The Chinese School Association in the United States (CSAUS), which has primary connections with the mainland Chinese immigrant and heritage communities, is composed of over 400 Chinese schools in forty-four major or medium-sized cities in the United States. Assuming that not all Chinese language schools have joined CSAUS, the actual number of students of mainland China background who are enrolled in Chinese language schools nationwide is certainly even larger. Today, community-based Chinese heritage language schools have evolved into an organized and influential educational institution with over 150 years’ history in the U.S. and have become the largest grassroot organization for Chinese-Americans with the mission of “uniting Chinese Americans, disseminating Chinese culture and promoting China–U.S. friendship” (CSAUS, n.d.). They have replaced the college, university, and K-12 sectors as the majority provider of Chinese language instruction over the past several decades (Reference McGinnis, Brinton, Kagan and BauckusMcGinnis, 2005a, 2005b). These schools represent the Herculean effort made by Chinese immigrant communities to maintain Chinese as a heritage language in the U.S. In this chapter, we will examine the opportunities and challenges of these community-based weekend schools through Chris (aged ten), a third-/fourth-grader; his parents; and Wang laoshi, his teacher at his Chinese language school. We will explore the question of why, in spite of sincere intentions, these schools are less than successful in preventing CHL children and their families from gravitating toward an English-dominant linguistic repertoire at home. We will begin with a brief review of the history of Chinese language schools in the U.S. We will then explore the entailment of acquiring literacy in Chinese; learn the perspectives of and practices by both Chris’s parents and his teacher Wang laoshi; and examine some specific discursive practices in the classroom as they relate to identities, positionalities, and values from a comparative cultural perspective.
5.1 From Survival to Enrichment
Chinese language schools have existed for as long as the history of Chinese-Americans. The purpose and characteristics of these schools have, however, evolved over time, largely in response to U.S. immigration policy changes (Reference LiuLiu, 2010).
In the late nineteenth century when anti-Chinese sentiment was strong and anti-Chinese violence was growing, the heritage language schools were meant to support the learning of Chinese languages and cultures by the children of immigrants so that the children would have the option of “identifying themselves on a cultural continuum with their parents” (Reference Bradunas and ToppingBradunas and Topping, 1988: 13) and of returning to their parents’ place of origin (Reference Wong, Lopez, McKay and WongWong and Lopez, 2000). The first Chinese heritage language school was established in San Francisco in the late nineteenth century (Reference Pan, Garcia and FishmanPan, 1997). By the 1920s, the number of such schools had increased to over fifty, spreading beyond the West Coast to New York and Chicago as well (Reference ChangChang, 2004). After World War II and with the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, the status of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. gradually improved, resulting in a decline in the interest in learning Chinese. The younger generation was attracted to mainstream American culture and made English their primary medium of communication in spite of the “cultural-retention” efforts through Chinese language schools both before and after World War II (Reference LaiLai, 2004). Many Chinese immigrants began to see the prospect of leading a productive life in the U.S. permanently, and no longer considered Chinese language education for their children crucial (Reference Wong, Lopez, McKay and WongWong and Lopez, 2000). In San Francisco, for example, although the Chinese population more than doubled from the 1930s to the 1950s, the total enrollment of students in 1957 in Chinese heritage language schools was only about 15 percent greater than in 1935 (close to 2,000 in 1935, a little over 2,100 in 1957) (Reference LaiLai, 2004).
With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the National Origins Formula, Chinese immigration increased dramatically. As was the case with other Asian-American groups, Chinese-Americans’ ethnic awareness was heightened, leading to revived interest in Chinese-American histories, languages, and cultures. More recently, since the 1980s, mainland China has been playing an increasingly important geoeconomic and geopolitical role on the global stage. All of these factors have led to a re-flourishing of Chinese heritage language schools nationwide. According to Reference ChaoChao (1997), over 80,000 students were learning Chinese in more than 600 language schools across the country in 1996. This number had expanded to 140,000 students by 2005, including from both mainland and Taiwan backgrounds (Reference McGinnis, Brinton, Kagan and BauckusMcGinnis, 2005a), and to an estimated 200,000 by 2016 (Reference XiaoXiao, 2016). By now, the purpose of the Chinese language school has shifted from providing students with survival skills upon return to China to language and cultural enrichment and affirmation, and assertion of ethnic and racial identity (Reference Francis, Archer and MauFrancis et al., 2010; Reference Wang, Creese, Martin and HornbergerWang, 2008).
5.2 Curricular Offerings
In addition to the change in the number of schools and students, there has also been a change in the instructional medium. From the mid-nineteenth century through the early postwar decades, the Chinese-American community was overwhelmingly Cantonese-speaking, so the majority of Chinese schools in the U.S. taught Cantonese. This began to change after World War II, when the Mandarin-speaking population increased rapidly, especially from the 1970s on. Mandarin gradually superseded Cantonese as the predominant language of instruction in Chinese schools (Reference LaiLai, 2004). By the mid-1990s, about eight out of ten pupils in Chinese schools were taught in Mandarin; Cantonese remained the language of instruction for only one of every eight students (Reference LaiLai, 2004). Few schools taught other dialects of Chinese, such as Hakka, Fuzhounese, or Taiwanese, in spite of the large influx of these immigrants. These dialects are considered to be of limited use either for communication in business or for scholarly exchanges in society at large.
The role of the Chinese language school has been multifold. It is not merely a place for children to learn CHL, but also a place to socialize CHL children into Chinese cultural values, as well as a place for parents to form support groups and cultural activity groups (such as traditional dance and tai chi). In the larger community, 中文学校 zhongwen xuexiao (Chinese language school) stands as the proxy for authentic, original Chinese culture. During the local annual celebration of Chinese New Year and the Dragon Boat Festival, Chinese language school is always an indispensable and important presence.
The Chinese language school that Chris attends is a community-based, private, nonprofit organization, first created in the early 1970s by a few faculty members affiliated with a local university, who were themselves first-generation immigrants from Taiwan. They created the school in order to provide opportunities for their own children as well as other children of Chinese cultural background in the local community to learn the Chinese language systematically. As the years went on and with the influx of Chinese immigrants from mainland China since the 1980s, the size and the demographics of the student and teacher populations, as well as curricular offerings, have undergone significant changes. Consequently, this school, like other weekend Chinese language schools, has faced considerable challenges in terms of its structure and language ideology (Reference ChikChik, 2010). The mission of the school is to develop and operate a nonsectarian, nonpolitical, and non-discriminatory program for teaching Chinese language, and for disseminating Chinese culture and traditions. At the time of data collection, it offers regular Chinese classes (including both Mandarin and bilingual classes) with the choice of either morning or afternoon class, and enrichment classes (e.g., Chinese dance, drawing, chess, go, calligraphy, martial arts, and so on) on Saturdays. Every year, the school enrolls about 300 students, aged five to seventeen. It employs about fifteen instructors to teach language classes and about ten instructors to teach enrichment classes. Some language instructors have some relevant professional background, such as degrees from China in teaching Chinese as a foreign language or prior experience with teaching Chinese language or teaching children; others have degrees and/or experience in accounting or engineering that are not specifically related to language teaching but became teachers out of their love for Chinese language and culture and/or their need to keep their own children in the program (so that it becomes a family Saturday routine of parents teaching and kids learning Chinese at the same school). Almost all instructors are also parents of current students.
5.3 The Difficulties of Home Learning
Chris’s mother Wenxiu came to the U.S. from mainland China in the early 1990s. His father Konstantin is an American of Eastern European origin, who speaks a rudimentary level of Chinese and is continuing his studies of Chinese language informally. The parents met and got married in China and moved to a suburban area on the East Coast in the U.S., where Chris was born. Wenxiu holds an graduate degree from China and is a homemaker, spending a lot of time with Chris and claiming that at home she speaks to Chris in Chinese exclusively. After several failed attempts to teach Chris how to read and write Chinese at home, she sent him to the closest weekend Chinese language school that she could find. Here is what Wenxiu says about herself and her reasons for sending Chris to Chinese language school:
I was born at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. At that time, pictures of Mao Zedong were hung in every household, every room in the house, along with the characters 毛主席万岁 mao zhuxi wansui [Long Live Chairman Mao]. My own literacy began with these characters. When I was a child, I had no storybooks, cards, or other toys that encouraged literacy. Nobody ever read any bedtime stories to me. My family was poor. In the minds of my parents, education would be nice but it was not essential; knowledge alone would not put food on the table. My parents were also very busy. By the time they were done with harsh physical labor at the end of the day, they were so exhausted that it was simply not possible for them to spend quality time with their children. And they were mostly illiterate; even if they had the time, they could not have read to their children. With my background, I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have had the opportunity to attend college in China and to now live in the U.S. … Chris is just spoiled. Completely spoiled. He has everything that I didn’t have and much more. But he doesn’t cherish them. He doesn’t apply himself.
Chris has been attending the Saturday Chinese language school for two years. He has a very dedicated teacher but for some reason he just doesn’t like Chinese classes. It just seems that he cannot remember anything from the class. For two years I haven’t seen any progress in him. He can speak Chinese but he doesn’t like to do it and he doesn’t like it when I speak in Chinese. Every Saturday morning, it is a struggle. He doesn’t want to come. I say to him, you are at least half-Chinese, you look Chinese (my son looks like me, not his dad) and you must learn Chinese. He said “YOU are Chinese but I am American; Americans don’t speak Chinese.” Then he signed up for the soccer team. He plays midfield and defense and does well. His coach said that he is good enough for the travel team. But to be on the travel team, he must participate in practice on Saturdays in addition to playing games on Sundays. So he will probably ditch Chinese for soccer. Honestly, if that happens, I wouldn’t be too unhappy. I am tired of the struggle every Saturday. He doesn’t want to do Chinese homework. He doesn’t bother to study the characters. It just feels like every semester he needs to repeat learning the same old materials. He hates Chinese lessons so much; there is nothing I can do. I want peace and happiness in the family. I don’t want to fight. And I don’t want my son to hate me because I force him to learn Chinese. So I gave up.
Honestly, I think my husband is partly responsible for Chris’s behavior. My husband is not Chinese and he doesn’t think the Chinese way. He thinks whatever the child does is fine. Whatever college the child attends in the future will be fine too. Whenever I ask Chris to do something, my husband would say, “Leave him alone, let him decide.” So, I am not getting the support I need from my husband. I have to admit that my husband does set a good example for Chris by learning Chinese himself. But even that, he does not do enough. Not enough to make a difference for Chris.
Chris’s Dad Konstantin:
I think Chinese culture emphasizes self-discipline too much, too much pursuit of self-discipline and too much emphasis on success. I mean it’d be great if Chris is interested in learning more Chinese. I myself would like to learn more. It gives me so much joy. I mean, yes, I can use Google Translate, but that’s different; that way I will miss so much meaning. But everyone is different. If Chris doesn’t want it and if he is not particularly talented in languages, what’s the point of pushing him?
Even though Konstantin does not agree with Wenxiu’s rationale for sending Chris to Chinese language school, he is receptive to the idea that Chinese language school might kindle Chris’s interest in learning Chinese, especially when it becomes clear that the one-parent–one-language approach (Reference Barron-HauwaertBarron-Hauwaert, 2004) does not seem to work at their home.
5.4 Being Literate in Chinese
The unit of Chinese writing, a set of strokes arranged in the shape of a square, is known as the Chinese “character.” Some researchers have called it a sinogram (Reference Minett, Zheng, Fong, Zhou, Peng and WangMinett et al., 2012). Whereas the alphabet system is based on the size of phonemes, the logographic system presents semantic and phonetic information simultaneously (Reference PackardPackard, 2000; Reference Wang, Tsai, Wang, Olson and TorrenceWang et al., 2009). Based on their internal complexity, characters are divided into simple characters with a single, indivisible component (such as 木, 水, 人) and composite characters which comprise two or more analyzable components (such as 沐, 睡, 仁). Furthermore, the majority of the composite characters are formed by two elements of distinctive features: the semantic radical and the phonetic component. For example, the character 沐 mu (to shower) has two components: a semantic radical on the left, which indicates the meaning of water, and a sound component on the right, which suggests the pronunciation. The Chinese writing system contains about 200 semantic radicals and over 1,000 phonetic components, the various configurations of which lead to thousands of Chinese characters. It is generally agreed that one needs to have an active knowledge of about 2,500 characters to be able to read a newspaper or a simple novel.
5.4.1 Logographs
Chinese characters may be difficult for Chinese-American children to learn, compared to the English alphabet. But Chinese characters can also be more interesting and intriguing than the English alphabet, because they tell stories. In many cases, the shapes of characters have a pictographic resemblance to the actual referents of the characters. For example, the word 山 shan (mountain) looks like a mountain. Another example, 大 da (big) looks like a human being with arms and legs stretched out. The character for “man,” 男 nan, has “field” on top and “power” below, which tells us that “man” is the one who has the strength to work in the field. If you see a “human” (人)radical and a “tree” (木) in a character (休), you can imagine the person is leaning against a tree, because he is tired from working and the word means “rest.” Not only are Chinese characters interesting, but they are also considered sacred in history. Unlike phonetic-based scripts in the world, Chinese writing serves as much more than a tool to record sound. According to the earliest records, Chinese characters first appeared on oracle bones and were originally called oracle bone inscriptions. In ancient times, tortoise bones were used for divination. When the oracle bones are roasted on a fire, cracks are regarded as the will of Heaven. The sorcerers of divination created some kind of graphics based on the cracks to record the will of Heaven.
For complicated social and historical reasons, modern Mandarin Chinese is written in two scripts, the traditional (known as 繁体 fantizi) which is typically used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Chinese diasporic communities with long histories, and the simplified (简体 jiantizi), which is the official script used in mainland China and Singapore and is also used by more recent Chinese diasporic communities with origins in mainland China. Analogous to the Balkan situation described by Reference GreenbergGreenberg (2004), the script used to write the Chinese language is often seen as an integral part of the language and the identity of its speakers. The split between the traditional and the simplified reflects the greatest divide in the modern Chinese language (Reference TsuTsu, 2010). Even though the “simplified” script is not necessarily newer or communist, since thousands of simplified forms of Chinese characters have been used in ancient calligraphy, dictionaries, and various bureaucratic documents for ease and expediency (Reference ChenChen, 1993, Reference Chen1999), the choice of a specific script can hold a powerful emotional sway and act as a political and/or cultural identity marker.
5.4.2 Literacy and Personhood
Handwriting Chinese characters is a skill, an art, and a form of self-expression. Every time one writes a Chinese character, one has in mind a square-shaped box. Within that box, you need to decide the relative positions and relative proportions of the components of the character; and within each component, you need to decide the relative positions and relative proportions of the various strokes that form that component. Writing Chinese characters requires a constant assessment and adjustment of balance, harmony, energy, and beauty. As the Chinese saying goes, 见字如见人 jian zi ru jian ren (seeing someone’s handwriting is like meeting the person). Our handwriting shows our disposition and temperament. Practicing writing Chinese is thus also a way to cultivate the self.
The task of learning Chinese characters can be daunting, even to mother-tongue, monolingual speakers of Chinese. When one learns a phonetic-based script, once one masters the alphabet, one can begin to read and write more or less from lesson one. With Chinese, characters start at lesson one and need to be learned, one by one, lesson by lesson, until one accumulates enough of them to begin seeing patterns, which will in turn help one memorize and internalize the characters. Acquiring and accumulating the characters requires sustained, substantive effort on the part of the learner. Maintaining the knowledge of and the ability to use these characters is equally challenging and requires constant practice of visuo-orthographic, phonological, and morphological skills (Reference Li, Shu, McBride‐Chang, Liu and PengLi et al., 2012). As the Chinese saying goes, it is like 逆水行舟 ni shui xing zhou (rowing a boat against the tide) – if one eases off the efforts, one goes backwards. That is why both acquisition and attrition of characters become formidable challenges for CHL speakers.
5.4.3 Challenges for CHL Learners
It is claimed that morphology, particularly inflectional morphology, is an area that is most vulnerable to change and loss, as morphology is generally considered a complex system with irregularities that confound acquisition and development (Reference Putnam, Schwarz, Hoffman, Montrul and PolinskyPutnam et al., 2021). It is also suggested that HL speakers appear to struggle more with nominal morphology than with verbal morphology; agreement, aspect, and mood are much weaker areas in heritage speakers than is tense (Reference Benmamoun, Montrul and PolinskyBenmamoun et al., 2013). In Chinese, the distinction between roots and affixes is often blurred and the concept of the Chinese “word” remains rather elusive. Chinese morphemes mostly correspond to characters (single syllables) and are graphically encoded by radicals. Lexical and literacy development thus relies crucially on the knowledge of radicals as they provide the visual and functional bases for character segmentation and meaning identification. Consequently, weaknesses in morphological derivation or inflection documented in other HLs manifest themselves in the challenges that CHL speakers face in the command of characters. Due to infrequent and incomplete exposure to print input, CHL speakers typically have difficulties with recognition and retention of characters, especially complex characters with copious strokes (Reference Koda, Zhang, Yang, He and XiaoKoda, Zhang, and Yang, 2008; Reference ShenShen, 2003; Reference Sung and WuSung and Wu, 2011). School-age CHL speakers often lack metalinguistic knowledge of the morphological structure in a Chinese word and are unable to dissect, identify, and manipulate morphemes in printed words. Adult CHL speakers often lack the ability to access or retrieve from earlier memory either phonological information or the semantic information of radicals, which makes it difficult for them to infer the meanings of unfamiliar characters or to access stored character information.
Such incomplete or underdeveloped morpheme–character awareness accounts for, to a large extent, the widely observed phenomenon that CHL speakers tend to have rather low literacy skills. They may use Chinese at home, receive primary literacy instruction in English at school, and pursue ancillary literacy in Chinese in a weekend school. As such, their primary literacy tends to build on underdeveloped oral proficiency, and secondary literacy reflects heavily restricted print input and literacy experience. While some young CHL speakers may be able to offset the limited linguistic support with additional meta-linguistic and cognitive resources and succeed in heritage language literacy (Reference Koda, Zhang, Yang, He and XiaoKoda, Zhang, and Yang, 2008), adult CHL speakers find it extremely challenging to develop or maintain their level of literacy (Reference Xiao, He and XiaoXiao, 2008). As a result, community-based Chinese language schools dedicate much of their class time to the teaching and learning of characters. Compared with, for example, Chinese–English dual-language immersion programs which emphasize U.S. citizenship education, the curriculum of the community-based CHL school is more focused on teaching heritage culture as well as the reading and writing of Chinese words (Reference Yuan, Keengwe and OnchwariYuan, 2021).
5.5 Teaching Chinese as a Heritage Language
Chris attends level 2 Chinese, which is roughly comparable to first- to second-grade Chinese (i.e., six- to eight-year-olds) in China. In a traditional Chinese classroom at this level, a teacher typically stands at the head of the class with a piece of chalk in one hand, the students listening attentively and hanging on the teacher’s every word. The students are quiet and reasonably well behaved, repeat like a chorus what the teacher asks them to repeat, and are otherwise silent while the teacher lectures. They ask no or few questions, and the teacher infrequently asks them to answer questions individually, not much different from the classroom interactional routine characterized by Reference CazdenCazden (1988) in the form of a tripartite sequence of the teacher’s initiation, followed by the students’ response, and concluded by the teacher’s evaluation. More frequently, however, the entire class answers en masse. It has been this way for generations and the role of the teacher in China is at the heart of it.
From an early age, when youngsters in China first begin their education, all the way up through college, students are taught that the teacher is their parent away from home, their leader, and their light in the dark world of academia. The teacher is always to be respected. To question the teacher is disrespectful, and to ask questions pertaining to the material may indicate an unacceptable level of understanding – a loss of face both for the teacher and for the student. And so it continues throughout the educational process: the teacher lectures; the student takes notes and memorizes facts, statistics, and languages by rote repetition and stubborn memorization; and when the time comes for testing, the student invariably gives back all that they have absorbed pertaining to the subject at hand. Speaking out of turn, questioning, or bringing attention upon oneself is viewed as inappropriate, thus resulting in a more authoritarian classroom where the only voice heard is that of the teacher.
Chris’s classroom, however, looks quite different. In the words of Chris’s teacher, Wang laoshi:
In that class I met Chris and his family. His mom told me that they have to drive about thirty minutes each way to attend Chinese classes on weekends because there is no Chinese language school where they live. So I always say to Chris, “You had better study hard. Your parents spend so much time and effort sending you here and waiting for you. If you don’t study hard and learn something useful, you will disappoint your parents.”
Teaching these kids is easier said than done. Chris and his classmates are little Americans. They don’t follow instructions the way the Chinese kids in China do. I thought my daughter Grace was not obedient. Now I see the other kids, Grace is definitely not the worst. Some kids cannot even stay seated on their bottom. When they are seated, they face all kinds of directions. Chris is one of those who don’t look at you when you are teaching something. You have to sweet-talk them, keep them happy, give them lots of rewards, and make the work not too demanding. Otherwise, they will be “on strike.” I think back on our own days being a student. Our teachers asked a lot of us and never spoiled us. Kids in China are scared of their teachers. Here the kids are not afraid of you; they expect you to be nice, very nice. I always tell my students, I am your teacher, not your friend. I can be nice, very nice, when you do your work properly. But my job is to teach you, not to spoil you.
These kids always have something to say. The problem is that they always say things in English. I know what they are saying but I pretend that I don’t know English. I ask them to say everything again in Chinese. They can when they try. If they don’t try to speak Chinese now, they will not be able to when they grow up. They don’t understand how easy and how cleverly designed the Chinese language is. So I tell them that speaking Chinese makes them smarter. But I myself sometimes forget. I sometimes mix English with Chinese in class too. The kids are naughty. They will catch me using English words and say, Laoshi, you are speaking English too! I know I shouldn’t use English but sometimes it’s just easier and faster if I want them to understand something right away … Another problem is that some kids learned non-standard Chinese from home because their parents or grandparents are non-Mandarin dialect speakers and it can be hard to correct them.
When asked what brought her to the teaching position, Wang laoshi (in her fifties) said,
I am absolutely not a professional teacher. I have had no training whatsoever. Teaching was never part of my plan in life. It just happened. It first happened in China. And it happened again here. I followed my husband to the U.S. in the early 1990s. He came as a doctoral student and I first came on an F-2 spouse visa. Before I came, I worked as a ziliao yuan [资料员] [information officer] in China, managing company information, project files, budget records, and so on, kind of like a cross between a secretary and a librarian. I also taught English part-time for a weekend supplementary school. My English wasn’t great at all, but they needed someone and there was no one else who could do it.
My husband’s job is not bad. So I didn’t keep trying hard to look for a job and just decided to stay at home and take care of our daughter Grace when she was young. I taught her some Chinese at home. But as she got older, she refused to learn. She wanted English only. I didn’t know what to do. Then I heard about the Chinese language school in our area. So I signed her up. I was hoping that if she sees that other kids are learning Chinese, she will too. The next thing I learned was that the lady who was supposed to teach Grace’s class moved somewhere else and the school couldn’t find a replacement. I figured that if I could teach English in China, I can certainly do a better job teaching Chinese in the U.S., because my Chinese is far better than my English and I love to read and learn anything about the Chinese language on my own! So I volunteered to teach my daughter’s class, which was first-to second-grade-level Chinese.
5.5.1 Which Version to Teach
From a practice- and habitus-based perspective, Reference Dai, Zhang, He and XiaoDai and Zhang (2008) ask the critical question of exactly what CHL learners are, or perhaps should be, inheriting. In a similar vein, in an ethnographic study of a weekend Japanese language school, Reference Doerr and LeeDoerr and Lee (2013) explore the intersection between language ideology, nationalist aspirations, school politics, and what to teach to whom. Wang laoshi has clearly given considerable thought to this question:
Even though I was not trained to be a teacher, I think a lot about how to be a good teacher. You see, every generation learns different things and learns differently, because they live in different times, and in different places. My own grandfather went to private schools [私塾 sishu] in the 1920s, which was very common during his days, read classical Chinese, memorized and recited Confucian classics [四书五经 sishu wujing – “the Four Books and Five Classics”], instilled core Confucian values of 仁义礼智信 ren yi li zhi xin [benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, faithfulness] and 温良恭俭让 wen liang gong jian rang [moderation, kindness, respectfulness, thrift, humility], wrote with a brush pen, and practiced calligraphy. When it was my father’s generation in the 1940s, there were no more 私塾 sishu [private schools]; my father attended public schools and had teachers who were trained to be teachers. He read in vernacular Chinese (as opposed to classical Chinese), and took courses in language arts, math, moral education, and geography at school. In addition, he was taught traditional Chinese classical texts at home, such as 三字经 San zi jing [The Three-Character Classic], 百家姓 Bai jia xing [The Book of One Hundred Surnames] and Tang poems [poems written during the Tang Dynasty, 618–907]. As he got older, he also took it upon himself to read great novels, such as 三国演义 San guo yan yi [The Romance of the Three Kingdoms], 水浒 Shui hu [The Water Margin], 西游记 Xi you ji [The Journey to the West], and 红楼梦 Hong lou meng [The Dream of the Red Chamber]. He actually didn’t read or remember much of the Confucian classics [the Four Books and Five Classics]. Also, during my father’s years of schooling, there was no pinyin. My father learned 注音符号 zhuyin fuhao [bopomofo – a character-derived phonetic transcription system]. Then it was my turn. I was born during the ten-year Cultural Revolution. Crazy times! Everything traditional was considered “feudalistic,” “superstitious,” or “counterrevolutionary.” There was nothing to read, except for “The Little Red Book” [a book of quotations from Mao Zedong] and political slogans everywhere in the streets. At school, our textbooks were full of political rubbish. Sheer insanity! China was destroying its own culture and its own civilization during those ten years. The Cultural Revolution ended when I was about to start middle school. So, compared with my older cousins whose entire education was ruined by the Cultural Revolution, I was more fortunate. At least my middle-school years were more normal and most importantly I had a chance to go to college.
Across the generations, the Chinese script has also changed. I’m glad that our school encourages children of Taiwanese background and children of mainland background to enroll in separate classes. It’s easier to teach literacy that way. Otherwise, we don’t even know how to handle the different needs – Taiwanese parents want their children to learn the traditional scripts; mainland parents want simplified scripts. My own grandfather used traditional characters only, my parents use half and half, our generation uses simplified characters. But in America, if you go to Chinatown, most Chinese writing is in the traditional form. So which script form should we teach our children in America?
So, I have been thinking, what kinds of “Chinese language and culture” should we be teaching to our next generation, who live in the U.S.? You see, Chinese culture is not one single thing; it is many things and different things during different time periods … My grandfather’s and my father’s early educations were very different from each other, but they both had a better early education than my own. My generation grew up in China with political indoctrination, which was brainwashing, not education. I definitely don’t think we should teach our children what my generation learned when we were children. If we teach them the traditional things that my grandfather learned, that belongs to history and not contemporary Chinese culture and frankly I won’t feel qualified to teach. If we teach them the subjects that my father learned, a lot of it will appear so outdated too. So I don’t know what the best answer is.
Right now, we are using the textbook that’s provided to us for free by the Chinese [PRC] consulate. It is compiled by Hanban [a mainland China government entity, the China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, established in 1987, renamed the Centre for Language Education and Cooperation in 2020]. It is convenient. But I don’t like it. The contents of the textbook sound so fake. The dialogs in lessons sound so artificial – nobody talks that way in real life. The cultural and history content reads like propaganda materials … These textbooks are written for “foreign language learners,” not our 华二代 huaerdai [second-generation Chinese-Americans]. The illustrative pictures and photos in the textbook show students of European descent, almost all White, with a few images of Black students. For example, the kids in my class know that in a Chinese name, the family name comes before the given name. But then they will be reading a passage about a 珍妮 zhen-ni [transliterated from the English name Jenny] and the next thing they started saying the character’s family is “Zhen”! There are more sensible textbooks that have been compiled in the U.S. specifically for children with a Chinese background. But the thing is that you have to pay for these books and the parents do not want to pay. They just want to use the free books from the consulate. This is something I really don’t get. The parents don’t mind spending sixty, seventy, or even eighty, ninety dollars per hour for their children’s music and art lessons, but they don’t want to spend forty dollars on a Chinese textbook that can be used for a whole year! This just shows a lack of actual commitment to the children’s learning of Chinese. They are hoping that their children can speak and write Chinese well just by sitting in the class for two hours per week and reading from a bad textbook. That’s wishful thinking. Who among us teachers would have that kind of magical power?
Just as Chinese language textbooks are laden with cultural, moral, and ideological values (Reference ChiuChiu, 2011; Reference Curdt-ChristiansenCurdt-Christiansen, 2008), so are traditional Chinese stories, which Wang laoshi read to her class to teach them the good moral values that have contributed to Chinese families, such as filial piety, hard work, 吃苦 chiku (“eat-bitterness,” meaning endurance), modesty, pursuit of excellence, and the proverb 愚公移山 yugong yishan (the old man who moved mountains), a story of dedication and perseverance. The story concerns a ninety-year-old man who lived near two big mountains. He was annoyed by the obstruction caused by the mountains and sought to dig through them with hoes and baskets. To move the mountain, he could only make one round trip between the mountain and his home in a year. When questioned as to the seemingly impossible nature of his task, the Foolish Old Man replied that while he may not finish this task in his lifetime, through the hard work of himself, his children, and their children, and so on through the many generations, someday the mountains would be removed if he persevered. The gods in Heaven, impressed with his hard work and perseverance, ordered the mountains removed. To this story, her students responded, “That’s such a stupid story; why does the old man not just move to a different place?”
Maybe it is time to teach our kids not some so-called traditional Chinese cultures, but current Chinese-American cultures. That is what they know, what they care about, and what they breathe every day. But they don’t understand why. So, we can teach them why. Why do we make dumplings during Chinese New Year? Why do we pay great respect to elders? Why must we always remain humble and modest? Why do we need to be grateful for what you have? Why must we study hard and always do our best? Why do we need to be self-reliant and self-disciplined? And Chinese-American history too. I hear that public schools in the U.S. don’t teach Chinese-American history; if that’s the case, then we, the Chinese language school, should pick up this important teaching. We need more stories about not just the Chinese but Chinese-Americans, something kids who grow up here can relate to.
5.5.2 Education versus Jiaoyu
The Chinese word for “education” is 教育 jiaoyu. The first character, 教 jiao, means “to teach”; the second character, 育 yu, means “to nurture.” If we dissect these two characters, the first character, 教 jiao, has two parts, one on the left and one on the right. The left part has two subcomponents, one on the top and one at the bottom. The top subcomponent refers to the older generation (the top part of 老 lao, “old”); the bottom subcomponent refers to the younger generation (子 zi, “child”). Put together, the left part of the character jiao depicts the younger generation holding the older generation in high regard and denotes the meaning of filial piety (孝). The right part of the character jiao is the radical 文 wen, which can mean culture, civilization, or written language. Hence to teach in Chinese means to create, promote, and sustain the culture where the younger generation learn from the older generation, show respect to them, and hold them in high regard. The second character, 育 yu, has two parts, one on the top and one on the bottom. The top is a logographic rendering of a woman’s private body part; the bottom is a radical that indicates the human body. 育 yu suggests the beginning of life.
Hence we see that the entailment of 教育 jiaoyu is very different from that of education. Educate comes from Latin educatus, past participle of educare, “bring up, rear, educate” (the source also of Italian educare, Spanish educar, French éduquer), which is related to educere, “bring out, lead forth,” from ex- “out” + ducere “to lead” (Online Etymology Dictionary, n.d.). Whereas education suggests that the role of the educator is to bring out what is already there inside the learner, 教育 jiaoyu implies that the educator must pass down knowledge to the learner.
This fundamental difference explains to a large extent why Chinese teachers and parents tend to require students to have complete respect for teachers, textbooks, or any other form of authority and why memorization, regurgitation, and following instructions are emphasized much more than discovery, exploration, criticality, and creativity.
Wang laoshi:
From my daughter Grace, I know that American elementary schools don’t give much homework. They don’t ask kids to do anything serious after school. If you don’t do homework, how can you remember and retain what you learned during the day? Everybody says that the U.S. has the world’s best education. I am not sure I can agree with that. Maybe the best education refers to higher education, but certainly not at the elementary level. So here kids don’t have homework and we as Chinese teachers have to be very careful. We don’t want kids to complain about too much homework. So, you see, teaching Chinese is really very challenging. You only see your students once a week, you cannot give them too much homework, and you expect them to learn. If they don’t, the parents will be upset. I am a parent too. Yes, I know it is hard to keep speaking Chinese at home. But some parents don’t even try. They expect the weekend Chinese language school to do magic. There is no magic. If parents don’t encourage their children to use Chinese, the children will choose the easy way – speaking English and English only!
Besides insistence on speaking the language in class, I also require my students to memorize many reading passages. I spend a lot of energy selecting these passages – they must be beautifully written; they must be age-appropriate. Yes, commit them to memory and then write them from memory. In the beginning, everybody complains. It is so hard! Parents complain too; they say that’s too old-fashioned teaching. But I said, if your children don’t memorize beautiful passages and internalize them, what is the point of sending your children to Chinese language school? Because at home they can learn how to speak from you, using everyday ordinary vocabulary. The purpose of the Chinese language school is to elevate their Chinese to a new level – where the children can read, appreciate the beauty of the language, and hopefully one day speak eloquently and write elegantly (that would be my dream come true!). I assign my students Tang poems to memorize. We are Chinese; Chinese must learn some Tang poems. If you say you are Chinese, you must know 床前明月光, 疑是地上霜 chuang qian ming yue guang, yi shi di shang shuang [a poem from the Tang Dynasty about longing for home that is well known], right? Many people say that memorization is bad; creativity is good. But how can you be creative when you don’t even know the good words, good phrases, and good speaking or writing styles?
My own observation of Wang laoshi’s classes showed, however, that she did much more than requiring students to learn through rote memorization. When her students appeared bored and disengaged from repetitive character writing, she read them stories about the characters from books that she had purchased during her summer trips to China. When her students forgot how to write a character, she would remind them of the story behind the character and the students usually could pick it up themselves. To help them memorize the strokes of the characters, she also asked them to practice 书空 shu-kong (tracing the imaginary shape of the strokes with a finger in the air). This way the students had a chance to use both their body and their mind to learn, which presumably would reinforce memory. As Wang laoshi said, When I am a better teacher, they become better students.
5.5.3 Learning Is a Serious Business
For Wang laoshi, time spent in the Chinese language school must be productive, and always conducive to learning, whether regarding in-class learning or onstage performance during celebration of Chinese festivals. Seen from her own personal trajectories, the constantly serious attention to productive learning is in and of itself a crucial part of Chinese culture, a position that sometimes receives challenges from her students, who have experienced life and learning somewhat differently (Reference GanassinGanassin, 2019).
I love my kids in the class. They are so smart. They learn so fast. We prepared a performance for the school’s annual Chinese New Year celebration. I asked them what they would like to do – sing a Chinese song, recite a Tang poem, or do the Chinese lion dance. They wanted to do the dance. It was very challenging. They had to learn the specific moves, and learn to dance in pairs, and wear the costume properly. It’s difficult even for adults, let alone ten- to eleven-year-olds. But they did it. I am very proud of them in my heart, but all I said to them was this: “Not bad! Next year you will do even better. Next year you will not only do the dance but also recite some Tang poems!”
Learning is a serious matter, not like playing games. Our principal once invited a college professor to give a workshop on modern teaching methods. That professor talked about “communicative methods” and “student-centered classroom activities.” And I don’t know if it is any good. You spend most of the class time playing games and keeping the students entertained; but where is actual learning? Learning requires concentration. Learning requires dedication, and sometimes even sacrifices. You learn, because learning is important for life and is a noble activity, not because it is “fun.” Call me old-fashioned. But this is what I believe. We need to let students know that learning is a serious business. When they understand this, they will apply themselves and they will learn, efficiently, effectively. And then they will truly enjoy the fun, in a deep, long-lasting way. No need to waste time pretending that learning is like playing games.
I want to improve my students’ motivation. I really hope my teaching methods can motivate the kids to learn. I’m just crossing the river by feeling the stones. I don’t know if the kids can actually learn and remember what I teach. I have no one to consult. Most of the teachers at the school are parent volunteers. Some have regular jobs. Some are stay-at-home moms like me. We have a lot of goodwill. But we don’t have good methods. I don’t like it when many kids tell me that they come to Chinese class on weekends because their parents said they must. The kids themselves must want to learn. Parents’ coercion can only work to a limited degree.
And parents, too, should take it seriously. I must say that some parents send their children here for the wrong reasons. They use the Chinese language school as some kind of daycare center on Saturdays. They drop off their kids here, go shopping and enjoy themselves. They don’t check their kids’ homework. They don’t know what the kids learn here. Some don’t even speak Chinese to the kids at home. Kids are smart. They find out very quickly that their parents are not serious about their learning Chinese. So, they come, meet with their friends, and then go home. It’s like having a playdate, or a party. That’s not learning.
Wang laoshi’s question and confusion concerning the learning materials in the Chinese language school, her non-American beliefs about what education should be and do, and her critical stance toward students’ and parents’ motivation all added up to an impression of her students and their families that learning in Chinese language school is very different from learning in mainstream K-12 schools. As Wenxiu reported, Chris said that school is fun but Chinese school is not. That’s why he didn’t want to go. Hence the degree of success in CHL maintenance through Chinese language school may have something to do with the extent to which the cultural and pedagogical norms in Chinese language school are sensitive to the norms in mainstream K-12 schools. Presumably, the greater the congruence between the two, the more likely CHL children will be motivated to learn attentively and productively at Chinese language school. At the same time, due to the influence and influx of American ways of learning and schooling, teacher authority in Chinese language school is no longer taken for granted as is the case in traditional Chinese classrooms. As can be seen in the section below, the negotiation of authorial status and the assertion of student agency suggests a cultural–behavioral shift that appears to accompany and motivate language shift.
5.6 Negotiating Authority and Identity
5.6.1 Simplified or Traditional
While the Chinese language schools I observed adopted textbooks published in mainland China in jiantizi (simplified characters), they also provided their students with supplementary reading materials published elsewhere, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong. In principle, Chris’s Chinese language school accepted any choice made by the instructor or by students who preferred one script to the other. Given the wide range of political, regional, linguistic, and socioeconomic divisions within the communities, bi-script writing has also been part of an attempt to forge a collective identity within an all-encompassing Chinese-American cultural framework.
Compounding the subcultural, political, and economic identity factors is the expert–novice role relationship between the teacher and the Chinese heritage language students. Originating in the teachings of Confucius and Mencius 2,000 years ago is the notion of 师道尊严 shi dao zun yan (the supremacy of the Way of the teacher). The teacher in a traditional Chinese classroom is someone who is the indisputable, unchallenged center and authority of knowledge. The student accordingly is someone who is expected to listen, observe, and follow the teacher’s instructions. Below, data segment (1) shows that the expert–novice relation between the teacher and the students in Wang laoshi’s class is not a clear-cut case of a representation of an instance of “traditional” classroom practice; instead, it may in fact take on a highly emergent quality as the participants ratify, reverse, reject or make irrelevant their prescribed role identities moment by moment.
The scenario in (1) concerns the choice of script between jiantizi, the simplified script, and fantizi, the traditional (unsimplified) script. Wang laoshi chooses to use jiantizi. Student G5’s mother is from Taiwan and prefers fantizi.
T = Wang laoshi
((T is walking around to check each individual student’s writing.Footnote 1))
1 T: 这个字嗯对吗? zhe ge zi eh dui ma? Is this character uh correct? 2 ((pointing to G5’s writing)) 3 G5: 嗯:: en: Eh 4 T: 照书上的写 zhao shushang de xie Write the character exactly as it appears in the book. 5 ((G5 opens the textbook and looks for the character and then opens another book, a storybook; T moves on to other students. In a few minutes, T returns to G5.)) 6 G5: 老师, 这本书说[我对了 Laoshi, zhe ben shu shuo wo dui le Teacher, this book says I’m right. 7 ((G5 points at the storybook; Tc looks and then picks up the book.)) 8 T: [照课本 – 这是这是什么书 – 哪里的? Zhao keben – zhe shi zhe shi shenme shu – nali de? Follow the text – What is this, is this, book – where does it come from? 9 G5: 从图书馆借的 cong tushuguan jie de [It is] borrowed from the library. ((The reading room in this Chinese language school.)) 10 T: 图书馆借[的? tushuguan jie de Borrowed from the library? 11 [((G5 nods)) 12 T: 这不是简体字》我们学的是简体字《 zhe bu shi jiantizi ≫women xue de shi jiantizi<< This is not jiantizi, what we’re learning is jiantizi. 13 G5: 陈老师说学繁体字简体字都 OK chen laoshi shuo xue fantizi jiantizi dou ok Teacher Chen says that learning fantizi and jiantizi are both fine. 14 ((Teacher Chen is the school principal.)) 15 T: 那 – 那好。 na na hao. Then – okay then. 16 (.2) ((Tc puts down the storybook.)) 17 T: 让我看你写得对吗。 Rang wo kan ni xie de dui ma. Let me see whether you wrote it correctly. 18 ((G5 hands in the storybook to Tc; Tc checks G5’s writing against the storybook.)) 19 T: 好。 hao. Good
In terms of sequential organization, T (line 1) begins with a question concerning whether a specific character was written correctly, a question to which G5’s answer appears uncertain (line 3). T then advises G5 to follow the book (line 4). G5 consulted two books, first the textbook and then a storybook (line 5), and finally reported to T that the book proved her right (line 6). At this point, realizing that G5 has mistakenly taken her previous turn (line 4) to mean “follow any book,” T initiates and completes a correction (“follow the textbook” – line 8) of her turn in line 4. Immediately subsequent to the correction, T also completes a self-correction within the same turn (marked by cutoffs, restarts – line 8), shifting the focus from the specification of which book G5 should consult to questioning the origin of the storybook. After G5’s reply that the book is from the school reading room (line 9), T presents an opportunity for G5 to correct herself with a partial repeat of G5’s previous turn, casting disbelief and doubt concerning the legitimacy of the book (line 10). G5, however, affirms that the book is indeed from the school reading room (line 11); in other words, T’s initiation for G5’s self-correction in line 10 did not succeed in getting G5 to complete any correction of her (G5’s) previous turn in line 9. T subsequently states that the character form present in the storybook is not permissible (line 12), to which G5 counters by invoking the school principal (line 13). T then reluctantly (indicated by the cutoff) gives in and revises her assessment of the book (line 14). Finally, T asks to check G5’s writing (line 17), a request with which G5 complies (line 18). T ends with an evaluation of G5’s writing (line 19).
By attending to interactional details moment by moment, we are able to see that the teacher’s expertise and authority are not presupposed to the same degree at all times and are not readily accepted by the student at all times. In this segment, the teacher began being the expert/authority by asking a question (line 1) and issuing a directive (line 4). The student’s response to the directive (line 6), however, compelled the teacher to respecify her original directive (line 8). Subsequently, the expert–novice relationship became neutralized, if not reversed. The teacher did not know the origin of the storybook (line 8), whereas the student did (line 9). When the teacher further challenged the student (line 10), the student did not revise her statement (line 11). The student was finally able to strike a balance in the interpersonal relationship when she countered (line 13) the teacher’s assessment (line 12) and succeeded in making the teacher agree with her (line 14). In the end, the expert–novice relationship returned to what it was at the beginning of this episode: the act of examining (line 17) and evaluating (line 19) the student’s character writing (though in fantizi) and the student’s compliance (line 18) re-established the teacher’s expert position. In other words, if the stance of expertise and authority indexes the identity of the teacher, here such a stance is not a static property, but instead an emergent one and the expert–novice relationship is constantly shifting as the interaction unfolds.
Furthermore, the free use of double scripts in CHL schools presupposes a well-educated language user who is familiar not only with the specific orthographic rules of the scripts but also with their associated cultural, political, and economic connotations. The question is, then, whether the scripts, when adopted into a new textual and cultural environment in the U.S., retain their specific connotations for the CHL learners and teachers. Whatever the answer to this question may be, could the adaptation of double scripts be interpreted as a conscious attempt on the part of the teachers and students to construct a layered cultural identity meaningful in, and suitable for, a pluralistic U.S. society? Ultimately, such encounters bring to the foreground the relationship between the scripts that CHL learners and teachers write and the sociocultural identities they imagine in writing and enact in life.
5.6.2 “We” versus “They”
To examine participants’ cultural identity is always a complex inferential and social process. From a language socialization perspective, this is because our understandings of which acts and stances constitute resources for constructing particular cultural identities are limited. However, group and cultural identities are particularly relevant and salient in heritage language education. Unlike the case of foreign- or second-language learning, where the learner is clearly a member of the “native culture” who is attempting to learn the norms and rules of the “target culture” as enacted and (re)constituted by the target language they are learning, the learner of a heritage language appears to have a multifaceted identity as someone who is both similar to and different from members of the target culture since they are sociohistorically connected with the target culture and yet experientially displaced from it. Through data excerpt (2), we may be able to see that with varying language forms, such as personal pronouns and shifting lexical entailments in various repair trajectories, the students and the teacher present themselves differently and project differential interpersonal alignments with regard to cultural and institutional groups.
(2) [TCCDL:953] choice of subject pronouns
((T is organizing the class to set up a writing contest between two groups.Footnote 2 Women “we”; nimen “you (pl.)”; tamen “they”))
If we focus on each of the pronouns, women “we” is used to refer to (1) students at Chinese language school (CLS) (by both Ss and T), (2) students and teachers at CLS (by T), (3) students at daytime schools (by Ss), and (4) all students at daytime schools (by Ss). Nimen “you” is used by T to refer to students at CLS (line 16). And tamen “they” is used by T to refer to (1) students and teachers at daytime schools and (2) teachers at daytime schools (lines 10 and 17). Alternatively, if we focus on each of the speakers, the students are self-presented as (1) students at CLS, (2) students at daytime schools, and (3) members of the entire student body at daytime schools. The students are other-presented by T as members of CLS only. In other words, while students identify themselves with daytime schools as well as with CLS using women “we” in all cases, T clearly differentiates CLS from daytime schools, referring to students and teachers at daytime schools as tamen “they.”
This data segment is also characterized by a number of repair sequences. In line 5, G4 announces that whichever team loses the contest will need to buy cookies for everyone. This turn is marked by perturbations in the beginning and the mid-turn code switch from Chinese to English. In line 6, T extends a correction of G4’s turn in line 5. She first offers a G4 an opportunity to correct herself through a partial repeat of G4’s previous turn with a question intonation (“Buy cookies?”), which structurally could have functioned as an initiation for G4’s self-correction. However, without allowing any space for G4 to respond to the initiation for self-correction, T continues to complete the correction herself within the same speaking turn, stating that learning should not be associated with food. Hence, interestingly enough, on the one hand, T appropriates the English item introduced by G4 (“cookie”), thereby exhibiting her own identification with the students’ linguistic membership categorization (i.e., bilingual in Chinese and English). On the other hand, she opts to use the least affiliative strategy for correction, that of other-initiated, other-completed correction.
In line 8, G4 argues for the legitimacy of buying cookies by invoking the practices of her daytime school. In lines 9 to 10, T strives (as evidenced by cutoffs and hesitations in the beginning of the turn) to present a counterargument by differentiating Chinese language school from daytime school. There are two instances of same-turn self-correction in lines 9 to 10. The first occurs at the beginning of the turn when T is trying to justify why buying cookies is not appropriate. The second instance occurs when she contrasts what is acceptable in CLS with what is acceptable in daytime school (“we” versus “they”).
In line 16, in reply to a student’s question (line 12) whether the winning team will get extra points, T produces another self-correction (from “you” to “we”), this time shifting from a categorization of students and herself as separate entities to an identification of students and herself as belonging to the same membership.
The last instance of correction occurs in line 19. It is yet another same-turn self-correction. Unlike previous instances of correction of the same type, however, in this instance the correction is completed through code-switching from Chinese to English. As T clearly spoke Chinese much better than English and since she rarely used English in the classroom, code-switching in this case can be seen as evidence for identity adjustment (Reference AuerAuer, 2005) for T, an adjustment from someone who makes a clear distinction between the Chinese-speaking “we” and the English-speaking “they” to someone who is receptive to ambivalence, duality, and possibly change.
To sum up, the students’ self-presentation appears to be multifaceted and fluid; they categorize themselves as members of simultaneously existing multiple groups and move in and out of groups with ease, aligning themselves with CLS, their daytime school and/or their teacher at various points in time. The teacher, on the other hand, appears to make every effort (including a succession of self-repairs) to categorize the students solely as members of CLS. In other words, as the participants collaboratively (although differently) define the identity of the students, they at the same time also jointly re-create the identity of the teacher. The correction sequences, the choice of scripts and the use of pronouns in teacher–student interactions construct various affective stances of certainty or uncertainty, knowledgeability or lack thereof, affiliation or disaffiliation, which in turn are constitutive of participants’ “identities of choice” (Reference Creese and MartinCreeze and Martin, 2006) as expert/novice, teacher/student, CLS/DTS student, Chinese, American, Chinese-American, Chinese-American of Taiwanese origin, or Chinese-American of mainland China origin. Given the symbiotic relationship between heritage language development and identity development (Reference HeHe, 2010; Reference LeemanLeeman, 2015), it is safe to assume that the kind of identity that CHL students adopt and assert will have a direct bearing on their dispositions toward learning Chinese. The more they disassociate themselves from being Chinese and being CLS students, the less likely they will commit themselves to CHL learning.
5.7 Cultures in Conflict
In the Chinese cultural tradition, teaching should be a moral act and teachers should be moral models for students. Socialization in the classroom is thus inevitably tied to moral education (Reference Fader, Duranti, Ochs and SchieffelinFader, 2011). The teacher’s role is largely defined in terms of or constituted by moral and authoritative dispositions. Confucian teachings, which have provided the dominant educational and social ethos for a major part of Chinese history, are primarily concerned with moral conduct as the basis of social harmony. It is thus the teacher’s and the parents’ prerogative as well as responsibility to socialize the students/children into the various virtues that regulate all human conduct, such as 礼 li – propriety-based civilities (respecting seniority, exercising modesty, humbling oneself, exalting others, putting collective needs before one’s own, striving for harmony). Therefore, as CHL teachers are engaged in the teaching of characters and literacy, they often inevitably also seize the moment to inculcate Chinese cultural values, through teaching character recognition, through teaching reading passages, and during classroom management.
Due to their logographic nature, Chinese characters not only are the ends of learning literacy in Chinese, but also become powerful means of socializing culture, morality, and values. The semantic structural potential in the formation of Chinese characters makes it possible to encode rich cultural and historical information. It allows us to glimpse the far recesses of Chinese culture. The composition and components of characters give us clues about the material culture and cultural beliefs, biases, and ways of thinking from a long time ago.
It is important to note, however, that these Chinese norms and values may not be readily accepted or applicable and that shared understanding of cultural meanings and dispositions may not be achieved all at once. In the segment below, Wang laoshi explains the composition of the character ren (“benevolence”), as well as its cultural connotations. Five minutes later, one student uses the word ren inappropriately. Wang laoshi corrects the student’s usage of the word and further clarifies the cultural entailment of the character.
5.7.1 Benevolence
老师: “仁”啊, 仁爱的仁,仁慈的仁。记不记得,那个东郭先生,他太仁慈了,不该仁慈的时候他也- 也也-啊-不应该,结果呢,被蛇给咬了,是不是?仁,好, 看一看,是上下分还是左右分呐? 左右分,是不是?左边呢,什么偏旁?什么偏旁?“人字旁,” 对了,“人字旁”。右边呢?右边是个数字,对不对? 是几啊?“二.”“二”就是除了我自己还有别人,不能只想着自己,要想想别人,看别人需要什么,想想我能为别人做点什么。这就是“仁,” 想着别人,给别人做好事。Footnote 3
Teacher: Ok, ren, ren as in ren-ai [benevolent love], ren as in ren-ci [benevolent charity]. Remember, that Mr. Dongguo [a figure in a Chinese fable], he was too benevolent. He even, even acted benevolently when he was not supposed to. He really shouldn’t have. So as a result, he was bitten by the snake, right? Ok, ren, look carefully. Does this character have a top–bottom composition or left–right composition? Left–right, right? On the left, what radical is this? What radical? The “person” radical, right, “person” radical. What about the right side [of the character ren]? The right side is a number, right? What number is it? The number “two.” “Two” means besides myself there is somebody else. [It means you] cannot just think about yourself. You must think about other people, see what their needs are, see what you can do for other people. This is the meaning of ren [benevolence], keeping other people in mind, doing good deeds for other people.
((About 5 minutes later, two students were fighting for a color pencil.))
001 老师: 不抢!互相谦让着点儿。
buqiang huxiang rang zhe dianr
Teacher: Don’t fight! Try to yield to each other.
002 学生1: 他没有 “仁”! Not nice!
ta meiyou ren
Student 1: He does not have “benevolence”! Not nice!
003 老师: 啊?! 哈哈 没有仁, 呃, 这太过分了, 没那么严重啊。“仁” 说的是大方面的事。
a haha meiyou ren e zhe tai guofen le, mei name yanzhong a. ren shoude shi da fangmian de shi
Teacher: What?! Haha. No “benevolence,” uh, that’s too much. Not that serious. “Benevolence” refers to something big.
((Student 1 turns to Student 2))
004 Student 1: My turn now! Share! My turn!
The supposed object of learning – the characters – becomes the basis and the resource for the participants to draw on to engage each other in collaborative efforts of delineation, articulation, and socialization of cultural meanings and values. What is noteworthy is that after the Teacher explains that the concept of ren is too grand to be applied in this situation, Student 1 switches from partial Chinese (line 002) to complete English and applies the American cultural value of “sharing is caring” (line 004). Hence the lack of applicability of important Chinese cultural values makes the practice and retention of the Chinese words that express these values difficult.
5.7.2 Diligence
Below, Wang Laoshi and students carried out the following discussion regarding the character 学 xue (“to study, to learn”):
“Study Hard”
老师: 你看这个字的上边,上边是古代小孩疏的那种那种发型那种头啊,把头发都扎在头顶。下边呢,下边谁认得?认得吧,是“子,”就是孩子。所以这个“学”字说得就是小孩子呢,他的主要任务就是要学习。要学习,对不对?我们小朋友啊都要好好学习。
Teacher: Look at the top part of this character. The top part looks like kids’ hairstyles in ancient times, when they put hair on top of their head in a bun. And the bottom part [of the character], who knows the bottom part? You know that part, right? It’s zi [child], meaning child. So, this character xue [to learn] says that for a child, his main responsibility is to study. [Kids] should study, right? My little friends, we should all study well.
学生: 那是古代,是很久了,现在我们不 疏那种样子了,谁都不那样了。
Student: That’s ancient times. That’s old times. Now we don’t comb our hair like that. No one [does his hair] like that anymore.
老师: 啊,对。现在当然不疏成那样了。那就是那个意思呵,说小朋友啊- 啊,什么时候都应该好好学习。
Teacher: Oh, yes. Now of course [we] don’t comb our hair like that. That is that means eh, it says little friends should, in any circumstances, study hard.
The teacher uses the shape of the orthography of the character xue (“to study, to learn”) as an iconic reference to the paramount value that the Chinese have, for thousands of years, placed on education and learning. A student casts doubt on what the teacher says by stating that the old kids’ hairstyle is long out of date, thus implying that perhaps the importance for kids to concentrate on learning is also running out of date. The teacher subsequently affirms the student’s explicit comment on the hairstyle but rejects the student’s implicit suggestion about the value of learning for children.
5.7.3 Altruism
The discursive, dialogic nature of the construction and contestation of cultural knowledge is more evident in the next episode, which took place as the teacher was explaining the cultural connotations of a widely popular folk story titled “Kong Rong Yields Pears.” The story is about a Chinese child prodigy in history called Kong Rong who insisted on yielding big pears to both his older brothers and his younger brothers and picking the smallest one for himself. For generations, the Chinese have used this folk story to instill the notion of “yielding to others” and “putting others’ interests first” in the mind of young children. Here the teacher at the Chinese heritage language school is doing precisely the same to her class.
“Practice Altruism”
001 老师: “孔融让梨”说的是小朋友应该互 (.) 相 (.) 谦 (.) 让。Footnote 4
KongRong Rang Li shuo de shi xiaopengyou yinggai huxiang qianrang
Teacher: What the story of “Kong Rong Yields Pears” tells us is that little friends should yield (.) to (.) each (.) other.
| 002 | 要是你们在家跟弟弟妹妹玩, |
| Yaoshi nimen zai jia gen didi meimei wan | |
| If you are playing with your younger brothers and sisters at home, | |
| 003 | 你们 (.) 抢玩具 (.) 这样对不对啊? |
| Nimen xiang wanju zheyang dui bu dui a | |
| You (.) fight for toys (.) Is that right or not? | |
| 004 | 不好啊 |
| Bu hao a | |
| Not good ok | |
| 005 | (.2) |
| 006 老师: | 要把 – 应该把玩具让::给弟弟妹妹 |
| Yao ba yinggai ba wanju rang gei didi meimei | |
| Teacher: | Should- Ought to yie::ld the toys to younger brothers and sisters |
| 007 Chris: | 为什么要让给他?我们share就可以了。 |
| Wenshenme yao rang gei ta? Women share jiu keyi le | |
| Chris: | Why yield to him? We can share. |
| 008 老师: | Share (.) 嗷:: share 是不错 |
| Ao shi bu cuo | |
| Teacher: | Share (.) uh:: share is not bad |
| 009 | (.2) |
| 010 老师: | 可是能让就更好 |
| Keshi neng rang jiu geng hao | |
| Teacher: But being able to YIELD will be EVEN better. | |
| 011 Chris: | Oh:: no::: Do I really have to? |
| 012 老师: | 不是说非 – 不是说必须得让 |
| Bushi shuo fei bushi shuo bixu dei rang | |
| Teacher: I’m not saying you have to – not saying that you MUST yield | |
| 013 | 能让最:好啊 |
| Neng rang zui hao a | |
| Being able to yield is THE BEST OK | |
| 014 | 让(.)就是就是做别人(.)不能(.)做的 |
| Rang jiu shi jiu shi zuo bier en bu neng zuo de | |
| Yielding means doing what others cannot do | |
| 015 | 别人做不到的(.)好事 |
| Bie ren zuo bu dao de hao shi | |
| The good deed that others cannot do | |
| 016 | 所以::最好::能让(.)啊 |
| Suoyi zuihao neng rang a | |
| Therefore [you] would do better to yield. |
Here, the teacher initially frames “yielding” as obligation (001–004). In line 001, T clearly characterizes “yielding” as a moral mandate (应该 yinggai). To reinforce this mandate, she carefully turns the modal verb 要 yao at the beginning of line 006 (“want or should”) which is ambiguous (“as it can take either the volition or obligation sense”) to a clear-cut deontic modal 应该 yinggai (要把 yao ba – 应该把 yinggai ba) through a same-turn self-repair (006), thereby clarifying and enhancing the sense of “obligation.” Chris, however, challenges this obligation (为什么要 weishenme yao, line 007) and sets up a contrast between obligation (要 yao “should”) and option (可以 keyi “can”). To address this challenge, the teacher presents an alternative, better “option” (010), which is in turn taken by the student to mean “obligation” (“have to” – 011). A consequent/subsequent third-position repair by the teacher revises the “obligation” interpretation (不是说必须得 bu shi shuo bixu dei – 012) and reinforces the “option” interpretation (能让最:好 neng rang zuihao, line 013). She then further proffers a definitional, categorical statement regarding what “yielding” means (lines 014 to 015) with no modulation and concludes with a suggestion with an obvious obligatory overtone (最好 zuihao – line 016). Hence, even though in terms of quantity of input, as measured by the number and length of speaking turns, Chris contributes less to the interaction than the teacher, he nonetheless plays a pivotal role in the shaping of the deontic degree of “yielding,” from strong obligation to moderate to weak.
This data segment shows that each time the teacher revises her moral stance, it is in response to the child’s challenge and question. It also shows that the socialization of cultural knowledge and preference is not a unidirectional transaction. Instead, it involves expectations, counterexpectations, assertions, challenges, mitigations, and modifications, all accomplished through a wide range of modals by all participants involved in situated interaction. As a result, 谦让 qianrang (“yielding”), an age-old Chinese cultural practice indicating proper etiquette and morality, becomes subject to discussion, negotiation, and modification in a weekend community-based school in the U.S. where Chinese is taught as a heritage language. If foundational core notions like qianrang (yielding) are cast in doubt and in debate, if the teacher cannot convince the students of the legitimacy, let alone the supremacy, of this value, then chances are that the students will not identify with this cultural doctrine and consequently will not use the term qianrang (yielding). In other words, the culture-focused approach to Chinese language teaching adopted at the Chinese language school may be inadvertently defeating its own pedagogical purposes.
5.7.4 Filial Piety
Although “teacher” is a universal social role, the communicative practices of teachers vary considerably across cultures and societies. Teachers in Chinese language schools, like those in schools in China, see themselves not only as experts in knowledge but also as guides of morality. As such, the directives they issue in the classroom are often couched in moral reasoning (Reference HeHe, 2000). The identity of the Chinese teacher is constituted and mediated by the relation of language forms to stances (e.g., moral and authoritative), activities, and other social constructs. Consequently, students in these classes come to understand teacher-related meanings in part through coming to understand certain recurrently displayed stances such as upholding the core Chinese moral tenet of filial piety (孝, xiao), a concept of Chinese philosophy for more than 3,000 years, which entails a strong loyalty and deference to one’s parents, to one’s ancestors, and by extension to one’s country and its leaders. In general, filial piety requires children to offer love, respect, support, and deference to their parents and other elders in the family. Acts of filial piety include obeying one’s parent’s wishes, showing gratitude for them, taking care of them when they are old, and working hard to provide for them (Reference Chan and TanChan and Tan, 2004). This concept is premised on the belief that children are eternally in debt to their parents since parents give life to their children, and support them throughout their developing years, providing food, education, and material needs. The tenet of filial piety also applies to all elders – teachers, professional superiors, or anyone who is older in age – and even the state. The family is the building block of society, and as such the hierarchical system of respect also applies to one’s rulers and one’s country. However, concepts like this present a challenge to American values of freedom, autonomy, and independence.
One day, Wang laoshi was teaching the Chinese idiom 尊老爱幼 zunlao aiyou (“respect the elderly and love the young”). To use an example, she asked her students what they would do if they saw an elderly grandmother trying to cross the street. Her students were very puzzled and did not understand what the teacher was asking. Wang laoshi said, 我们应该主动过去搀她, 陪她过马路, 保证她安全 women yinggai zhudong quoqu fu ta, pei ta guomalu, baozheng ta anquan (We should voluntarily go over to her, support her by the arm, accompany her as she crosses the street, and make sure that she is safe). Her students asked, What if she doesn’t need help? What if she doesn’t want us to help? Wang laoshi did not follow up on this topic. She shook her head and said to her class, 你们这些孩子真是美国化了 nimen zhexie haizi zhenshi meiguohua le (You children are indeed Americanized). And the four-character idiom 尊老爱幼 was not mentioned again and did not appear in subsequent vocabulary tests.
Community-based heritage language schools function as a critical, grassroot component of nationwide efforts to create and sustain a more equitable and more inclusive language education system that can serve diverse learners and communities in U.S. society. How can parents and educators (both professional and volunteers) together enhance the impact of community-based heritage language instruction, in terms not merely of heritage language proficiency gains, but also of promoting a sense of ethnic and cultural identity and a more just society? As we can see from these snapshots of the Chinese language school that Chris attends, there is much to be explored in terms of co-operation and co-ordination (or lack thereof) between community-based heritage language schools and educators in “mainstream” school environments. There are myriad challenges facing Chinese heritage language schools in every aspect of teaching.
Teaching materials are detached and decontextualized from the life of Chinese-Americans in the U.S. Teachers, being mostly parent volunteers, lack professional training in language teaching and are left to their own devices. As such, teachers tend to teach in the way they themselves were taught when they were young in China. They expect their students to perform continuous studious hard work and to obey teachers unquestionably, always. However, the students who are used to cultural and institutional norms in mainstream K-12 schools find these expectations challenging to understand and live up to. Additionally, Chinese language schools’ intensive dual focus on literacy competency and on traditional cultural values may backfire. Without frequent and adequate exposure to print materials, many students find Chinese characters frustrating to learn and retain. And in contrast to American cultural values, Chinese virtues such as absolute altruism and filial piety appear either irrelevant or unattainable. Hence until deeper issues of cultural cohesion and congruence brought about by simultaneously multiple discourse worlds that CHL learners inhabit are resolved, the challenges facing learning and maintaining CHL will remain daunting.
Up to this point, we have largely explored the perspectives of parents and teachers. And up to this point (the stage of elementary school) the prospect of learning and maintaining CHL does not look optimistic. Does this mean that Chinese will be rejected by CHL children completely and for good and that the shift toward an English-dominant linguistic repertoire is immediate? The answer is no. Even though the shift appears inevitable, the trajectory is nonlinear. In the next two chapters, we will examine the CHL learners’ perspectives and experiences. We will look at the evolving communicative contexts and demands at home as the children get older and as the family’s immigration experience unfolds. We will focus on the kinds of cultural and discursive practice that are conducive to CHL learners’ practicing and incorporating Chinese as part of their own linguistic repertoires, as well as those that are not.
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