How Chinese Are You?

Adopted Chinese Youth and their Families Negotiate Identity and Culture

Andrea Louie

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781479834297
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Antropología cultural y social

Chinese adoption is often viewed as creating new possibilities for the formation of multicultural, cosmopolitan families. For white adoptive families, it is an opportunity to learn more about China and Chinese culture, as many adoptive families today try to honor what they view as their children’s “birth culture.” However, transnational, transracial adoption also presents challenges to families who are trying to impart in their children cultural and racial identities that they themselves do not possess, while at the same time incorporating their own racial, ethnic, and religious identities. Many of their ideas are based on assumptions about how authentic Chinese and Chinese Americans practice Chinese culture. Based on a comparative ethnographic study of white and Asian American adoptive parents over an eight year period, How Chinese Are You? explores how white adoptive parents, adoption professionals, Chinese American adoptive parents, and teens adopted from China as children negotiate meanings of Chinese identity in the context of race, culture, and family. Viewing Chineseness as something produced, rather than inherited, Andrea Louie examines how the idea of “ethnic options” differs for Asian American versus white adoptive parents as they produce Chinese adoptee identities, while re-working their own ethnic, racial, and parental identities. Considering the broader context of Asian American cultural production, Louie analyzes how both white and Asian American adoptive parents engage in changing understandings of and relationships with “Chineseness” as a form of ethnic identity, racial identity, or cultural capital over the life course. Louie also demonstrates how constructions of Chinese culture and racial identity dynamically play out between parents and their children, and for Chinese adoptee teenagers themselves as they “come of age.” How Chinese Are You? is an engaging and original study of the fluidity of race, ethnicity, and cultural identity in modern America.

1

Introduction

I sometimes feel guilty on Sunday mornings when I think about how some of my son’s Chinese American friends are at Chinese school learning to read, write, and speak Chinese while he stays at home tinkering with his Legos. It’s not that we have not considered Chinese school. When he was five, he expressed interest in learning Chinese along with some of his friends. I was excited that he wanted to learn the language and thought this would give him an opportunity to spend time with other children of Chinese background who were his age. We tried out a kindergarten-level class, one where parents were allowed to sit at the back of the room to monitor behavior and help children with books, supplies, and snacks. But he barely made it through the two-hour session, which was geared toward children who spoke Mandarin at home. The instructor spoke only in Chinese and assumed a working knowledge of the language, including colors and other basic vocabulary that my son did not have. The class involved the rote memorization and reading of Chinese phrases such as duibuqi (sorry) and bukeqi (you’re welcome) and on-the-spot recitation. My son was lost and frustrated, only chiming in when the teacher had the class sing “Liang zhi laohu” (Two tigers), a song he had learned from watching a YouTube video.

The following year we decided to try a Chinese as a second language class run by a different Chinese school. He fit in better with this group because none of the other children were native Chinese speakers, but the class met from six to eight o’clock on Saturday evenings, and the first homework assignment, practicing the characters of the zodiac, seemed rather demanding. We could have stuck with it, and he probably would have done fine, but ultimately we did not feel strongly enough about him learning Chinese to follow through with the class. Maybe next year, we thought. Or perhaps he could learn Spanish instead.

Our ambivalence stemmed from our uncertainty about whether learning Chinese should be a priority for our son. What was it that we really wanted him to get out of Chinese language class? Was it our goal for him to become fluent in Chinese, or to merely be exposed to another language? More broadly, we wondered how important Chinese language was for fostering his sense of Chinese identity or as a general skill for him to possess as a Chinese American individual. Neither we nor his grandparents speak Chinese fluently, if at all. Our son, who is our biological child, is actually three-quarters Chinese. When he was around five, he declared that since he was three-quarters Chinese, that must mean that he knows how to say three words in Chinese. Indeed, he had learned to say ni hao (hello), zai jian (good-bye), and xie xie (thank you) when we went to China, but has since forgotten. His first words were actually in Spanish, a language that his half-Chinese father, who grew up in El Salvador, had attempted to speak with him since birth. But Spanish soon fell by the wayside. By age two, our son increasingly responded “Speak English!” to his father while pressing an imaginary button on his head to make him switch back to English. After all, he hears only Boston-accented English when he visits his maternal grandparents, who speak village dialects unintelligible even to Cantonese speakers; and he hears Kentucky-accented English (and sometimes fluent but Kentucky-accented Spanish) when he visits his paternal grandmother, who is of Scottish and Irish stock, was born and bred in Kentucky and later married a Chinese man from El Salvador.

As I try to help my son craft his identity, I make choices for him that reflect my own ideas about which aspects of Chinese (or Chinese Salvadoran/Kentuckian) cultural heritage he should be exposed to and about how to balance these activities with others that are not necessarily related to his heritage.

Chinese Culture Exposure

Each year since he was two, I have brought my son to the annual Chinese New Year celebration hosted by the local Families with Children from China (FCC) organization, which is run by adoptive parents. These celebrations have been criticized by parents I interviewed in the San Francisco Bay Area, mainly Asian American ones who were the primary focus of that set of interviews but also some white parents. They had critiqued their local FCC chapter’s events for being artificial and inauthentic. To them, seeing a group of white parents eating Chinese food with their Chinese children dressed in silk outfits seemed somewhat unnatural. They respected the well-meaning efforts of their fellow adoptive parents to create an environment where their children could be with other kids adopted from China, and be exposed to Chinese culture, but they thought the event seemed disconnected from other Chinese people and also from the deeper historical and cultural traditions that are ingrained within that community. Though critical of these FCC events, the Bay Area parents I spoke with did not necessarily refrain from attending them. They participated so they and their children could meet others like themselves. However, these parents felt that there were numerous other opportunities to experience Chinese and Chinese American culture in the Bay Area, from sending one’s child to Chinese school to spending time with Chinese American friends.

I could see why some might view such events as lacking in historical and cultural depth. At the gathering I have regularly attended with my son, the walls of the rented church room are brightly decorated with shiny paper and foil cutouts of dragons and Chinese characters, the tables graced with centerpieces that look like miniature fireworks displays with plastic gold coins spread around them. A thirty-foot span of rectangular tables holds the potluck feast, consisting of take-out chow mein, dumplings (jiao zi), sweet-and-sour chicken, home-cooked dishes, and desserts. Most of the children, and some parents, are dressed in colorful, silklike Chinese outfits. Two craft tables are set up at the back of the room. The children receive red envelopes (hong bao) with chocolate Chinese coins inside, and more coins and other goodies are distributed at the end of the event. The entertainment program usually features a performance by a Mandarin-speaking, ethnic Chinese singer. However, the highlight of the event is the lion dance, during which the children march around the room, with three or four at a time wearing the scaled-down costumes. Next come the “faux fireworks,” which involve the spreading out of an industrial-sized roll of bubble wrap and the distribution of battery-powered fiber-optic wands. At the signal, the children enthusiastically stomp on the bubble wrap and wave the wands around, creating an auditory and visual approximation of fireworks being set off.

New Traditions?

While many may not consider the FCC Chinese New Year celebration “authentic,” in some ways it has become a new tradition. The celebration was meant to signify a positive identification with Chinese culture, and it was more hands-on than more formal New Year celebrations such as the parades and lion dancing that one might find in Chinatown community festivities. Through their participation, children were able to embody and take ownership of these traditions. Children remembered the lion heads, the noisemaking instruments, and the bubble wrap from past years and looked forward to partaking in the activities again. Although attending such celebrations alone is not sufficient to create a sense of Chinese or Chinese American identity, or to address issues of race, the events do represent an opportunity for adoptees to form friendships and be exposed to the variety of ways of being “Chinese.”

I wonder, too, how this celebration was any different from the presumably more “authentic” lion dance my family and I attended on Chinese New Year in 2010 at a local Chinese restaurant. Hosted by the restaurant’s Chinese American owners and featuring a kung fu group headed by a Hong Kong–born sifu (master teacher), this event focused on the consumption of dim sum and the spectacle of Chinese lion dancing. In attendance was a diverse crowd, consisting of both Chinese and non-Chinese. Interestingly, none of the performers was Chinese, though they had been trained by the sifu in the art of lion dancing and Chinese kung fu styles. Both the Chinese and non-Chinese restaurant patrons seemed intrigued by the kung fu demonstration, crowding around the performers, the Chinese-speaking couple behind me enthusiastically recording the performance.

I had made reservations for a group of twenty, including both adoptive families and Chinese families with first-generation immigrant parents and bilingual children. The event was a chance for families to get to know one another better in a context that disrupted certain notions of Chinese cultural authenticity. A form of “traditional” Chinese culture was being performed by non-Chinese, and appreciated by Chinese and non-Chinese alike. The social interactions among the people in our group, a third of whom were children, formed the basis for the creation of new friendships and the sharing of knowledge. In this context, the immigrant Chinese who grew up in Communist China were not necessarily the authorities because many had not previously seen the lion dance in China. After most people had left, some of the children performed their own version of the lion dance under a long, down coat with fur-ruffed hood borrowed from one of the mothers, a “tradition” that had debuted the year before to the applause of the lion dancers who were having a bite to eat after their performance.

New Identities?

Attending such events alone is clearly not sufficient to provide children with a well-rounded sense of Chinese identity. But what part do these events play in adoptive parents’ efforts to expose their children to Chinese culture? The highly sensory experience of seeing, hearing, and tasting representations of Chinese culture that characterized the New Year’s party resonates with how a young child explores and experiences his or her world. For better or worse, it is also consistent with how most adults experience their surroundings and understand and appreciate cultural diversity in our media-driven world, in which we are constantly bombarded by signs and symbols. How do such moments feed into the broader context of identity formation?

Like many Chinese adoptees (and other Chinese Americans) I’ve met, my son is still sorting out what it means to be Chinese, and being Chinese is only part of how he defines himself. At times, he has seemed alarmingly clueless about it. One day when he was in first grade, I picked him up from his after-school program. I asked one of the boys he was playing with whether they were having a battle with their toys. The boy responded, seemingly out of the blue, that he was Korean, not Chinese. Another boy then proclaimed that he was Malaysian but explained that he spoke Chinese and went to Chinese school. I then asked my son what he was, and he replied, “Nothing.”

On our walk home, I asked him whether he thought he was white. “No,” he replied. I asked whether he was black, and he again answered, “No.” We have talked on many occasions about how he is Chinese American or Asian American. Many of his friends are also Chinese American or Asian American, and many are children of color, so his confusion raised some interesting questions. What exactly does make him Chinese American? He does not identify with mainland China, nor does he speak Chinese. Nor did he at that age identify strongly as a Chinese American or Asian American racial minority. His conception of what it means to be Chinese is likely based on popular notions of identity and culture that root Chineseness in histories, places, cultures, language, and perhaps “race.” Clearly, a Chinese American identity was something that needs to be both created and reinforced.

I can understand his confusion. Though I identify strongly both as a Chinese American and as an Asian American, in the context of my daily life, I do little that could be considered specifically “Chinese.” I do not speak Chinese very often (or very well), cook much Chinese food, or participate in a Chinese church or other organization. Some of the Chinese cultural practices that I follow were learned not from my parents but from friends and relatives in Hong Kong and mainland China, where I spent time teaching English and doing research. I married a man who is half Chinese but who identifies primarily as Salvadoran, or perhaps secondarily as Kentuckian. Yet I teach courses about China and in the field of Asian American studies, and my research has focused on questions of Chinese American identity and transnationalism.

I have come to understand that though there is no question as to whether my son will be seen as a Chinese American or Asian American, it is also up to me to help him understand this identity. Because of his lack of identification with China, Chinese language, and Chinese customs, I will need to help him separate Chinese identity from common notions of cultural authenticity related to language ability and descent that often become tied to it. In many ways our family already disrupts these notions of Chineseness that imply that there are specific, authentic ways to be Chinese and to practice Chinese culture. We are of Chinese descent, but my son is fourth generation and mixed race, with cultural influences from not only U.S. locations but also El Salvador.

Sometimes I wonder how important it is for me to teach him about Chinese culture at all. In the context of a multicultural United States, this question can be broadened and asked with regard to other forms of cultural heritage. But more than exposing my son to Chinese culture, I am concerned with preparing him for the complex forms of racism and discrimination he may face because he is Chinese American. He will encounter a host of stereotypes based on his “Asianness”—that he is foreign, passive, and weak; that he is good at math, plays the violin or piano, and is proficient in the martial arts; that he will become an engineer or scientist; and that he can speak an Asian language. While some of these stereotypes may not seem overtly negative, they will certainly play a role in how he sees himself, perhaps as images he tries to live up to or against which he tries to define himself. Whether or not my son learns to speak Chinese and regardless of how much he knows about China, he will be viewed as racially Asian. As Chinese American parents, his father and I hope that we may be more attuned to the multiple and often subtle ways that racism and discrimination are manifested. Though we may not always feel confident about being able to handle situations in which racism or discrimination arise, or to teach our son how to deal with them, we can draw upon our own experiences and our networks of other people of color for support.

I am also cognizant of the fact that the process of identity building is something over which I will not have total control. My son will be influenced by other family members, teachers, and peers whose views on these issues, like my own, emerge from their own experiences and identities and are framed more broadly by a shifting politics of multiculturalism and race; all of this will shape what representations of “cultural diversity” he is exposed to and how issues of race and racism will be addressed (if at all). His own ideas will also likely be reworked over time, just as my own have been, as he grows older and wants to develop and express his identity in other ways.

Chinese Cultural Authenticity?

In this sense, we represent just some of the diversity that constitutes the Chinese diaspora. Academic works on Chinese identity in mainland China and in the diaspora note that even within mainland China itself, a wide variety of cultural practices are deemed Chinese, and that these have varied across time and place (Cohen 1994; Wu 1994). Similarly, ethnic Chinese populations outside of China have been found to interpret and practice their Chineseness in a number of ways that are often framed by geopolitical factors, historical trajectories, and local racial and ethnic politics (Siu 2005). A global or diasporic perspective on Chinese identity opens up possibilities for many different ways of being Chinese that are not reducible to ideas about racial or cultural purity. Children adopted from China can be seen as representing yet another part of this diaspora.

Yet despite the actual diversity found within the Chinese diaspora, many of the white adoptive parents whom I interviewed operated on assumptions about how “real” Chinese Americans behaved: that they likely spoke Chinese at home, cooked Chinese food, spent time with other Chinese people, celebrated Chinese holidays, and practiced Chinese values of frugality, humility, respect for elders, and hard work. These ideas about authenticity to some extent also shaped the ideas of Chinese American adoptive parents, as well as their critiques of white parents’ attempts to re-create Chinese American practices.

But if this is the case, how can we understand the significance of newly invented Chinese traditions, such as those created by adoptive parents and carried out by FCC organizations around the United States? Can they be seen as merely mimicking the activities of ethnic Chinese communities, or can they be understood as part of a variable and changing set of practices that constitute the landscape of Chinese and Asian American culture today? How can they be read within the broader context of Chinese American and Chinese adoptee cultural production that I address as part of my reframing of Chineseness as something produced rather than just inherited?

In order to understand Chinese cultural identity as something produced, I share an example from my own family. Every year that her health allowed, my grandmother used to make faat-go-ti (a type of brown sugar–sweetened muffin eaten during Chinese New Year) and distribute them to family members. A few years ago, my aunt, who had learned the recipe from my grandmother, invited a group of my cousins and their children over to her condo after they asked her to show them how to make them. My cousins paid close attention, and though they are still never sure whether the muffins will turn out correctly, making them represents the continuation of a tradition started by my grandmother. In this sense, the production and performance of Chinese identities involves a degree of reflexivity about how to translate a family’s past so that it becomes meaningful for its future. In the context of adoptive families who are incorporating aspects of cultural tradition and identity that are not part of their own family traditions, Chinese identities are worked out through the imagination and reinvention of both parent and child identities as they “triangulate” with Chineseness.1 I argue that this is by no means unique to Chinese Americans but can operate within other ethnic and religious traditions.

Preemptive Parenting and the “Privilege of Authenticity”

As I grapple with how to expose my son to the various aspects of his heritage, I do so within the context of broader questions about parenting. In this age of conscientious child rearing, activities such as sports, dance, and playing a musical instrument are carefully selected to produce a well-balanced child by middle- and upper-class parents trying to provide their children with a competitive head start (Hays 1996; Friedman 2013). But where do Chinese language, cultural events, and the making of faat-go-ti fit in? These questions surrounding Chinese language and culture are not unique to our family but become part of a broader set of decisions that go into raising a child with attention to his or her developing identity, as well as family heritage and identity as whole. Furthermore, they become intertwined with parents’ own values and perceptions regarding both parenting and identity, Chinese or otherwise.

I have realized that many issues I have faced as a Chinese American parent relate to the experiences of adoptive parents and their children, and to parenting more broadly. First, how can one as a parent proactively and preemptively address issues of cultural and racial identity to meet the challenges of parenting a Chinese American child in today’s world? Second, what combination of self-exploration, family tradition, and invention characterizes the formation of today’s Chinese American identities and cultures? And how do these processes of identity development and negotiation work, initially under the guidance of parents and later on one’s own? Third, how do these identity formations work in relation to other discourses defining Chinese, Asian American, and other aspects of identity, as well as within the broader structures of a changing U.S. racial politics?

Being a parent presents numerous challenges that accompany the decisions that must be made in shaping one’s child’s future. I acknowledge that raising an adopted child creates additional challenges and sparks a host of anxieties for parents. After all, adoptive parents, whether Asian or white, negotiate issues of cu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. A Background on Transnational and Transracial Adoption
• 3. Beginnings: The Adoption Trip
• 4. Asian American Adoptive Parents: Freedom and Flexibility
• 5. White Parents’ Constructions of Chineseness: Preemptive Parenting
• 6. Negotiating Chineseness in Everyday Life
• 7. Don’t Objectify Me: Chinese Adoptee Teens
• 8. Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author