A 1 1/2 Generation of Chinese Man

choi

Patrick Marion Bradley, The Education Issue: Studying Chinese to Eeach His Parents. Washington Post Magazine, Nov 3, 2013.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/li ... 7ed1f685_story.html
(Daniel Chen is a junior at School of Communication, American University in Washington DC)

Quote:

"First-language loss occurs almost across the board by immigrants’ third generation, [linguistic anthropologist Linda] Light says.

"His mother, Xiao Juan, and father, Ajun, arrived in 1986 from Zhoushan, an island town. The two had left their studies before high school to work in the seafood industry. They came [to Brooklyn] with no money, no English and little education. His father started as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant, while his mother worked in a textile factory. * * * Daniel says, 'We were on food stamps. Growing up poor, you want to be as unattached to your family as possible sometimes.'

"Here’s the tragic part: Moving to the United States and the hard work by Daniel’s parents to free themselves from poverty, these are the very things that have built this barrier within the family. And it’s not only that the harder they worked, the less time they spent with him; it’s that they willingly made themselves poor, leaving comparatively comfortable lives in China, for the son who would ultimately ignore them for doing so.

"Daniel is not alone in his former feelings [rejecting his parents and shutting them out mentally]. In 2011, the US Census Bureau applied to official data its new poverty measures to get a more accurate picture of the nation’s impoverished. The results revealed striking poverty rates of 16.9 and 28 percent among Asian Americans and Hispanics, respectively, from official figures of 12.3 and 25.4 percent — compared to a slight 9.9 to 11 percent bump for non-Hispanic whites. 'The fact is that non-speakers of English are pretty much usually poor. That’s the status of immigrants here,' Light says with empathy in her voice.

"Daniel’s story comes down to one thing: time — time as a result of money, of financial stability. With money, with time, Daniel might have had the connection with his parents that he’s searching for.

"With glasses and long, dark hair, Bing Ying Hu[, now a Chinese-language instructor at New York’s Hunter College,] meets me with a smile and walks us toward the Lindsay Park Housing Corporation[a city-run development for the poor with about 10,000 families], where her cousin Daniel grew up. After she moved from China at age 12, Bing and her parents lived two floors above the Chens.In fact, they still do. Now, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and even old neighbors from China all live within walking distance. [the author visiting Daniel's Brooklyn home] In the elevator, Bing tells me how he employs a number of people in the neighborhood with his restaurant and drives them there every day. Incredibly, over the years he rose from dishwasher to waiter to cook to chef to now co-owner of his own restaurant in Livingston, NJ, about an hour away. It’s the classic, now almost mythic, American dream. [at the door] Her [Daniel's mom] English is labored, and it’s likely she thought over our first words [for the ensuing hour at living room, mom talked though Bing]. * * * Sitting with her, it’s hard to imagine how — with enough time together — Daniel wouldn’t have maintained his Chinese when he was younger. * * * Since Daniel was young, she has gone between jobs such as one at the garment factory and janitorial work. Now she spends the night shift cleaning a Madison Square Garden office building. She likes the work for one main reason: 'Not too much English.'
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"Daniel is now minoring in Chinese language with a major in international relations and a focus on U.S. and Chinese relations. For all his work with the language so far, he says he’s only 10 percent along the way to achieving his goal of fluency and truly knowing his family. Even now, Daniel still can’t explain to his father what he’s studying. He just says he wants to be a lawyer because it’s one word he knows. With his family being primarily speakers of Shanghainese, his Mandarin classes are of little help, but they’re better than nothing.


Note: "we take a seat on the living room’s leather sectional"

sectinal (n; First Known Use 1901):
"a piece of furniture made up of modular units capable of use separately or in various combinations"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sectional