Advice to young kids' parents

My son is roughly 2 years and 9 months old, and my wife and I have decided that it's time for him to start attending a daycare center. There is a fundamental difference in Western and Chinese culture in the nomenclature "daycare center", or more specifically "kindergarten".

For Westerners, kindergarten is the year before grade 1, in which a child is usually 5 years old. Prior to kindergarten, there is also junior kindergarten for even younger children. In China, though, any daycare center or preschool that precedes grade 1 is classified as "kindergarten".

If my son went to a kindergarten he would have had to spend more than 8 hours a day away from parents or grandparents. Since we surmised that that would be too much for a kid leaving the confines of home for the first time, we decided on a half-day schedule - from Monday to Friday - at a kindergarten near our home.