[HERITAGE-LIST] Fwd: Looking to Beijing, With Pride

[Kim Potowski]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Harold Schiffman" <hfsclpp at gmail.com>
> Date: July 30, 2008 9:10:22 AM CDT
> To: lp <lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
> Subject: Looking to Beijing, With Pride
> Reply-To: lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
>
> Looking to Beijing, With Pride
>
>
> By N.C. Aizenman
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Tuesday, July 29, 2008; Page B01
>
> In her quest to keep her 10-year-old son Joseph connected to his
> Chinese roots, Diana Wobus has hung paintings with Mandarin characters
> in his room, shuttled him to Chinese language classes most Saturdays,
> and steadfastly resisted the temptation to speak to him in English
> rather than Chinese. But it wasn't until Wobus and her American
> husband, Peter, decided to take Joseph to the Beijing Olympics, that
> the boy began truly identifying with the land of his birth.
>
> "It's really exciting because I never knew the Olympics could be in
> China," said Joseph -- who moved to Rockville before he reached the
> age of 2 -- as he pulled a well-worn Olympics T-shirt out of his
> half-packed suitcase to show a visitor on a recent afternoon. "It's
> like the first time China gets to do it in more than a hundred years
> and it makes me really proud."
>
> When the first bars of the Olympics theme are broadcast from Beijing's
> National Stadium to television screens across the United States this
> August, perhaps no one will cheer more ecstatically than the nation's
> estimated 1.4 million mainland Chinese immigrants. Like their
> countrymen back in China, many immigrants consider the Olympics a sort
> of national coming-out party -- the ultimate recognition of China's
> long transformation from "sick man of Asia" to economic powerhouse and
> world player.
>
> Many Chinese Americans say they are just as thrilled by the
> opportunity the Olympics will offer to introduce their U.S.-raised
> children to Chinese culture in a modern, appealing light.
>
> "One of the frustrations for Chinese parents in this country as they
> try to pass on their heritage to their children is that the children
> say, 'Oh, China is the old way. That's your heritage, not mine,' "
> said Yan Tai, deputy national editor of World Journal, one of the most
> widely read Chinese-language dailies in the United States.
>
>
> "But through the Olympics, parents can say to the kids, 'See, where
> I'm from is not that old fashioned or out of date. We can do great
> things like hosting the Olympics. The Olympics is your thing, but
> we're hosting them.' . . . It's a way to bring the first and second
> generation together."
>
> Months before the games, teachers in some of the dozens of
> Chinese-language weekend classes for children of the Washington area's
> more than 46,000 Chinese immigrants were already using Olympic-themed
> readings or reward stickers to capture students' attention. And lately
> Xiaoning Wang, owner of ChinaSprout, a New York-based company that
> markets Chinese textbooks to Chinese American parents, has also been
> doing a brisk business selling Olympic-themed pencils, clothing, and
> plush toys.
>
> Once the games begin, almost all Chinese immigrant parents are likely
> to make watching them a family event, predicted Yaohui Wang, a
> scientist at the National Institutes of Health and head of the
> American Chinese School in Rockville.
>
> "The Olympics are such a good way to communicate to the kids," said
> Wang, whose 16-year-old son has a poster of Chinese NBA star Yao Ming
> in his bedroom. "Sports are universal."
>
> Then there are those willing to spring for an even more expensive
> version of the lesson: Several travel agencies that specialize in
> Chinese American clients estimate that purchases of tickets to China
> are up as much as 20 percent this summer, largely due to parents who,
> like the Wobuses, are taking their children to see the Games in
> person.
>
> Wobus and her husband, both health policy researchers, have encouraged
> Joseph to find maps of China on the Internet and plot their trip
> itinerary in advance. Diana Wobus said her ultimate goal is to ensure
> that he doesn't grow up to be "a banana -- yellow on the outside,
> white on the inside."
>
> "There are already so many second-generation adults who are like
> that," said Wobus, who was born in China. "They take a trip back to
> China [as grown-ups] and they realize that they have no connection to
> this rich, ancient culture and it's too late. . . . I don't want
> Joseph to have those regrets."
>
> The difficulty of keeping their children grounded in Chinese culture
> is all the more vexing to many Chinese immigrant parents because of
> the effort they put into it. Chinese Americans, of course, are hardly
> the only immigrant group struggling to pass their language and
> traditions on to the next generation. But they are certainly among the
> most systematic, founding hundreds of weekend and summer academies
> like Wang's to teach not only Chinese reading and writing but
> decorative arts, sports, music and dance.
>
> The mixed results of that approach were evident during interviews on a
> recent afternoon with some of the roughly 150 kids, mostly Chinese
> Americans, attending Dr. Li's Summer Camp in Rockville -- which offers
> six hours of math, English, middle- and high-school entrance exam and
> SAT prep classes, five days a week.
>
> Despite attending language classes, few children said they could read
> or write well in Chinese. And asked to define what part of them was
> Chinese, most gave examples related to their parents rather than
> themselves:
>
> Being Chinese American, giggled 10-year-old Jessica Zhang, means
> having a mother who insists that you eat Chinese food every single
> day. "I'm so sick of it -- it's so oily!" she said.
>
> Or having parents who make you spend the summer toiling in Dr. Li's
> camp, even though you're already in your middle school's advanced math
> class, added her friend, Rolanda Wang, 12. "They want me to do even
> better -- Chinese parents have the highest expectations," she said,
> half-sighing, half-laughing.
>
> And though most said their families have access to television and
> music broadcasts from China through Internet subscriptions, they could
> not cite a single Chinese performer whose work they followed.
>
> "I guess," said Jacob Chen, 15, summarizing the sentiments of many
> peers, "I think of the Chinese part of me as the stuff that comes at
> home rather than the rest of my life."
>
> Yet nearly all the children interviewed said they considered
> themselves Chinese American, or even simply Chinese, rather than
> purely American. Most shared not just their parents' pride in the
> Olympics, but the dismay that even immigrants not particularly
> supportive of China's government expressed when human rights advocates
> protested the international torch relay through Europe and San
> Francisco.
>
> And as much as a group of high school boys on break from their SAT
> prep class bemoaned the Saturdays of their youth lost to Chinese
> language class, not one hesitated when asked if they planned to
> subject their own children to the same regimen.
>
> "Oh, definitely," said Ed Gao, 16, of Potomac. "And I'm not going to
> let them quit like I did!"
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/29/ST2008072900840.html
>
> -- 
> **************************************
> N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
> its members
> 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. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
> *******************************************
>

_________
Kim Potowski
Associate Professor of Spanish
Director, Spanish for heritage speakers
The University of Illinois at Chicago
Department of Spanish, French, Italian & Portuguese
1722 UH, MC-315, 601 S. Morgan St.
Chicago, IL 60607
kimpotow at uic.edu