Jiaozi

So anyway -- PANDAS!

May and I got back from our two-week trip to China a few weeks ago, and I've been busy sorting through photos while jumping back into work and the rest of the routine.

It was a wonderful trip. Not relaxing, like a trip to Hawaii, or fun, like a trip to Disneyland; it was an adventure, and meaningful to both of us.

Originally we had planned for the whole family to go, but for one reason or another it didn't work out, so we agreed I would take May, who hadn't made a return visit to her homeland. That turned out to be a great decision. It was a lovely chance for my middle child to have me all to herself, and for her to be able to call the shots about where we'd go and what we'd eat without having to negotiate with her elder sister and younger sister. And, of course, I loved having her all to myself, without the distractions of school and work. My quiet girl and I had serious talks and giggled over private jokes like a couple of schoolgirls.

We went to Beijing, which May loved (she said she could see herself living there), Xi'an, Chengdu, Nanchang, and Shanghai. The social welfare institute took us out to lunch, put up a welcome banner for May, and let us look at (but not remove) her file. Separately, we met with her foster family and walked around her old neighborhood. It was good for her to confirm some memories and correct others that were not as clear. Some people consider teenagers too old for homeland tours, but I think we went at exactly the right time for her.

Although seein g the Great Wall and Forbidden City was important culturally, and the trip to May's home city was emotionally significant, the highlight of the trip -- and the part May was most excited about -- was still probably the visit to the panda breeding center in Chengdu. It was amazing to see dozens of pandas, of all ages, in one place, roaming around their pleasant green compounds. But best of all was being able to hold a baby panda. This was crazy expensive, but they've added some little extras to make it seem more worthwhile; you get a certificate commemorating your donation, an educational film on DVD, and a hooded sweatshirt with a panda logo on it.

And you get to sit for a minute wearing a surgical gown and plastic gloves holding a chubby, soft six-month-old panda on your lap. They give the panda a stick of bamboo dipped in honey to lick, and he sits placidly for some time, not paying much attention to the people or cameras, until the honey runs out.

I smelled my panda's head. He smelled of animal fur and grass. May was in heaven, hugging her panda and looking at him with adoring eyes; it was a dream come true for her.

I hope she never forgets that feeling.

Spring break!

Not that I post here that often anyway, but at least I have a good excuse for being absent for the next couple of weeks. I'm taking May to China for her first return trip since she came to America. It will be her first visit to Beijing and my first visit to Shanghai, and we'll hit some other locations that are new to both of us. Plus we'll be returning to her social welfare institute. Maybe I'll have touristy pictures to post when we return. Zai jian!

Racist much?

Parenting is complicated, but transracial and international adoptive parenting is doubly so. I've been an adoptive parent for 15 years, and the concerns tend to come and go. Sometimes issues of identity come to the fore, sometimes the lingering effects of institutionalization, sometimes race and culture, and sometimes you're just trying to get everyone out the door in the morning.

This past month has been a big one for racism. Maybe it's because of Halloween, which tends to make people think they have a license to be offensive. Maybe it's the coming elections; I came across two separate posts on Facebook recently in which people made fun of the president using a stereotypical "Stepin Fetchit" black dialect. And maybe it's just a thing that happens from time to time; we've recently had another round of schoolchildren doing the "slant eyes"* gesture at one my kids, a recurring problem.

What puzzles me, perhaps even more than the offensive remarks, is the defensiveness people immediately throw up when you call them on racism. The responses are so predictable you could play Racism Bingo. Even the most gentle, light, or heartfelt of admonitions -- "You know, that's considered to be an offensive gesture," "Not cool!" or "I am offended by that" -- bring out all the old chestnuts and flippant remarks: "Why does everything have to be so PC these days?" "Chill out!" "I didn't mean any offense, so it's okay."

I've been around and around with people about calling kids like mine "China dolls." Many people are honestly unaware of the history and connotations of this term. I understand this. There are still innocents in the world. What I don't understand is why they want to argue with me when I tell them why it's offensive. That's not ignorance. That's arrogance.

It's so simple. Don't say or do things other people find offensive. Don't tell them it's not offensive; that's not your call. Apologize if you say something offensive by accident. It doesn't matter how you "meant it." Refer to groups by the names they prefer. Don't argue with them about their choice. You don't even have to understand it. You just have to know.

Especially if you are white. You do not get to be the arbiter of what is and isn't racist any more than men get to be the arbiters of what is and isn't sexist. The group in power does not get to tell the group that is in the minority/oppressed/marginalized what's offensive. Oppressed groups get to retain that right, at least.

I knew this before I adopted transracially, but I didn't feel it in my bones. Now I do. And it has been humbling. I feel weird talking about race. I feel weird pointing out racism to my kids. I feel weird talking about my whiteness. But I think it's the right thing to do, and I'm going to keep doing it.

And I feel good when I see that they really do understand about racism and will be able to take up the battle on their own, in their own way.

A couple of weeks ago we were watching an episode of "Dance Moms" in which the African American mom was trying to make the dance teacher understand why it was not okay to put her daughter, the only child of color in the group, in leopard-print leotards and Afro wigs (there was more, but it was too awful to repeat here). The dance teacher held her ground and insisted that she was creating more opportunities for the little girl.** May snorted, "Racist much?"

All three girls are getting pretty good at seeing racism aimed at themselves and others. They are well aware of the stereotypes that other people are going to try to push onto them. They know it's not okay for anyone to make "slant eyes" at them, and they speak up when it happens.

This is what we promised to do for our children, isn't it? Our adoption agency required us to read books, attend classes, and respond to questionnaires about race and culture. We had to have a plan for how we would responsibly raise a child of color in a white society.

I feel like some people didn't get the memo.

 

*I'm sorry, I can't think of a better word for this. Angry Asian Man calls it "chink eyes," but I'm not sure I can say that.

**Why on earth doesn't that mom pull her kid out of the school? She shouldn't stand for it.

Educating May

We were prepared for May to be behind her American peers academically. She was 8 when we met her and had been attending third grade for two months. She was not in the orphanage school, but attended what was described to us as a private school near her foster family’s apartment. Our home school district recommended placing her according to age, but I knew from talking to other adoptive parents that it might be necessary to place her a year behind.

I could see right away that she was very bright. She could write the English alphabet and knew what sounds the letters made. (Most likely she learned the alphabet in preparation for writing pinyin, not English.) She had studied Chinese reading and writing, a bit of art and music, and mathematics.

Watching her over the first couple of weeks, I didn’t see any signs that she was immature compared to a typical third-grader. She was well-behaved, related well to people, and was interested in learning. There didn’t seem to be any reason not to go ahead and enroll her in third grade, with English language learner (ELL) support. (The Chinese grades do not directly correlate to ours, but third grade is pretty close.)

May got right into the school routine. Obviously, language was a challenge. She was pulled out of class for ELL instruction for an hour every day. She completed reams of language arts worksheets while the other kids did their spelling and reading lessons. A couple of older students who spoke both Mandarin and English were assigned to help her find her way around, which was invaluable. Several girls in class took her under their wings, and I’ll be forever grateful for their kindness.

She was ahead in math, at least in computational skills, because the American students were just starting to talk about multiplication, and she already knew multiplication and long division. But American schools’ highly verbal approach to teaching math was a disadvantage to her. I’m not just talking about the ubiquitous story problems. She brought home worksheets asking her to identify place numbers – ones, tens, hundreds, thousands. This was in preparation for learning the more advanced computational operations, which she already knew. In most of her homework, she was expected not just to get the correct answer, but also to explain how she arrived at her answer. It wasn’t enough to do math; she had to be able to talk about math.

She finished third grade speaking conversational English, beginning to understand American-style math, reading first-grade books, and playing and chatting with new friends at recess. We spent her first summer building on that foundation. I read more challenging books to her while she followed along, to give her a better “feel” for English. She did some language arts workbooks. She watched American TV and Chinese movies.

Mostly, we talked, all of us, and she learned proper English, and colloquialisms and slang as well. For a while, it was like having a 2-year-old again; she clung to my side all the time, constantly asking questions. It was intense and exhausting but necessary, because she had a lot of catching up to do emotionally, socially, and intellectually.

Third grade is about basics. In fourth grade, we got a better sense of her educational gaps. Social studies and science were completely new subjects to her. She had no sense of world geography or history or cultures outside of China and the United States. She wasn’t familiar with art or literature, Chinese or Western. She didn’t know how many planets are in our solar system or that Earth circles the sun or that the sun is a star. She didn’t know how plants grow or where baby animals come from.

This I was not prepared for. May had skills, but she had no foundation of knowledge on which to build her broader education. Partly this was because of the Chinese educational system. The Chinese language is so complex that students spend many years learning to read and write characters properly, and language is the most important subject in school. Math comes in second.

There were also cultural reasons; China is still quite closed off, and information about the rest of the world is closely guarded. (Ethnocentrism is certainly not absent in our country – we study the history and culture of the Americas and Europe, but learn little about Asia or Africa, for example.)

But her gaps had to do with more than schooling. Most American third-graders have never studied world history or science either. But they’ve been surrounded by the general concepts since birth, through popular culture. They’ve watched Ratatouille and have a sketchy idea what France looks like and how the people speak and what they eat. They’ve recited nursery rhymes about London Bridge. They’ve seen ancient Egyptian mummies on Scooby-Doo. They’ve watched Bugs Bunny rocket through the solar system with Marvin the Martian in hot pursuit. I’m not kidding about this. You don’t realize how much our daily lives are saturated with information, trivial and important, until you spend time with someone who missed that exposure.

May learned quickly. She received minimal ELL support in fourth grade. By the end of fifth grade, she was reading English at grade level. She soon tested out of ELL. Today, having just finished seventh grade, she has a straight-A average. She writes amazing poetry and creates beautifully executed school projects. She works very hard, and complains equally hard. She is absolutely on track with her peers socially, physically, and academically, even ahead of them in some ways. Despite the challenges, placing May in third grade when she arrived was absolutely the right choice for this particular child.

We continue to build her general fund of knowledge. She is very expressive in English, but some of the more irregular aspects – helper verbs, prepositions – still trip her up. Building vocabulary is difficult because she does not have an innate sense of the language. She doesn’t automatically recognize prefixes, suffixes, and root words as a native speaker might; for example, she would not be able to figure out what monophonic means despite knowing the words telephone and monotone. She can’t figure out words from context while reading because so much of the context is meaningless.

She has little sense of historical time. I try to explain ancient Greek or Roman mythology and she can’t place their ancient civilizations in time. I try to use Jesus as a milepost, but she can’t quite grasp the magnitude of events that can occur over the course of 2,000 years. Classical music means nothing to her. She can’t associate a musical style with a particular era. The same goes for art. She wouldn’t know a Michelangelo from a Picasso. (I suppose not all American 13-year-olds would, but this is a household where art and music are valued and available.)

Literary references are lost on May. Even the nursery rhymes that every American child knows are strange to her. If she jumps away from a spider and I joke, “You’re like Little Miss Muffet,” she gives me a blank look. So many of the cultural touchpoints that we take for granted are missing. She enjoys reading young adult fiction, the more angst-ridden the better, because the language is contemporary and familiar, and she can understand modern teens’ challenges. But the language in classic works of children’s literature – Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables – is too antiquated for her to get anything out of them. She quits in frustration after a couple of pages.

In the world of science, I keep explaining that Earth is the third planet from the sun, and there are nine planets (or eight, it keeps changing) in our solar system, and our solar system is one of many in our galaxy, which is one of many in the universe, but it doesn’t seem to stick. I know she just doesn’t have the picture in her brain that we all have because we once made a model of the solar system with Styrofoam balls or a teacher took us out on the playground and used a marble to represent Earth and a basketball to represent the sun.

She learns facts, but she doesn’t know them in her bones yet. This year she learned to identify all the countries in Europe and Asia on a blank map. But she still isn’t exactly sure where Europe is on the globe. She isn’t dense; she lacks the benefit of repetition. How many times did you study the solar system in school? She is hearing this stuff for the first time. I explain as much as I can, but there’s no point of reference on which to pin the bits of information.

Helping her with schoolwork is like stitching together a tablecloth that is filled with holes. She will get it eventually, but we both feel frustrated in the meantime. She is a good enough student that several of her teachers were encouraging her to sign up for honors courses next year, and we said no. Part of her wants to do it – she says, “Mom! I’m the only Asian kid who isn’t in honors math or learning an instrument!” – but she also understands our reasoning, that she needs to get a really solid grounding in the basics before moving on to more challenging work.

So we patch the holes and make connections wherever we can. Summer is a great time for this. Movies work just fine. For literature, we can watch Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet and the Katharine Hepburn version of Little Women. Amadeus should help with music history. I’ll let her watch Scooby-Doo (shudder), and then I’ll unroll the big Wall Chart of World History on the family room floor and point to where those ridiculous mummies came from. We’ll get there one way or another.
   

The Americanization of May

When May joined our family, we had been parenting Chinese-born children for 9 years. I thought I understood Chinese culture. I was wrong.

I was surprised to find that, compared to our other children, May was so much more...Chinese. Bess and Ella were indistinguishable in behavior, temperament, and values from American-born children of American-born parents. Culturally, they were American kids with an awareness of their Chinese heritage. They celebrated Lunar New Year and ate mooncakes during the Autumn Moon Festival in much the same way that a child whose grandparents immigrated from Norway might celebrate Syttende Mai and eat lefse. China was in the background of their lives (though never far away), rather than at the forefront.

But May had been raised and schooled for 8 years in the People's Republic of China. She was in every way a traditional Chinese girl. She was extremely modest, preferring to bathe and dress herself. She was shocked by women on television showing great expanses of cleavage; she pointed at them and made faces to show me her disgust. Kissing scenes were also new to her -- you almost never see kissing in Chinese television and films -- and she covered her eyes during romantic scenes. She was generally obedient and did not speak to adults unless asked a direct question; even then, she often said what she thought the adults wanted to hear, and she spoke in a soft voice with downturned eyes. She loved girly, dressy clothes and wore jeans only if there were nothing else available. She did not understand why anyone would wait in line, and punched the buttons in the hotel elevator impatiently, as she had seen the adults do. She loved TV and believed that Tom & Jerry was a Chinese cartoon -- well, obviously, they spoke Mandarin!

May was also a modern Chinese girl. And that means that she was a C0mmunist. She revered Mao Zedong and Lei Feng. She saluted the Chinese flag and sang patriotic songs. She wore the red scarf of the Young Pioneers to school. Her formal education involved reading and writing Chinese, studying mathematics, and practicing art. She had no knowledge whatsoever of world geography. She had heard of Japan and the United States, but had no idea where they were located; she knew only that the two foreign countries had a better standard of living than China (that is, she had heard that everyone there was rich). She knew nothing of science, nothing of world history, and nothing of Chinese history prior to the Communist Revolution.

As a modern girl, she had never seen anyone wear a qipao besides waitresses at restaurants catering to tourists. And she had no sense of spirituality. She was vaguely aware of Guan Yin, and had seen statues of Buddha. But when we went to the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees in Guangzhou, she seemed to have no clue what to do with the incense sticks. 

When we returned to the United States, we eased her into American ways as slowly as possible. At her insistence, we enrolled her in school fairly quickly. (She now denies that she was in any hurry to go to school, so this may have been an instance of her saying what she thought we wanted to hear.) But at home, she watched Mandarin-language videos and had Chinese books at her disposal. We let her choose her own clothes for the most part -- the more pink and sparkly, the better, as far as she was concerned. I offered rice, noodles, and vegetables at every meal. We didn't fuss over table manners, letting her learn by example, which she was eager to do.

Of course, over time she became acclimated. She learned, to her surprise, that Tom and Jerry spoke English and were invented here in America. She tried American foods one by one and decided which ones she really liked. She hung on to her Mandarin for a year or two, much longer than most children, but eventually she learned English. She has learned things about China and its history and leadership that she couldn't have learned in China, and she now has a more balanced view of both China and America.

But her character remains, in many ways, Chinese. She is much less likely to talk back than the other girls, and mutters under her breath when she has a beef with us. She tends to employ passive resistance rather than open defiance. She still speaks very softly. She loves fashion and makeup, and, though she wears jeans most of the time, they have to be skinny jeans in the latest wash, and she is always dressed to the nines; she never went through a tomboy phase. (If you have been to China recently, you know that young women there tend to dress up all the time rather than wearing sweatshirts and sneakers everywhere like American women.)

May has very high expectations for herself academically. As she explains it, in China, if you score less than 95%, you will earn a scolding; less than 90%, and your parents will slap you. She complains bitterly about her homework -- which, granted, is a bit more difficult for her than for native speakers -- but berates herself if she gets anything less than an A on an assignment. (She is still trying to fill the many holes in her world knowledge; I could fill another post with her school experiences, and plan to.) She gets straight A's, but she notes ruefully that she's the only Chinese kid at school not taking accelerated math or learning an instrument.

Socially, she knows and is friends with most of the Chinese-American kids at school, and she probably feels more comfortable with Asians. Her two best friends are a girl whose parents immigrated from Shanghai and a girl who was adopted from China at age 6. She has friends who are not Asian, but they're more casual friends. I can see May returning to China to live someday and being perfectly comfortable doing so (provided she has enough money to go shopping).

I am telling you this because I think it's important for prospective adoptive parents of older children to be aware that their new children's behavior, demeanor, and values may be more, and differently, "foreign" than they have anticipated. And they will likely remain Chinese at heart long after they have forgotten how to speak Chinese. (Or Korean, or Spanish, or Hindi, or Amharic, or Creole, as the case may be.) Their cultural and racial identity should be honored and not completely "Americanized" out of them -- an effort that would probably fail and frustrate both of you anyway.

And I think there is a message here for those of us who adopted infants. Even before May joined us, I had some nagging questions about how effectively and accurately we as adoptive parents are conveying "Chinese culture" to our children. Celebrating Chinese holidays, wearing qipaos and silk pyjamas, putting Chinese artwork on the walls and story books on the bookshelves -- there is nothing wrong with these observances, per se, and they certainly give our children more exposure to their birth culture than most of the Korean adoptees of the 1950s through 1970s received. But it's a sort of Epcot version of Chinese culture, a sanitized version that is stuck in the 19th century and pretends that the Communist Revolution never took place.

We tend to ignore the aspects of Chinese and Chinese-American culture that are alien to us as white Americans -- values such as filial piety, high academic achievement, a rigorous work ethic, sacrificing individual desires for the good of family and country. We buy silk fans and brocade slippers at the gift shops in Guangzhou and leave behind the Mao caps and propaganda posters. We celebrate the Autumn Moon Festival but not Learn From Lei Feng Day. We take our children to culture camp to make kites and sing traditional songs, but we don't, for the most part, sign them up for Saturday math classes and violin lessons or sacrifice our free time to prepare them for an Ivy League education.

This has always bothered me, and I think we do our children a disservice when we limit their view of Chinese culture to a two-dimensional cartoon. It would be confusing to hand our 3-year-olds copies of Mao's Little Red Book in place of New Year hong baos, but contemporary China should be represented at appropriate times in their upbringing, in a manner both truthful and respectful. Our children should have the chance to make a return visit to China at some point, but they also need opportunities to associate with other Asian Americans of all ages in this country.

As for the cultural values -- well, Big A and I do expect respect, academic achievement, and hard work from our children, but that's because we are old-school, not because our children are Chinese. (Though we joke that our parenting sometimes aligns better with that of Chinese-born parents than with some of our more indulgent American peers.) I'm not suggesting that we all try to turn our children into academic prodigies -- the long-term effects of institutionalization would make that difficult for many of our children anyway -- I just find it interesting that we resist enforcing the same high standards that our children's birth culture would likely have imposed on them.

For May, over time her "Chinese-ness" has become not an obstacle but an advantage. She fits in easily with the Chinese-American community. She has a strong sense of race, culture, and identity. Bess and Ella are more thoroughly assimilated, which means they have an easier time fitting into the dominant American culture, but they would have difficulty adapting to life in China or an exclusively Asian American community.

It is too soon for me to say whether this will be a liability for them. But I do believe that May's ability to smoothly negotiate her two cultures will, despite the challenges, be an asset for her in the future. And that, too, has been a surprise.

A question of identity

The other day May said to me, "You know, it's weird. I don't know when I was born. I don't know what my real parents look like. I don't know what I looked like when I was a baby. I don't even know for sure what my real name is."

This is the first time she has clearly expressed regret at not knowing her own history. We have pictures of her at about age 5, when she was brought to the orphanage, but no baby pictures. She remembered a great deal about her early life when she first arrived, and I wrote down everything she told me because I knew she would forget. But there were many events she didn't understand because no one explained them to her, and she did not know the basic facts of her own life.

The question about her name is a new one. She told me her name early on, and made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with her orphanage name. Now she says she's not sure. The name she told me was the name of a teacher at her school in China. She thought it sounded familiar when she met the teacher and decided it must have been her name. 

May has a friend who is her age and was adopted from China when she was 7. Ava also went to the orphanage at about age 5. She wrote an amazing story for school about how she came to the orphanage. She remembers clearly that she had an older sister whom she didn't like and a baby sister she loved. She does not believe that she was abandoned. Her recollection is that the police saw her alone in a store, and when she saw them following her, she ran, because her mother had told her to avoid the police. When they caught her, they took her to the Civil Affairs office and then to the orphanage. She still misses her baby sister.

I have heard of children adopted from Korea learning that they had in fact become separated from their parents in a busy market, not abandoned, as they had been told. Ava's story may be as she remembers it, or it may not. She will probably never know.

What is striking about the accounts of children who came to the orphanage when they were older is that they seem to know so little about themselves. They don't know when they were born because they never celebrated their birthdays. They don't know their home address or phone number. They don't know their parents' or siblings' names. They aren't even sure of their own names. Were they never called by name? Is it possible that they knew their names and told them to the orphanage staff, but later forgot because they were constantly called by new names?

Some day we will visit the orphanage and ask them to open their files. But I'm not holding out much hope that we will find any answers there.

Three years

May had an adoption anniversary this month -- she has been part of our family for three years now.

What an amazing journey she has had. It's hard to believe she was Ella's age when we met her. She was small and shy, but she had inner strength and a sure knowledge of who she was. Today she is hip and stylish and on the cusp of being a teenager, in attitude if not in years. She loves chic clothing, jewelry, and hairdos. She calls herself a fashionista, and the title fits. She also admits to being a chocoholic. She still struggles with English conventions, yet she is a wonderfully creative poet and short-story writer. I am in awe of her creative-writing ability. I think she may have a future as a writer, but the choice is hers.

This summer she discovered two passions that I believe will stay with her for a long time. The first is dance. She has taken Chinese dance for three years, but during the summer she also took a hip-hop class and attended ballet classes with a teacher in Chinatown. She did quite well in the ballet class -- the teacher is traditional Chinese and expects high levels of discipline, so it was a crash course for her, and she learned a great deal in just a few weeks. Chinatown is a long drive for us, and I complained about the inconvenience, but we wound up having several adventures there, catching a street fair, getting a close-up view of a lion dance, and stopping by the Chinese bakery after class for hot-dog rolls and strawberry whipped-cream cake. The hip-hop class, on the other hand, was pure fun, and she demonstrated a knack for the complicated steps and sassy attitude. This year she is taking jazz and hip-hop dance and having the time of her life. She choreographs her own dances and has big plans for the talent show this spring.

Her second new passion is reading. She learned to read in English within a few months of arriving here, but it has taken her a long time to build her vocabulary and world knowledge enough to get much out of her reading. She latched onto the teen fiction section of our little local library, and for the past four months she has burned through two or three novels a week. She especially enjoys stories of misery, and if people solve their problems with magic, so much the better.

Sometimes I worry that she's getting spoiled and may turn into a diva. She complains about doing chores, doesn't like to walk when she can ride, and pouts when she doesn't get her way. We stand our ground, and we can usually make her laugh and snap out of her bad mood. I tell her (as I tell all the girls) that we're not raising princesses.

But then I am reminded of how much she has to make up for. We were talking this morning in the kitchen. I teased her, "Remember, you're not a teenager yet." (She'll celebrate her 12th birthday in a few months.)

She replied, "But maybe I am. We don't really know." She's right. Her birthdate was assigned by the orphanage.

I said, "I keep hoping that maybe you gave the orphanage some information that made them give you that birthdate. Maybe you told them you were born during the Year of the Rat. Maybe you said it snowed on your birthday."

"Mom!" she said. "How could I tell them that? I never had a birthday! For eight years, no party, no presents, not even a cake. I didn't know when it was my birthday."

So -- can I be blamed for spoiling her, trying to inject a little magic into her life? She really is a good kid, despite enduring the kind of childhood most of us have only read about.

Motherland

May performed at an Autumn Moon Festival gathering over the weekend. Announcements were made by two nice young ladies, one speaking English and the other Mandarin. The lady speaking Mandarin spoke very quickly and clearly, and her voice coming over the loudspeaker sounded exactly like the voices one hears making announcements in Chinese airports. Listening to her, I suddenly felt intensely homesick for China. I felt as though I were in a Chinese airport, feeling the slightly damp air on my skin, hearing the buzz of voices, smelling instant noodles and tea.

I wouldn't say that any of our trips to China were pleasure trips. They were very stressful -- trying to care for an unfamiliar, slightly traumatized child, relying on a translator for communication, adjusting to the heat and humidity and traffic and food -- all while sightseeing and trying to make the most of the big adventure. After about 10 days, I always hit the wall and wished fervently to be home.

But every once in a while I become overwhelmingly nostalgic for China. Certain sights or sounds or (especially) smells can throw me into a Remembrance of Things Past-style reverie, and I long to go back. Each of our trips was so different, and yet so much alike -- two weeks in another world, experiencing a sense of displacement similar to what our children experience when they come home with us. I will never eat dumplings as good as those we had in Hangzhou. I will never sleep on a bed as hard as the ones in Nanchang. I will never appreciate a buffet as much as the breakfast buffet at the revolving restaurant in Hefei.

I want to go back. Five years elapsed between our first and second trips to China, and four years between our second and third. It's been three years since our last trip, and I suppose my subconscious is thinking it's time to go again. The economy disagrees. I'm looking forward to seeing China someday without the stress of adding a family member at the same time. Will it look different? Will it feel different? Most important, how will my children see it?

China is our family's home away from home -- strange, yet familiar; far away, but as close as our daughters' faces. I feel homesick for a place that was never really my home. But it was my children's home, and that is enough.

This is going to drive me crazy

If I hear one more news commentator say "Bei-zhing" instead of "Bei-jing," I'm going to scream. Come on, people, don't be afraid of the letter j. You don't have to make it sound more exotic just because it's Chinese.

Update: Here's an interesting discussion on this topic: Languagehat

To hear Beijing pronounced: Inogolo

You can also see the tones and hear the words pronounced here: MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary

p.s. I didn't know this until I studied Mandarin and learned I had mispronounced it for years. But I would have expected someone to school the press in Mandarin pronunciation.

Woman warrior

This is a picture of May from a recent dance performance. She has a solo in this particular dance. Isn't she magnificent? I love this picture.She looks so strong and heroic, like a character from one of Madame Mao's ballets or a propaganda poster.

This dance is a huge crowd pleaser. There is nothing quite like watching eight preteen girls march onto the stage armed with swords and determination. It's a terrific counterpoint to their usual ladylike dances with parasols and fans. Maxine Hong Kingston would be proud.

Photo by Byron Dazey