Chinese culture fails to make the grade for today's mixed-race children
Lijia Zhang recounts her struggle to instil pride and love of all things Chinese in her daughters
May, my 17-year-old elder daughter, told me the results of her school exams by phone. When there was a pause, she asked: "Are you disappointed?" I shouldn't have been. Three As and a B were good results.
But the problem was that she got the B in Chinese. And she is half Chinese.
I see it partly as my fault in failing to speak Chinese consistently at home, at least for the time May and her younger sister, Kirsty, spend at my house. The truth is that she's really interested in the language and, indeed, the Chinese part of her cultural heritage.
A few years back, I took the girls to Bangladesh for a holiday. As soon as we were out of my friend's guarded complex, we were surrounded by curious locals.
"Where are you from?" they asked the girls. May, the spokeswoman of the two, replied without hesitation: "We are from England."
After we had settled down in a rickshaw, I said to May: "You were born in Beijing. Save for four years in London, you grew up in China. How does it qualify you as 'English'?" May blinked her big round eyes. "Well, if I tell people I am Chinese, they wouldn't believe me."