Moving Family to China

[Guangxi Shane]

 

One more thing to consider.  Because your daughter "looks Chinese" (because she is....), most/many/all Chinese will expect her to speak Chinese, and will look down on her / mock her / give her grief for not doing so.  The fact that she hasn't lived in Chinese since she was 10 months old does not affect this reaction.  They'll say they understand why, but it won't change their behavior.

 

Not saying you should change your plans because of this, but just be warned.

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@jbradfor, thanks for the heads up. We've heard similar warnings elsewhere as well.

 

Hopefully we'll be able to prepare our daughter ahead of time and explain to her what to expect, so she won't be surprised by Chinese people's reactions to her.

 

My wife is Japanese American, and when we were living in Japan we often had interesting experiences where a group of us foreigners would go out somewhere and inadvertently commit some faux pas. The Japanese people in the restaurant or hot spring or train station or whatever would inevitably go to my wife and start yelling at her in Japanese about what we had done, but no one would say anything to the caucasian members of our group, I guess because they assumed that we couldn't be at fault because we were foreigners who obviously couldn't speak the language and couldn't be expected to know the social norms. Ironically, some of our friends with blonde hair and blue eyes were the best speakers of Japanese in our group, but my wife took the brunt of the scoldings for anything the rest of us did.

 

When my wife and I were travelling around Asia we used to joke that my wife's face must change each time we crossed a border. She got yelled at on the street in Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc. Most times we had no idea why. Wherever we went people just assumed that because my wife looked Asian, she must understand their language...

[陳德聰]

It kind of mystifies me that you intend to put your 6-y/o through that but whatever floats your boat.

[Guangxi Shane]

Does anyone know anything about Chinese people's attitudes towards adoption? I'm curious how Chinese people feel about Westerners adopting Chinese children? (angry?, ambivalent?, embarrassed?) Over the past 10 years the number of healthy Chinese babies available for international adoption has dropped dramatically, presumably because fewer Chinese families are abandoning children and also because there's been growing domestic demand, probably mostly from urban Chinese families who want to adopt the children themselves. Before the one-child policy was implemented in China, was adoption common? Is it something that Chinese people openly talk about, or is it a taboo subject? For example, if a Chinese family adopted a baby, would they openly tell their friends, neighbors, colleagues about it, or would they not mention it or try to pretend that the adopted baby was their birth child?

 

I looked up adopt(ion) in the dictionary and came up with several different options. What would be the best word to use in Mandarin to explain to Chinese people that we adopted our daughter in China? Also, is this something we should openly share with Chinese people, or will it possibly open our daughter up to prejudice or attacks? In the U.S. we don't go around telling everyone that we adopted our daughter, but we also don't try to hide it. Where we live interracial families are the norm and adoption is an accepted, traditional cultural practice. Most people who don't know us well assume that my wife gave birth to our daughter. We've had acquaintances tell us in the supermarket how much our daughter looks like us... What's it like in China? Is adoption something people openly talk about or not?

[Angelina]

Pang-Mei Natasha Chang:

 

 

http://pmchang.com/articles/ChineseAdoption.pdf

One of my new friends, Caitlin, tells me how she took her four-year-old adopted Chinese daughter to Hong Kong for a visit. The two of them were sitting on the subway and her daughter looked around in puzzlement at the faces of all the other passengers.

Finally, she looked up at Caitlin and asked, “Are you my mother?” “Why?” Caitlin asked. “Because I love you,” her daughter answered. Emily’s daughter might have said the same to her. 

[陳德聰]

領養的

lǐngyǎng de

 

I think people will probably consider you to be "good people".

[jbradfor]

 

When my wife and I were travelling around Asia we used to joke that my wife's face must change each time we crossed a border.

My wife's experience as well.  Although I can't remember the last time we were yelled at, more talked to.  What do you keep doing wrong? :-)

 

Adoption by strangers is very rare in China.  [No number to back me up....]  Usually, if there are any issues, the child would be adopted by some (often distant) relative.  I don't think it's taboo, but I don't think most Chinese would really understand why.

 

Some posts back you mentioned wanting to try to find your daughter's birth family.  I would really recommend AGAINST doing that.  You have no idea why they gave her up.  For all you know, it could have been a bad situation why she got pregnant.  You are, without checking first, imposing your desire to find your daughter's birth parents onto the birth mother's life, her family's life, potentially many people around her.  You could bring shame on them for making everyone aware.  She could have kept it a secret, and you are forcing exposure.  You could, in extreme case, bring legal problems to people who tried to cover this up.  They gave her up for adoption anonymously; I don't think it is your right, legally or morally, to force a meeting.

[Guangxi Shane]

 

 

It kind of mystifies me that you intend to put your 6-y/o through that but whatever floats your boat.

 

We're hoping that the positive aspects of the experience of travelling to China, studying the language and learning more about the culture will outweigh any potentially negative experiences we may have.

[Guangxi Shane]

 

領養的

lǐngyǎng de

 

Thanks. We'll add that to our flashcards.

[Guangxi Shane]

 

http://pmchang.com/a...eseAdoption.pdf

One of my new friends, Caitlin, tells me how she took her four-year-old adopted Chinese daughter to Hong Kong for a visit. The two of them were sitting on the subway and her daughter looked around in puzzlement at the faces of all the other passengers.

Finally, she looked up at Caitlin and asked, “Are you my mother?” “Why?” Caitlin asked. “Because I love you,” her daughter answered. Emily’s daughter might have said the same to her. 

 

 

Thanks Angelina. Have you read Bound Feet & Western Dress? Was it any good? I just finished reading River Town by Peter Hessler, about his two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Sichuan, and now I'm reading Oracle Bones by the same author, also about China.

[Guangxi Shane]

 

 

My wife's experience as well.  Although I can't remember the last time we were yelled at, more talked to.  What do you keep doing wrong? :-)

 

Maybe "yelled at" was too harsh an expression. Probably "scolded," which I think I also used in that post, would be more accurate. In some cases people weren't yelling at us or scolding us. They were just trying to help. Usually it was for relatively minor things like standing in the wrong line at the bus/train station or trying to enter through the exit or inadvertently trying to go into the wrong restroom...

 

In Japan we could communicate with the people in their language so it was easier, but when we were in Korea, China and Vietnam, we couldn't understand what the people were saying, so we didn't always know if we had done something wrong or not. Sometimes, I think, people would say something to my wife, and when she didn't immediately respond in their language, they would repeat what they had said in a louder voice, so maybe it seemed like they were yelling at her when actually they were just checking to see if she was deaf or not.

 

 

Some posts back you mentioned wanting to try to find your daughter's birth family.  I would really recommend AGAINST doing that.  You have no idea why they gave her up.  For all you know, it could have been a bad situation why she got pregnant.  You are, without checking first, imposing your desire to find your daughter's birth parents onto the birth mother's life, her family's life, potentially many people around her.  You could bring shame on them for making everyone aware.  She could have kept it a secret, and you are forcing exposure.  You could, in extreme case, bring legal problems to people who tried to cover this up.  They gave her up for adoption anonymously; I don't think it is your right, legally or morally, to force a meeting.

 

Thanks for your advice.

 

We're not planning on actively looking for our daughter's birth family while we're in China. Even if we were, it seems unlikely that we could find them unless they wanted to be found.

 

Recently we watched a good documentary film about Chinese adoption called Somewhere Between. In the movie one of the young Chinese adoptees and her American family go to the village where the girl was found, post notices in Chinese around the village, and within a couple of hours, the girl's birth family appears and invites them into their home. I'm pretty sure that only happens in the movies, though.

 

As I said earlier in the thread, rather than finding our daughter's specific birth family, we're more interested in travelling around the area where she is from, visiting villages where she might have grown up, and getting an idea of what her life might have been like had she stayed in China. If, by chance, we were to meet our daughter's birth family, we would be open to that experience, but we're not going there to look for them.

[Flickserve]

I just had a recent experience of meeting some Americans who live in Beijing. Initially, they told me they have worked in China for 4 years but things got really interesting when they told me they sent their kids to a local Primary Chinese school.

In context of the very cautious comments on this thread, seeing white Americans send their kids to a fully Chinese school is highly unusual. In fact, the mother had in the past studied Mandarin as an undergraduate and both parents had previously spent time in China before having children.

The mother was very enthusiastic of the Chinese primary school system. She was an advocate of serious attitude to studying and the discipline that Chinese students are instilled with. She was quite happy for the kids to go through primary education like this and change to an international school for the secondary education. Her own belief was that the American education system is not rigourous enough.

I did ask how her children coped and she said fine - the kids have good Chinese friends as well.

I think we all have our own beliefs about education, but this little story provides an alternate side of the coin.

[eion_padraig]

One of the substitutes at our school is a white Canadian woman. Her husband is Canadian and grew up in Canada, but his father was from China. His biological mother is a white Canadian, but his parents got divorced and he was raised by a stepmother who was also from China. Anyway, this woman and her husband have two daughters with blonde hair and light eyes. They basically don't look Chinese at all. However, they've been raised in China and attended local schools.

 

The mother did comment to me that they end up with some interesting ideas from their grandparents who live with them and from going to local school. They typical, "you get sick from drinking cold water" type of ideas and other standard Chinese thinking about health. She sees her children attending local school as a way for them to connect to their heritage by learning Chinese at a high level. She speaks to them in English, though it's clear that their English isn't as good as their Chinese.

 

She hasn't mentioned bullying or problems, but again they are native Chinese speakers who don't look Chinese. They may even get very positive attention for looking so foreign.

 

I do get the sense that they plan to enroll them in English language schools as they get older. So it's probably an anomaly like the folks that Flickserve met, but it does happen. I do think it becomes more of an issue as the kids get older and people start to think about English language education. 

[Guangxi Shane]

As our daughter gets older - she'll be 7 next month - it seems like it's becoming less and less likely she'll be able to learn Chinese to a high enough level, quickly enough to make putting her in a regular Chinese school successful. Based partly on feedback we received from this post, we've scaled our plans for visiting China way back from what they originally were. Right now, we're still definitely planning on going to China, studying some Mandarin (maybe in Beijing where we have some Chinese friends with a child our daughter's age) and traveling around the country. If things work out well and we end up loving China, we can always extend our stay. It seems better to me to tell our daughter ahead of time that we are only planning on visiting China for a couple of months, and then if we love it and decide to stay longer, it'll be a positive thing. I'd rather have that than we tell her we're going to stay in China for a whole year, China ends up being disappointing in some way, and we end up bailing out early. We'd like our daughter's first visit back to China to be a positive experience for all of us.

[陳德聰]

Sounds like a good plan ^_^

[Flickserve]

Primary school starts at 7 years old.

This well known American personality underwent the same process a while ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Hua

[Guangxi Shane]

Interesting, I'd never heard of Ai Hua before. That'd be nice if our daughter could become famous too. Then my wife and I could just sit around sipping lemonade and live off of her for awhile...

[Flickserve]

You can find her presenting "Growing Up With Chinese". This is a production by CCTV where she teaches Chinese. Quite good. I like the dialogue between the actors - it's a bit difficult for me to pick up.

There is another YouTube video where she and her sister are interviewed about the circumstances of coming into China, their school experiences and becoming child actors.

Very interesting (to me)!

[Guangxi Shane]

Thanks Flickserve! I'll check it out.

[Guangxi Shane]

Just wanted to follow up on this, now, almost 2 year old post to let those of you who shared helpful advice know how our first trip to China turned out. Basically, we took everyone's advice and pared our ambitious plans to move to China for an extended time down to 3 weeks of traveling. For us, it was a good decision. Although we enjoyed China, we are happy we didn't move there for a year, as we'd originally planned. Thanks to all of you who shared your wisdom.

 

In December, 2017 we finally left Hawaii, first spending 2 months in Japan, where our daughter mostly enjoyed attending a regular Japanese elementary school for a month. Next, we spent a month in Hong Kong, eating good food, reuniting with old friends and getting used to "China lite." In March and April we spent a week in Guangzhou (广州市), a week in Guiping (桂平市) and a week in Nanning (南宁市), both in Guangxi (广西). My favorite was Guiping. The whole week we were there exploring I never saw another white Westerner, which was great.

 

Our daughter is 8, going on 9 years old now, and, unfortunately, seems to be a little beyond the age where she can just relax and un-self consciously play with other little kids without worrying about the fact that they don't speak the same language. Luckily, during our last week in Nanning, we met a nice Chinese family with a daughter about the same age as ours who spoke English well. The family invited us over to their apartment for dinner where I got to drink shots of 白酒 with the grandfather while my wife learned about Chinese tea and our daughter played with the little girl and her cousins. It was great! We really enjoyed ourselves and were happy that we got to spend some quality time with an actual Chinese family to see how they live and do something other than just be tourists. Since we left China in early April, our daughter has been keeping in touch with her friend in Nanning using WeChat.

 

Although I liked the small(er) town feel of Guiping, realistically, if we were to move to China some day, a little bigger, more modern city like Nanning would probably be a better fit for us. Through our Chinese friends in Nanning we met a nice Mandarin teacher who said she would be willing to give us all private lessons if and when we return.

 

Instead of living full-time in China for a year like we'd planned, we've decided to use Kuala Lumpur as a base to explore Asia, hopefully making multiple short(er) trips to different areas of China, as well as SE Asia. From April through late June our daughter attended a semester at a small English language international school in central Vietnam. From there we flew to KL, where we're currently staying for a month. In another two weeks we're heading off for a month of backpacking around Cambodia before coming back to our base in KL again. After that, we haven't got any definite plans yet.

 

Our multiple-entry China visas are good for 5 years (daughter) and 10 years (adults), so we've got time to go back and visit China again, hopefully multiple times...

[roddy]

Thanks for the follow-up! Let us know how you get on with future trips...