By Connie Chang  Feb. 12, 2021 On Sunday afternoons, my grandfather would sit by my elbow while I gripped his prized calligraphy brush, tracing inky lines on tissue-thin paper. “Many Chinese consider calligraphy a high form of art,” my grandfather reminded me whenever my attention flagged or arm drooped. I’d sigh in response — this weekly ritual just felt like more school. Growing up as a child of first-generation Chinese immigrants, I was used to straddling two worlds — that of my parents and the country they emigrated from, and America, where the pressure to assimilate buffeted us constantly. The message was clear in the media and popular culture of the 1980s: It was better to speak English, exclusively and without an accent; to replace thermoses of dumplings with hamburgers. My father’s college classmate, also a Chinese immigrant, proudly boasted that his kids knew no Mandarin, a claim confirmed when his son butchered the pronunciation of his own name while my parents looked on with unconcealed horror. My parents, instead, dug in their heels against this powerful wave that threatened to wash out the distinctive features of their past. I spoke no English until I started preschool, but in Mandarin — according to my grandmother — I was a sparkling conversationalist, a Dorothy Parker of the toddler set. The school administrators wrung their hands, worried that I’d fall behind, but my father shrugged, figuring (correctly) that I’d learn English quickly enough. But as I grew older, Chinese lost ground, inch by incremental inch. And while I happily accepted the bills tucked in crimson envelopes that adults bestow on children for Lunar New Year and consumed my weight in mooncakes during the Moon Festival in autumn, I didn’t feel connected to the culture. Before my children were born, I had already decided that I would teach them Mandarin, but I hadn’t spoken it with any consistency since I left home for college. At the time, mine was more a nebulous wish, a feeling that they ought to be able to speak the language of their grandparents, the first language their mother encountered. It was awkward at first. I was a new mother, home alone for the first three months with my daughter — a wriggling, needy, nonverbal lump. Speaking to her in any language, much less a language in which I had not strung more than a few words together in over 15 years, seemed daunting. Parenting books advised narrating your actions as a gentle entry into communication with your baby. Gamely, I started excavating long-buried words: “ball,” “eat,” “sleep,” “play.” Most words, however, lingered on the periphery, frustratingly out of reach. As this exercise continued, the gaps in my Mandarin became more and more obvious. After a nap one morning, when my daughter was especially alert, wide eyes tracking my movements, I started a game with her. I gently tugged on her nose, pointed to her stomach, grabbed a foot — naming each body part after her answering giggle. When I.

1. By Connie Chang
Feb. 12, 2021
On Sunday afternoons, my grandfather would sit by my elbow
while I gripped his prized calligraphy brush, tracing inky lines
on tissue-thin paper. “Many Chinese consider calligraphy a high
form of art,” my grandfather reminded me whenever my
attention flagged or arm drooped.
I’d sigh in response — this weekly ritual just felt like more
school.
Growing up as a child of first-generation Chinese immigrants, I
was used to straddling two worlds — that of my parents and the
country they emigrated from, and America, where the pressure
to assimilate buffeted us constantly. The message was clear in
the media and popular culture of the 1980s: It was better to
speak English, exclusively and without an accent; to replace
thermoses of dumplings with hamburgers. My father’s college
classmate, also a Chinese immigrant, proudly boasted that his
kids knew no Mandarin, a claim confirmed when his son
butchered the pronunciation of his own name while my parents
looked on with unconcealed horror.
My parents, instead, dug in their heels against this powerful
wave that threatened to wash out the distinctive features of their
past. I spoke no English until I started preschool, but in
Mandarin — according to my grandmother — I was a sparkling
conversationalist, a Dorothy Parker of the toddler set. The
school administrators wrung their hands, worried that I’d fall
behind, but my father shrugged, figuring (correctly) that I’d
learn English quickly enough.

2. But as I grew older, Chinese lost ground, inch by incremental
inch. And while I happily accepted the bills tucked in crimson
envelopes that adults bestow on children for Lunar New Year
and consumed my weight in mooncakes during the Moon
Festival in autumn, I didn’t feel connected to the culture.
Before my children were born, I had already decided that I
would teach them Mandarin, but I hadn’t spoken it with any
consistency since I left home for college. At the time, mine was
more a nebulous wish, a feeling that they ought to be able to
speak the language of their grandparents, the first language
their mother encountered.
It was awkward at first. I was a new mother, home alone for the
first three months with my daughter — a wriggling, needy,
nonverbal lump. Speaking to her in any language, much less a
language in which I had not strung more than a few words
together in over 15 years, seemed daunting.
Parenting books advised narrating your actions as a gentle entry
into communication with your baby. Gamely, I started
excavating long-buried words: “ball,” “eat,” “sleep,” “play.”
Most words, however, lingered on the periphery, frustratingly
out of reach.
As this exercise continued, the gaps in my Mandarin became
more and more obvious. After a nap one morning, when my
daughter was especially alert, wide eyes tracking my
movements, I started a game with her. I gently tugged on her
nose, pointed to her stomach, grabbed a foot — naming each
body part after her answering giggle. When I got to her arm, the
game stalled. What was the word for “arm?” I panicked. Had I
already reached the boundaries of my knowledge? Since those
sleepless days, much of my Mandarin has come back to me —
the long dormant part of my brain awakening and reforging

3. connections to my earliest memories, when the lilt and rhythm
of Mandarin dominated my conscious thoughts.
These days, the ready availability of Chinese language media,
from books to television shows to music, is a much-needed boon
to parents like me — second-generation immigrants, often with
a tenuous grip on the language, who nevertheless want to pass it
on to their children.
The first time I stepped into the local library in my Bay Area
hometown, I was amazed to find a well-stocked Chinese section
in the children’s wing. I emerged with an armful of books, their
fanciful pages filled with half-remembered refrains, echoes
from my childhood. Like the mischievous Monkey King, Sun
Wu Kong, whose spirited high jinks seized my daughter’s
imagination, or the tale of Chang E, the lady who lives on the
moon, which prompted late night examinations of the moon’s
pocked surface.
Learning Mandarin is more popular than ever. As a kid, my
Saturday class was populated by students like me, with parents
who spoke Mandarin exclusively at home. But the
demographics of Mandarin learners
today run the gamut from heritage speakers to those without a
familial connection but with other motivations to learn (an
affinity for the culture, an appreciation of Asia’s growing
importance in the world’s economy).
In 2015, the Obama administration set up an initiative to
increase fivefold the number of students learning Mandarin in
five years. Today,
more than 300 Mandarin immersion schools
operate all over the United States. The language and customs I
had hidden and compartmentalized, considering them “weird” as
a child, have entered the mainstream.

4. But it’s an uphill slog. According to the Foreign Service
Institute, Mandarin, a Category Four language, takes
four times as many hours to master
as languages like Spanish or Italian. And, as I can personally
attest to, maintaining fluency is a lifelong commitment.
Still, when I see my youngest converse with his grandfather in
rapid-fire Mandarin or when my daughter insists on fish for
Lunar New Year (“fish” and “abundance” are homonyms in
Mandarin — it’s somewhat of a sport among the Chinese to play
with these happy coincidences), the time spent poring over
books and taking them to activities feels well-spent. Although
my parents’ English is serviceable, it is only in Mandarin that
they’re at ease, that they can inhabit their own skins.
In Mandarin, I can almost see the people they were before they
uprooted their lives in search of better opportunities in a foreign
land. I think about how frightening it must have been, what an
act of bravery it was, to raise their children in a language whose
rhythms and meanings will always remain cryptic to them, to
know that those children will forever be wai guo ren —
“foreigners.”
For the Moon Festival performance at my youngest child’s
preschool last fall, he recited Li Bai’s “Quiet Night
Thoughts”— perhaps China’s most celebrated poem by its most
famous poet. For generations of Chinese children, it’s the first
piece of literature they memorize — trotted out for all
occasions, but most often for the Moon Festival because of its
four poignant lines, which describe how the glow of the full
moon reminds the poet of his distant home.
Decades ago, my Chinese teacher explained to me how the
steadfast moon connects all those who seek its light, no matter
how far apart they are. So, too, does language, mediating
culture and history and memory, connect future generations to

5. past ones. Buried in Mandarin’s rounded vowels and tones, in
the whimsical idioms that pepper our speech, in the Tang era
poems every child knows, are irrevocable pieces of me, of my
family.
Before my bed the bright moon’s glow
Seems like frost on the ground
Raising my head, I gaze at the moon
Lowering my head, I think of home
My son’s voice rang out with confidence and his chubby arms
swept up to indicate the moon above. Joy and wonder alighted
on my father’s face as he listened to the familiar verses tumble
out of his grandson — verses that had been spoken by my father
as a little boy in Taiwan, by my grandparents when they were
students in China, and by countless boys and girls before that.