Learning of Their
Homeland
Chinese adoptees on LI studying language, culture
By Erin Texeira
STAFF WRITER
October 28, 2002
"What's
the difference between a good car and a good meal?" teacher Anne Bingham
quizzes her students.
Hands shoot up in the classroom at the Dix Hills Chinese school. A slim
9-year-old attempts the subtle pronunciation changes that distinguish the two
vocabulary words, and Bingham, who studied Chinese in Beijing for three years,
nods. "Hao chi," she says, pointing to the chalkboard, "and hao
ché."
On this recent evening, little seems different at one of about a dozen Chinese
language schools on Long Island, which have for decades offered the children of
immigrants lessons in vocabulary and cultural pride. Over the years, as the
schools added tai chi classes and Chinese New Year celebrations, field trips and
Mandarin courses to their curriculums, they became community hubs. The students
in Bingham's classes reflect how the schools are again shifting to accommodate a
new type of student: the adopted children of Americans who want to give them
entree into the language and culture of their distant homeland.
As infants mature into grade-schoolers who wonder where they come from and why
their parents don't look like them, the schools have become a touchstone for
many families struggling to negotiate the complexities of transracial adoption.
"It's like a little haven from our society," said Janice Alto, an East
Islip educator who last year enrolled her 6-year-old daughter, Janine, in the
Dix Hills school. "I really wanted to immerse my daughter in her own
culture and her own community."
For the better part of the 1970s and 1980s, relatively few Americans adopted
Chinese children, according to Stuart Patt, a State Department spokesman.
By the mid-1990s, that had changed dramatically: In 1992, the Chinese government
eased restrictions and set up a government agency to facilitate international
adoptions. By 1995, the adoptions had grown from a few hundred a year to 2,130,
he said.
By 2000, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was processing nearly 5,000
Chinese adoptees a year, making China the No. 1 source country for international
adoptions by Americans, INS data show.
The numbers also point to New York State as the top destination for all children
adopted from overseas, and the New York City area as home to nearly 7,000 such
families, said David Youtz, New York chapter president of Families with Children
from China, a support group.
"I personally feel like we're creating our own cultural phenomenon,"
said Debbie O'Kane of Orient, who adopted her daughter Claire from China in 1996
and co-founded a Families with Children language school on Long Island.
"We're establishing a new type of Chinese American family."
As the adoptions became more common, parents began to consider how best to help
their children adjust, particularly since few adoptive families were Chinese
American.
When the children began talking, many asked why their almond eyes and silken
black hair looked different from their parents'.
For Janice Sheinbaum's daughter it was mildly traumatic. "About a year ago,
my daughter had a little mourning period," said the Commack resident, who
is a co-founder of the Families with Children classes. She said her 6-year-old
daughter, Amy, "asked me if she lost her first family. ... She had a night
when she was upset and crying and she said she was sorry she had to leave them
in China. It was very brief."
Experts say parents can help their children adjust. "I tell parents: We see
our children as not a member of a racial group, but when they're out on the
street, society sees them as being a member of a racial group," said Janice
Goldwater, executive director of Adoptions Together in Silver Spring, Md.
"It's really important that parents give their children the tools to deal
with how society perceives them."
For many, Chinese language schools have become a key tool in that pursuit.
Long Island is home to about a dozen schools, which run from September through
June, said Marisa Fang, a spokeswoman for the Association for Chinese Schools'
Long Island schools. Anyone can enroll.
At the Dix Hills facility, nearly one-third of the 143 students come from
English-speaking backgrounds, many of them adopted, said Amye Lin, president of
the school.
Some adopted children initially feel like outsiders, parents said, because,
unlike most students, they don't speak Chinese at home and typically don't
master the language as quickly. Soon enough, however, many adjust - and love the
schools, parents said.
During classes one recent evening, on nearly the entire second floor of a Half
Hollow Hills high school, students practiced writing Chinese characters,
memorized vocabulary words and tried kung fu moves in the hallway. (It costs
$250 a year to join the school, and membership allows students to take all
available classes.)
In a class for younger students, Janine Alto sat in a circle singing in Chinese,
pointing, laughing and waving her hands in time with the lyrics.
After a year of disliking the school because she felt out-of-place, she now
looks forward to the three-hour Friday evening courses because she has new
friends and she fits in, said Janice Alto, who spent the evening socializing
with other parents and taking a Chinese class for adults.
"I really don't know what type of racial issues she's going to be involved
with in the future," Alto said, "but to me, having this cross-cultural
relationship with other children, I hope she'll be able to gain some sense of
what she's about."
Transracially adopted children from other countries such as Korea and Guatemala
also have joined language classes for similar reasons, Goldwater said. Unlike
other countries, however, China does not maintain records on adoptees' birth
parents in case they want to find them later in life.
"She may reach a point in her life when she says, 'Mommy, I'm an American
and this is ridiculous,'" said Janice Alto. "That will be fine, but
now I want her to have all the options."
Copyright
© 2002, Newsday, Inc.
美国纽约长岛 十峰中文学校 编
