Photo: VCG

When you first meet Grace Chang, you may think she is a little crazy. Every time she sees Chinese parents speak English or switch back and forth between English and Chinese with their children, be it at a playground or a McDonald's, she will approach them and sermonize about the benefits of speaking only Chinese with their children. "My son often asks me, why bother? I said even if I can persuade only one, it's worth it," Chang told me recently.

She has been promoting Chinese language and culture since she came to the US in 1986, especially to the younger generation of Chinese. Chang was born in an artists' family. Her father Chang Baoting and uncle Chang Baohua were renowned crosstalk comedians in China. Chang has been exploring various art forms herself. She learned Peking Opera as a child, is a professional magician, published several children's books in the US, and took on roles in various movies including the acclaimed Joy Luck Club. 

Now out of her passion for convincing young Chinese to keep their heritage, she has made a movie called A Missing Piece, which has won several awards in various film festivals since being released this year including a "Best Short Film" award from the Big Apple Film Festival this summer in New York. 

The movie, focusing on the reconciliation of an immigrant Peking Opera singer and her native-born son over cultural heritage, is based on the real story of Chang and her son who is of mixed ancestry. 

Chang told me when she discovered the "worrying signs" that her son was more interested in hip-hop culture than traditional Chinese culture, she sent him back to Beijing to study at a local school for more than a year. He came back with fluent Chinese and was full of cozy memories of his mother's home country. Now, at 19, he cannot only speak Chinese but also perform kuaiban, an oral storytelling tradition popular in northern China.

"If you have a Chinese child, you have to force him or her to speak the language and learn the culture," said Chang. "Unlike monoglot people, polyglot people are less likely to be single-minded. They can interpret the world from different perspectives." 

They may not be so obsessed as Chang, but many Chinese parents in the US have realized the importance of having their children learn the Chinese language and culture. Unlike in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Chinese Exclusion Act and its aftermath prompted a generation of Chinese parents to encourage their children to speak English to avoid being ostracized, nowadays, being a Chinese not knowing the language is considered a little embarrassing.

A comic video released in the summer by the online streaming website AsianCrush about an American-born Chinese trying to hide his linguistic ineptitude by ordering dishes out of a Chinese language menu that he doesn't understand in a Chinese restaurant has been circulating widely among young Chinese parents on WeChat. The title "When you are Asian but only speak English..." is explicit enough to trigger nightmares for them.

Nevertheless, most parents face the same frustration Chang had with her son. In many cases, resistance from the children starts long before they have reached a rebellious age. Almost all my friends who have school-aged children complained that their kids spoke fluent Chinese before they enrolled at school, and, then completely stopped speaking the language. Incentives like an extra ice cream cone or more computer or TV time rarely work.  

Many factors can be blamed. But one concern is the old-fashioned teaching methods at many Chinese schools in the US.  

Many of the teachers at these schools are older generation immigrants. They may earnestly want the children to learn but their use of the "tough-love model" that they themselves grew up with in China can make learning too serious and stressful to be appealing. This may work well if learning Chinese is a mandate of society like in China. But in the US, it is already an extra burden for children who don't like to be forced to work more than their peers. One can only imagine, from a child's perspective, how suffocating it can all become. This is in sharp contrast to the discipline-oriented teaching style in Chinese schools and the motivation-based teaching style in their public schools. 

The attractions of mainstream culture for young people and the lack of opportunities to practice Chinese in the US make it an uphill battle. But if we can get the schools to change, there is still hope - business opportunity anyone?   

The author is a New York-based journalist and Alicia Patterson fellow. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail.com