<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" itemprop="name">A test for one Chinese province: How to educate an influx of US-born children</h1>
<h2 class="" itemprop="description">
<p>At least 10,000 children born in the US to Chinese parents have been
sent back to Fujian to be raised. But because they maintain US
citizenship, they're ineligible for China's public schools.</p></h2>
<p class="">
By
<span class="">Violet Law</span>, <span class="">Correspondent</span> /
January 20, 2014
</p>
<div class="">
<div class="">
<div class=""><div style="display:block" class=""><div style class=""><ul style="overflow:hidden;margin:0px;padding:0px;width:490px" id="pgallerycarousel" class=""><li style="float:left;list-style:none outside none" class="">
<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/2014/0113-fujian/17821957-1-eng-US/0113-fujian_full_600.jpg" class=""><img src="http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/2014/0113-fujian/17821957-1-eng-US/0113-fujian_full_380.jpg" alt="" itemprop="image"></a>
</li></ul></div></div></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="">
<p class="" id="pgallerycarousel_caption" title="Photo Caption">Kindergartners
practice kung-fu on the playground of Jiang Huliu's school. Parents can
see their children through a video camera installed above the
playground. The children are sent back to China because their parents,
mostly illegal immigrants in restaurant and shopkeeping jobs in the
United States, work long hours and can't afford day care.</p>
<p class="" id="pgallerycarousel_credit" title="Photo Credit">Violet Law</p>
<span id="pgallerycarousel_related"></span>
</div></div></div><div class="">
<p class="">
Houyu Village, Fujian Province, China</p>
</div>
<p>A gray marble monument stands at the village’s entrance to document
the latest fundraising feat: half a million dollars collected in 2011
to bring the villagers tap water. Donations overwhelmingly are made in
dollars, remitted by local sons and daughters who work in America. </p><div class=""><div class=""><div id="ad_unit" class=""><table class=""><tbody><tr height="5%"><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr></tbody></table></div>
</div> </div>
<a name="nextParagraph"></a>
<p>Elsewhere, plaques and other privately funded community projects –
from streetlights to sewer lines – dot the landscape. And villa-style
mansions with marble pillars now tower over mustard-colored brick
shacks.</p><p>The mansions’ inhabitants are mostly the elderly and their grandchildren. While <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/China" title="Title: China" target="_self" class="" rel="nofollow">China</a>’s
countryside is teeming with such families as working-age adults migrate
to cities in search of higher wages, the difference here is that many
of the children are Americans by birth. They are known as <i>yang liu shou er tong,</i> or “left-behind foreign kids.”</p>
<div class="">
<p class="">
<br>
</p>
</div>
<p>The children are sent back to China because their parents, mostly illegal immigrants in restaurant and shopkeeping jobs in the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+States" title="Title: United States" target="_self" class="" rel="nofollow">United States</a>,
work long hours and can’t afford day care. The children often don’t see
their parents until they’re old enough to return to the country of
their birth in order to start grade school.<b> </b> </p><p>In a single district that encompasses Houyu and 200 other villages, there are 5,000 such children. In the provincial capital of <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Fuzhou" title="Title: Fuzhou" target="_self" class="" rel="nofollow">Fuzhou</a>, they number between 10,000 and 20,000, according to estimates made by officials in 2012.</p>
<p>For
this village and others like it in southern Fujian Province, the
“left-behind foreign kids” represent a challenge and an opportunity for
educators. Because China does not allow dual citizenship, the US-born
children are not eligible for local public schools. Instead, they attend
private schools set up by villagers especially for them.</p>
<div class="">
<p><b>RECOMMENDED:</b> <a style="font-weight:bold" href="http://www.monitorfrontiermarkets.com/2014forecast" target="_new">Get your 2014 Emerging & Frontier Markets Forecast FREE.</a></p> </div><a name="eztoc17806787_1" id="eztoc17806787_1"></a><h2>
Village-run schools</h2><p>A
2012 report from Fuzhou city and district officials says many of the
kindergartens run by villagers for the left-behind foreign children are
not up to the standards widely followed by government schools. For
instance, village-run schools often do not require teachers to be
licensed. </p><p>Teachers also struggle with educating children whose
parents aren’t always vested in readying their children for the
transition to a foreign land.</p><p>“What the parents care about the
most is livelihood,” says Lu Fabin, a principal at Houyu Primary School
and Kindergarten. “There is very little they can do about their
children’s education. And some don’t care that much anyways.”</p><p>One
of his students is four-year-old Zeng Huliu, all bundled up in pink
against the unseasonal chill in this southern coastal province. After
lunch, Huliu paced around in the playground outside her kindergarten
before taking her nap. She last saw her parents in central Florida two
days ago – over Skype. </p><p>“Sometimes, when she’s unhappy, she
doesn’t say much,” says her grandmother Lu Ying, stuffing a peeled grape
into her palm. “But then her parents can’t tell because they aren’t
around.”</p><p>Grueling restaurant jobs leave Huliu’s parents little
time to call home, let alone take care of her. So as soon as she was
weaned off her mother's milk at 10 months old, Huliu was sent back to
the village. Her parents plan on bringing her to Florida next year.<b> </b></p><p>Like
many who left the village, Huliu’s parents entered the US illegally;
they cannot travel abroad freely. Her father left home in 1998 at age 20
to work at a Chinese restaurant run by close relatives in the US, and
her mother waits tables at another Chinese restaurant. </p><a name="eztoc17806787_2" id="eztoc17806787_2"></a><h2>Emigration tradition</h2><p>Among the Chinese, the coastal Fujianese<b> </b>are
famous for their wanderlust. Many prominent ethnic Chinese in Southeast
Asia trace their roots here. Beginning in the 1970s, boatloads of
Fujianese were smuggled across the Pacific to toil in Chinatowns in the
US, mostly on the Eastern seaboard. Even after China’s socialist economy
was transformed by private capital, Fujianese still looked overseas for
opportunities.</p><p>The tradition of emigration runs so deep that many
Fujianese villages have set up friendship clubs in the US to pool money
for the benefit of fellow villagers. The club’s name is emblazoned on
many of the marble plaques in Houyu, which has at least 3,000 locals in
the US, three times the size of the village’s current population.</p><p>Jiang
Huizhen, who has 20 years' experience in preschool teaching, expanded
her kindergarten two years ago in a refurbished school building on
donated land in the nearby Guantou township.</p><p>Now, out of her 200
students, nearly 4 in 5 are born overseas, mostly in the US. She has
worked hard to engage the absentee parents in school life. They can see
their child through a live feed from the school’s playground and can
chat with the teachers on microblog sites.</p><p>The teachers often find
out a child is being pulled from school on short notice. Five-year-old
Ou Binqian is to go by the end of this month, before the Chinese New
Year’s. “I’ve been to the US before,” says Binqian. “My dad took me to
the amusement park. I had classes to learn English.”</p><p>Ms. Jiang
says teaching English isn’t her teachers’ strong suit, but it is more
important to inculcate in the children a sense of independence and
responsibility. For midday nap, every child is taught to fold their
blanket and put away their clothes.</p><p>“No matter where they go,
inevitably there’ll be a sense of strangeness,” Jiang says. “What all
kids need is a sense of security.” <br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><br>-- <br>**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br>
<br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************
</div>