I don’t see why you have to be so ashamed on being called a foreigner when you are not a 100% foreigner. You obviously learned the Mandarin and Chinese and know some of the Chinese customs. You obviously made an attempt to try to mingle with the local Chinese so I don’t think they will hate you for it. You should go to places like Hong Kong or Shanghai because the people there are more acceptable to people like you. I speak no mandarin and little cantonese and they treat me with no disrespect.

LOL…You are right. Funny thing is, I hated DM, Boy George and the chic androgynous lot, except for George Michael and Michael Jackson, simply because they can actually sing . I don’t care at all if a person is gay or straight, I just don’t enjoy watching the parades. My gay friends are cool and lesbianism I usually encourage, but man, oh man, those awful periods of mullock haircuts, soulless techno pops, and blissful pre-internet and pre-blog days. When the West (NATO) were perceived almost unconditionally to be the good guys, with CNN being the apex of journalistic integrity. How will we look back to now 20 years from now I wonder?

People are people, so why should it be
you and I should get along so awfully…

I’m only human, of flesh and blood I’m made…
…human…born to make mistakes…

Like I mentioned in # 38 above – In my younger days I had quite a few ABC & CBC friends in British HK, but most of them left (I believe) for the same reasons that “seriously saddens” you. Nowadays, I see history repeating itself in China – with overseas born or even Hong Kong born Chinese, who are not fluent enough in Mandarin. I really don’t know what to say as I am not in your shoes, except perhaps try to start with one of them – there usually is one or two who are friendly and open-minded. Start with him/her/them, and over time, you will be accepted as one of them – I think.
Most of my friends who went to university overseas returned with some degrees of bitterness towards the overseas locals – even those who spoke very good English. So, like I’ve always said, people are people – flesh and blood we all are.

I think that it is important to not forgetting who you are. I have joined the US Armed Forces, I have done many American things, I can comfortably identify myself as American. But doing just these is quite ignorant on my level. I feel that letting go of my Chinese identity is like letting go a treasure I rightfully inherited at birth. American culture of 300 years certainly lacks much comparing to the 4000 years Chinese culture, by that I also mean morale values, principle and guidance in personal developments, etc…

Recently a lot of foreign students from China came to my school campus (which almost has no Chinese population), I felt very happy. Ethnicity should not matter in friendship, but there is still a closeness and warmth in associating with “our own people”. Yet the experience was not as I hoped. Those Chinese students largely regarded me as “foreigner” in their conversation (as I could understand some Mandarin), largely because my life-style is very Americanized, my English is perfect (comparing to them) and the “cultural gap” is apparent even we are all Chinese. This seriously saddens me as how much I struggle to retain my Chinese identity still does not allow me to be regarded as Chinese.

my problem with classical chinese culture is that it can be made to mean just about anything anyone wants it to. and it can look real trippy and deep when really it’s not. like how bart (or lisa?) simpson solved the problem of “what’s the sound of one hand clapping?”

identification is an interesting one. i generally am deeply suspicious of any identification with any group. SIMPLY cos i cant figure out the mechanics. or the meaning.

They contribute to local economy and drive up the house prices (esp. in Vancouver where the climate is nice) instead of going to the social welfare offices right away. I wonder why the locals in Vancouver complained on their house values which were doubled?

This is the first generation of such mass migration from HK and Cantonese is not surprisingly the spoken language. However, most cities in US, Mandarin is getting more popular than Cantonese (the first Chinese migrants spoke Taishanese). After the Tienanman incident, Chinese students were allowed to stay. Score one for US for scooping up the top of the cream from China.

Now, many Chinese students find more opportunities in China than US esp. for students in the most prestigious US schools.

I’ve seen Canadian public schools in the Toronto area where Cantonese is the de facto language among the Cantonese majority. Needless to say, they’ve at least preserved the spoken language. If you want your children to be bilingual, give those Saturday morning schools a chance. It definitely helps augment a disciplined home speaking strategy if you are serious about it. I wouldn’t commit the resources unless there is a strong home front though. It might all be for naught and completely forgotten. Then the time would have been better spent on developing additional interests.

I wouldn’t worry about your daughter getting lost. As you identify with New Zealand yourself, she will come to identify with New Zealand as well, with the influences of her peers and parents.

It’s not strange for 2nd generation minorities to write about the native country on a class assignment (an assignment that asks for difference/uniqueness), but surely she would identify with New Zealand when asked in a third country.

As for understanding classical Chinese, I agree with the zompist link that she will eventually lose most Chinese abilities, much less classical Chinese, unless a conscious effort is made to ensure that she does not. But even so, she may pick it up again in tertiary education if she has an interest in it.

I agree with Raj and stuart in the sense that she should be “allowed” to develop a close affiliation with the host nation and not be “controlled”, but disagree in that this is completely moot due to the herculean effort that would be needed to “disallow” something this natural. Any amount of brainwashing you attempt would pale in comparison with the influence from her peers and society. You’d have to lock her in the basement!

“because it is natural to keep politics away from children.”

I disagree. Children share this world with adult as well. They should know what is happening in the world. Quote from one of my daughter’s home work questions, “The US made a formal request for NZ to send Special Air Service to which country?”

I am very happy her school doesn’t isolate its student in a fairy land.