OpinionIn one household, a losing battle to keep the Chinese language alive

Every day, I wage battle with my son. The subject of this battle is Chinese. It is a battle my own parents lost decades ago. Raising me in the US, they gave up on teaching me to read and write Chinese when I was a child. They thought just speaking the language was enough. I rejoiced until, years later, it became my biggest regret.

I wish my Chinese reading and writing were better, not so I can get a better job or make more money but to have a better knowledge of China.

The stories the local Chinese people tell me say more about the current state of China than any headline. I remember once asking a local Chinese person whether he thought the one-child policy was cruel - and he laughed at me. "What difference does it make if I have the right to have more than one? I still have to feed them, don't I? And I can't!" he said. "Foreigners care so much about rights. This right, that right. Well, guess what, you can't eat rights!"

Thoughts raced across my brain when I heard this - thoughts like, "that's indoctrination for you". Most of all, I remember thinking I need to know more Chinese. I need it to ask more questions; without it, we're getting someone else's opinion of China.

But Chinese is a ridiculously hard language to learn. Try talking to a Chinese person in substandard Putonghua and he'll immediately switch to English. Reading and writing are even more difficult. Not only are there tens of thousands of characters, but there are correct strokes, stroke order, radicals, traditional versus simplified, and countless other complications.

"Why can't you just let him write it however he wants?" my American husband asks me. My son and I have been sitting at the kitchen table for two hours - him, glaring at his Chinese journal, me, sighing as I erase his imperfect strokes and ask him to start over yet again. "Because I can't!" I hiss back.