Andy Wong/Associated Press

Like any regular Chinese kids, my children, who are ethnically European but deeply rooted in China and fluent in Chinese, love playing on the grass. And like any regular Chinese parent, when they rush onto the grass in a Beijing park I often shout, “Off the grass! It’s not clean!”

After 33 years in Hong Kong, on the mainland of China and in Taiwan, I love Chinese grass as much as the next person. It’s probably, literally, part of my blood.

So why whisk the kids away?

I’ll let Xiao Yao, our family’s ayi, or nanny, a native Beijinger, speak for me, since her reaction tells much about why Chinese parents are reluctant to let their kids play on the grass in downtown parks, or even touch the ground too much. (Picking brightly colored leaves off the ground in the fall is another no-no.)

“Zang!” she yells, “Dirty!” swooping up our 4-year-old daughter and pointing our 9-year-old son to a concrete surface on which to play football, instead.

The reason? Small patches of grass in China’s cities, such as those around the trees that line many Beijing streets, tend to be used for the kinds of activities that no parent, Chinese or otherwise, wants their children to come into contact with — urinating, expectorating, clearing the nose.

When the patches are larger, as they are in public parks, they are often protected by signs: “Cherish our Nature! Keep off the Grass!” In those places, grass is for looking at, not for rolling on.

All this makes raising kids in a big city in China something of a grass-free experience, unless you are lucky enough to have access to a large, private lawn, a rare thing.

Inevitably, vacations elsewhere, even in the big cities of Europe, the United States, or Australia, is a bonanza of grass. The kids revel in it.

Giant green vistas such as Munich’s Englischer Garten are paradisiacal. The only thing you have to watch out for, and it’s a real threat, is dog feces.

But what China lacks in touchable grass it makes up for in other family-friendly attributes.

For one, people are immensely tolerant of noise. That includes the inevitable, wearing noise that children make. In fact, they’re generally deeply tolerant of children.

No one tuts if a child yells or cries in public. No one frowns if a child accidentally breaks crockery in a restaurant. Apologies at smashed ceramic spoons in restaurants in Beijing are inevitably met with a smile and “It doesn’t matter,” followed by a quick sweeping away of the shards, even when my kids have clearly been using the spoons as toys.

Switch to Europe, where attitudes towards noisy kids may be growing more tolerant (spurred, perhaps, by anxiety over falling birthrates?) but where I still find myself automatically shushing my kids when there’s an explosion of temper in a restaurant, or an outburst of high-spirited play, to ward off the disapproving glances or critical remarks that I sense may follow if I don’t. Broken crockery brings forth groveling apologies, to ward off the irritation from the waitstaff.

In fact, the early years of a child’s life in many Chinese families can be paradisiacal in a way that I value as highly as clean, green grass, since children are routinely humored and indulged, even if that may fade at six, when the serious business of school begins.

Children are generally treated with an extraordinary degree of affection and tolerance by both their families and the broader public, a tolerance that resides at the heart of the people and may be rooted, however subconsciously, in traditional Daoist and Confucian notions of balance, of harmony and of the importance of children to society.

In the rare instance where something happens that does elicit some disapproval, I am never made to feel like a “bad mother,” as may happen Europe —— there may be a response to whatever has happened, but not a lesson in morality.

And that’s a reason when we return to China, it’s always with a glad heart.

My son is clearly trying to work through some of these differences.

This week, in Munich, he wrote a short essay.

“Beijing is growing constantly,” he wrote.

“You know what they say: ‘China is the world’s factory.’ And approximately 20 years ago China was full of bicycles, but today it’s full of cars. And since there are so many factories and cars the picture at the back is formed.” On the other side of the page he drew a car-and-skyscraper stuffed cityscape for Beijing, and a grass-filled cityscape with lots of playgrounds, for Munich.

“Munich is a whole other story,” he continued.

“It has less cars, less factories, less pollution and it’s just nicer for me, but Beijing is the only place I feel at home.”