Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

Raised to be Chinese

I met my Chinese language tutor today, and she told me she plans on having four kids. Already she’s pregnant with the first one.

Four kids? That’s fine and all, I thought to myself. But this is China, and you are a Chinese citizen. How can that work?

“Because my husband is Australian,” she said. “So I can have as many kids as I want.”

My tutor then smiled; I guess that’s a nice benefit of marrying foreigner, I replied.

She later explained that she doesn’t plan on raising her kids in China. For one, it’s much cheaper to do so in Australia, where the government is paying people to have kids due to the population rate. The schools are also better, and there are more opportunities, she added.

“I want my kids to be Australian,” she said, referring to their citizenship.

But she acknowledged raising her children in a foreign country would at least pose a cultural challenge. This recently came to light with one of her new foreign students she's been teaching.

“His mother is from Taiwan, grew up in Hong Kong for a while, and then went to America," she said of this student. "But despite this, he has no interest in China. He knows nothing of China’s open door policy or the country’s history.”

“In my eyes, he’s not Chinese,” she added.

Now she’s thinking of how to prevent that happening to her own future kids.

“What are other Chinese-Americans like?” She asked. “Do their parents try to teach them about their culture?”

I just said it depended on the person. In my experience, many Chinese-Americans know how to speak Mandarin, but don’t know how to write or read it. Some are even near-fluent in Chinese. Yet then there are others who know little of the language, and of its culture.

I guess it all comes down to interest level, I surmised. But in terms of advice to give, I wasn’t sure.

“When I was younger, I just thought if I didn’t learn Chinese, I would be a disgrace,” I jokingly told her today.

Yes, I had some culture/parental pressure to learn Mandarin. But still, I struggled with the language when I was young boy, and I often dreaded going to the local Chinese language on Sundays. My situation, however, influenced my cousin Jeffrey. He’s another Chinese-American, who is 13 years old. But he now lives in Taiwan.

“His parents must have looked at me and thought ‘Michael’s Chinese is not very good,’” I told my tutor. “So my cousin was sent to Taiwan so that he could become fluent in the language.”

I guess he’s lucky, I said. "It will benefit him in the future," I added. I, however, am still learning Mandarin.

"I hope there are good Chinese schools abroad," my tutor then said. "I hope they can really teach more about the Chinese culture."

“It’s good that my kids can be raised in a better environment,” she added. “But I want to make sure that one half of them will still be Chinese.”