You beat me to that one. However, Mrs. Livingston was Japanese.
Here's a photo to jog memories.
Posted on 01/11/2006 12:10:42 PM PST by oblomov
Chinese au pairs are New York's latest fashion: Manhattan's elite wants to prepare its progeny for the economic world of tomorrow.
Her parents are caucasian Americans, her home is a $1 million villa on the Hudson River and her favorite place to play is a swing in the yard.
But when Hilton Augusta Rogers, aged 2, swings through the air on sunny mornings she doesn't express her joy in English. "Geng gao," she calls to her father Jim. "That means 'higher,'" he says, pushing the swing.
The girl is happy and burbles in a child's Mandarin Chinese: "le, le," she says. Then she asks for a fresh piece of "gua gua." Each word makes her parents proud of their little globalization project: Who else at Hilton's age can already say "melon" in the language of a future economic world power?
Hilton is Jim Rogers' latest investment. The 63-year-old earned millions of dollars by founding the Quantum Fund in the 1970s with George Soros. And while the world speculated on Internet startups a few years ago, Rogers invested (successfully) in sugar, copper, and nickel. Since then he's been known as the "Commodities Guru."
(Excerpt) Read more at chinadaily.com.cn ...
I feel so deprived that I never had an international nanny--just a mom that stayed at home.
If their villa on the Hudson is only worth $1 million, they're middle class.
I would be very, verp happy with a Chinese coed "nanny"...but then the misses would want a young muscular "poolboy".
He's my best friend...
Villa on the Hudson---love it.
Rogers is famously very frugal. He has a net worth of several hundred million, would be my guess.
The kid's name is Hilton?
Good Gracious. She better be worth some money.
I think there are parking spaces on the Hudson that are worth $1 million.
Maybe the next generation of limosuine liberals will be smarter than this generation.
Consider yourself lucky. I was abandoned in the wild and raised by a pack of gophers. Until I was kidnapped by the motorcycle gang, that is.
Rarely have a read anything so full of laughable cliches about WASPy, coastal, upper-class yuppie types. It has everything: a "villa" on the Hudson, a 63-year-old with a 2-year-old daughter, the daughter's name being, Lord help us, "Hilton", the daughter described as an "investment" and clearly being concieved as a plaything or pet to the aging millionaire couple, connections to George Soros, and, of course, the oh-so-trendy idea of getting a Chinese nanny (God forbid the PARENTS raise the child) to "prepare" the child for the "economic world of tomorrow" in which China is inevitably the "future economic world power". It's like a joke article!
Of course China will be the world superpower, if latte-swilling yuppie snobs like this, who think that would be so beautifully, wonderfully "multicultural" (as long as the third-world stays out of their backyard, except when their Mexican gardener is mowing the lawn), are running the country. Fortunately, they're not.
I have two cousins who speak fluent English, Spanish, and Portugese. My uncle is a med student and my aunt is a flight attendant. If CAFTA ever goes online, those kids' linguistic skills are going to be a valuable commodity.
Good points...I had many of the same reactions. What wonderful things our "planners" have in store for us!
Obviously a bit tricked up, since if she were old money she'd have three given names and a surname and all of her given names would be last names. "Augusta" just doesn't make it (unless she's related to the House of Windsor, nee Saxe-Coburg-Gotha).
I suppose in preparing a child for life, a Chinese nanny would be an improvement over the former favorites, English or French nannies.
Whoa!
Maybe that's where she was conceived. :)
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