Fujian speakers in New York

[Harold F. Schiffman]

March 19, 2002

           American Born, Chinese Raised, and Confused

           By YILU ZHAO

              Renhui Tian wept tears of happiness last year at Kennedy
International Airport when he saw two of his sons for the first time since
they were infants.  Xiaoxian and Xiaoqin, then 5 and 7, were born in
Manhattan's Chinatown. But they were arriving from Fujian, a rural
province in southeastern China, because Mr.  Tian, in a practice common
among illegal Chinese immigrants, sent them there as infants to be raised
by their grandparents.

           As illegal immigrants who owed smugglers more than $40,000, Mr.
Tian and his wife could not afford to take time off from seven-day-a-week
jobs in restaurants and garment factories to care for their sons or spend
the $700 a month asked by Chinatown's day care centers.  But the Tian
boys' reunion with their parents has been difficult, even though the boys
are old enough to go to school. Indeed, children like the Tian boys pose a
significant challenge for New York City's public schools.

           Speaking only Fujianese, a dialect that few teachers even
Chinese-language bilingual teachers can understand, raised by doting but
often illiterate grandparents who neglected their early schooling,
sometimes sick with contagious diseases, the Fujianese children frequently
lag behind academically.  At schools, Fujianese children are placed with
other students in regular classes or bilingual classes taught in Mandarin
or Cantonese. Since Fujianese students understand none of these languages,
they often keep quiet, talk among themselves in Fujianese, or simply look
lost. Fujianese is as different from Cantonese or Mandarin, the two
languages that New York's bilingual teachers of Chinese speak, as Yiddish
is from German.

           "The Fujianese children in general have very poor academic
backgrounds," said Lily Woo, principal of Public School 130 on Baxter
Street.  "It's very hard for us to help them, because they speak only
Fujianese."  In Fujian, most grandparents do not send their American-born
grandchildren to local schools, even if the children stay in Fujian until
they are 9 or 10, said Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian-American studies
at Hunter College who has studied Fujianese immigrants for many years.

           "Their grandparents are very soft on them," said Dr. Kwong,
noting that the grandparents know the children will return to the United
States. "The grandparents believe these kids, who are American citizens,
have it made already. They also think America's education is different;
why bother teaching them stuff in Fujian?"  As a result, he said, many
Fujianese children fail to grasp some of the basic concepts that other
children have mastered by the time they enter elementary school, like the
ability to count to 10.  Jeannie Lau, a caseworker at Lower East Side
Family Union who is herself a child of Fujianese immigrants, said that
after the children return to New York, "when their parents want to
discipline them, the Fujianese kids' attitude in general is, `Who the heck
are you? You were never there, and all of a sudden you are giving me
orders?' "

           In addition, American schools are disorienting for these
children. Ms. Woo said: "They get scared at school, they cry, and they
don't feel they can turn to anyone, not even their own parents. The people
who took care of them when they were little are gone."  In a way, the
challenge posed to the Board of Education by the shifting waves of Chinese
immigrants reflects the fact that administrators are always one step
behind immigration trends.  More Fujianese children are returning to New
York every year.  The enrollment trend at P.S. 184 on East Broadway is
similar to the other half-dozen schools in the Chinatown area. In 1998,
one-fifth of all new students at P.S. 184 were categorized as Fujianese.
In 1999 and 2000, their number increased to one- third, and last year, it
was half. Based on figures provided by principals, more than 1,000
Fujianese students attend Chinatown's elementary schools.

           The Board of Education, which now supplies enough Cantonese-
speaking bilingual teachers two decades after large waves of
Cantonese-speaking children entered the city's public school system does
not yet offer Fujianese as an option on the survey forms it sends to
parents about languages spoken at home.  Mr. Tian laments that his sons'
scores on tests in their kindergarten and first-grade classes are in the
50's and 60's.  He also said that neither of the pair liked their cramped
new home much, and that each cried for at least a month, asking for their
grandparents. "They didn't know we are their parents," Mr.  Tian said,
speaking Mandarin. "They thought Grandma and Grandpa were Mom and Dad."

           Many parents seem at a loss about how to deal with children who
are not entirely familiar to them. "Just the other day, my son came home
and lied to me," said Mrs. Chen, whose 7- year-old child returned from
Fujian last year and now attends P.S. 184. (Mrs. Chen would not give her
first name because of her illegal status in America.)  "He told me he
didn't have homework, but he actually did. I wanted to hit him, but he
said he would call A.C.S. and send me to jail," fumed the mother,
referring to the Administration for Children's Services. "Calling A.C.S.,
that's the first thing he learned here."

           Occasionally, Fujianese children face problems that go beyond
schooling. Some Fujianese children return to New York sick with
tuberculosis or hepatitis B, both endemic in rural China, where health
care is inadequate. "The mom would come to me with her sick child and cry,
saying she should never have sent the child back," said Selina Chan, the
head nurse of the Chinatown clinic of St. Vincent's Manhattan Hospital.
Often, they are overweight or too skinny, because their grandparents did
not enforce balanced diets.

           After years of unremitting work, Mr. Tian has his family
together, almost. He toiled 12 hours a day as a cook at Chinese
restaurants and his wife equally long hours as a seamstress.  They paid
their last installment to the smuggler last year, 12 years after Mr. Tian
arrived, and later in the year, they sent for Xiaoji, 4, after his older
brothers settled in. But their oldest children, 13 and 14, are still
living in Fujian with Mr. Tian's parents.  Mr. Tian crossed the border of
southern China to Cambodia, where he made it to Thailand, almost 13 years
ago. He was caught by the Thai police and beaten in jail, he said, but he
eventually flew to the United States on a fake passport. Two years ago,
Mr. Tian successfully applied for political asylum in a New York court,
claiming he feared prosecution under China's one-child policy.

           Mr. Tian, laid off from his job as a cook after Sept. 11, is
looking for ways to apply for government-subsidized housing.  Sharing a
400-square- foot two-bedroom apartment with another family in a tenement
on East Broadway, Mr. Tian, his wife and their three sons sleep on a
full-size bunk bed. The lower layer of the bed doubles as a desk for
Xiaoxian during the day.  Mr. Tian's grueling life here has made him
desperate for his children to succeed. On a recent Tuesday evening, Mr.
Tian went to the weekly parents' class at P.S. 184, which teaches the
Chinese parents some basic English and a few American customs. Mr. Tian,
who had never attended school, stared at the principal, confused, as the
other parents hesitantly followed her to pronounce the word "horse."  "I
want my sons to make it here," Mr. Tian, 35, said, smiling apologetically.
"Living as I do is too hard."