China News Agency, Beijing, December 1. Question: How can the second generation of Chinese Americans get in touch with Chinese?
——Interview with Wu Guo, Associate Professor of the Department of History, Allegheny College
Author Gao Chuyi
Language is the bond of emotion and the bridge of communication.
For the second generation of Chinese living overseas, the dual influence of Chinese and Western cultures has given them different cultural memories and cognitions. It is considered that they naturally have the advantages of two languages, but it is not achieved overnight.
How to improve the understanding of China and Chinese culture through learning Chinese has always been concerned by Chinese parents.
Recently, Wu Guo, associate professor of the History Department of Allegheny College in the United States and director of the China Studies Program, said in an exclusive interview with China News Agency "Dongxiwen" that understanding the history of Asian Americans will help the second generation of Chinese Americans understand Chinese history and think about their own future. help.
Wu Guo put forward the concept of "understanding China" while proposing "understanding Chinese".
He believes that Chinese parents should not reject the path of "understanding China through various languages", and should also grasp the "secret" for the second generation of Chinese to fall in love with Chinese through "understanding China".
The interview transcript is summarized as follows:
Reporter from China News Agency: The second-generation ethnic Chinese group has an innate "advantage" in learning Chinese. What kind of help will their mastery of Chinese bring to their future life and development?
Wu Guo:
The help is obvious.
The Asia-Pacific region is the most dynamic region in the future economy and culture in the whole world, and East Asia, with its long civilization, rich cultural heritage, unique way of life and world view, is increasingly becoming a very attractive region beyond English culture .
Due to the widespread use of Chinese and Chinese characters in this area, the second-generation Chinese teenagers with inherent advantages are more likely to become culturally "amphibious" people.
Outside of Europe, North America, and Oceania where they were born and raised, they can use the Greater China cultural circle as a stage for personal development, learning, experience, and display of talents. This has many advantages over most Western natives.
The second generation of Chinese Americans has a network of parents, relatives and friends from China, and they have a deeper understanding of Chinese culture, lifestyle and way of thinking than ordinary Westerners.
For them, English is their first language. If they are fluent in Chinese, it will be a rare advantage. Sometimes it can help resolve some conflicts when Chinese and Western cultures collide, and enhance mutual understanding.
The important thing is that they have an emotional connection to China that ordinary foreigners do not have. This kind of power is of great significance, but don't look too harshly at the second generation of Chinese Americans. There are different levels of "mastery" of language.
In 2019, the "Journey to Seek Roots in China · Charm of Southern Guangdong" opened in Guangzhou.
Photo by Ji Dong
China News Agency reporter: You mentioned that the second generation of Chinese Americans tend to have a sense of distance from Chinese characters, and are more accustomed to expressing themselves directly in English. During their growth, how to increase their interest in Chinese and guide them into the Chinese world?
Wu Guo:
At present, most of the languages used in the world use pinyin, which is significantly different from Chinese characters.
Overseas Chinese children also grew up in this environment, and the strangeness of Chinese characters, which are mainly ideographic and pictographic, is no different from that of ordinary Western children.
For example, Chinese children who were born in China and were taken by their parents to settle in other countries around the age of 10 are generally called "1.5 generations". These children receive enlightenment education in China and have a much stronger sense of Chinese characters.
Children born and raised entirely in foreign countries face even greater challenges.
The cultural and educational environment they faced at the beginning was not an environment where Chinese characters were the main body and the basis of thinking.
For them, the enlightenment education of Chinese characters should emphasize the uniqueness and compatibility of Chinese characters.
There are two characteristics: one is aesthetics, Chinese calligraphy is an art, which is not available in pinyin.
The process of learning calligraphy is also an aesthetic process, which is similar to traditional Chinese painting.
The second is modern transformation. In the world of computers and the Internet, as long as anyone masters Chinese pinyin, he can input Chinese characters to find content and images, and enter a field different from the English Internet world. This will also stimulate interest and bypass the "writing" "This obstacle.
Today's children can get in touch with players from all over the world in online games, including Chinese children. This is also an opportunity for in-depth exchanges.
I once did an experiment at home, printing out some Tang poems with beautiful artistic conception, such as "Spring Dawn", marking the words and words in pinyin to teach my son to read, and then translating the poems word by word in English, so that he can read them in English. Its superior sense of English converts the literal translation of verses into natural and fluent verses.
In this way, he can not only try to understand the artistic conception and emotion of ancient Chinese poems, but also participate in the practice of cross-language conversion and feel through his own "translation".
The Chinese teacher of the 28th Elementary School in District 5 of Buenos Aires, Argentina teaches Chinese characters.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Yu Ruidong
China News Agency reporter: You have studied and lived in the United States for many years. What are your stories and "secrets" in educating your children to "understand Chinese" and "understand China"?
Wu Guo:
Before the new crown epidemic, I took my 11-year-old son to China to visit relatives, friends, travel, and even attend academic conferences.
We went to the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall, Nanluoguxiang and the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xi’an. We experienced the one-day tour group in Beijing and the high-speed rail between Beijing and Xi’an. Raising chickens, experiencing different life in urban and rural areas, and also experienced a small earthquake that was not dangerous; stayed in Xijiang Miao Village, Guizhou, watched dances, ate barbecue, and looked at the misty valleys and houses from the mountains in the early morning. I also have a concrete and intuitive understanding; experience the life in Taipei and the people's feelings in small towns in Taiwan.
In the United States, we often travel as a family to let him learn as much knowledge as possible through field trips.
Education in a broad sense is not only structured books, courses and examinations, but also includes observation and perception of life outside of books.
These travel experiences, including "auditing" academic conferences, may not have any obvious effect on a child for a while, but with the accumulation of time, they will bring various aftertaste to him when he becomes an adult, making him feel the real life in China.
These potential things cannot be replaced by school education.
I will use an open and tolerant attitude to encourage him to explore the knowledge he wants to know, patiently answer his various questions, and even take some notes.
He is now in grade 10 and will suddenly be interested in Chinese "Hakka culture".
I'll answer to the best of my knowledge and let him look it up online.
He can immediately search for Meizhou, Guangdong, the capital of Hakka culture.
I think Chinese-American children will naturally have more in-depth knowledge of China than native children of the same age, but parents need further encouragement and guidance, and cannot ignore these budding interests.
Overseas Chinese teenagers participating in the "Journey to Seek Roots in China" visit giant pandas in Chongqing Zoo.
Photo by Zhou Yi
Reporter from China News Agency: How will the learning of Chinese reading, writing, communication and other languages help to enhance the understanding of Chinese culture by the second generation of Chinese Americans?
Wu Guo:
(Chinese and English) Both languages are very important.
As far as I know, the Chinese of the second generation of overseas Chinese may be more limited to the "communicative" function of the language, that is, they can speak and listen, but in terms of in-depth knowledge and perspectives, how many second generations of overseas Chinese can read high-level literature? , history and other ideological Chinese works, I doubt it.
I recently read "The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics" by Mae Ngai, a professor of Chinese descent at Columbia University.
Asian American history is a relatively active research field in the United States. Learning Asian American history is also helpful for the second generation of Chinese Americans to understand Chinese American history within the framework of American history and immigration history, and to think about their own future.
But such studies, including related documentaries, are far more numerous in English than in Simplified Chinese.
Therefore, English, as a source of information and knowledge, must be taken seriously by ethnic Chinese who already use English as their first language.
Parents of Chinese descent should not reject the path of "understanding China through various languages", and should also grasp the "secret" for the second generation of Chinese descent to fall in love with Chinese through "understanding China".
At an event to commemorate the participation of Chinese laborers in the construction of the Central Pacific Railway in Los Angeles, a Chinese American-born child learned to write the Chinese character "Looking for".
Photo by Mao Jianjun
China News Agency reporter: In the multicultural environment of the United States, Spanish and Japanese are also widely used. Chinese children may only regard Chinese as one of the options for foreign language learning. How to break through the cognition that "you can only understand a culture through its language"?
Wu Guo:
Born in the United States, there are many Chinese children who can only listen but not speak, or who can't speak Chinese well.
A Chinese friend of mine is from Xinhui, Guangdong Province, who immigrated to the United States with his parents. He has two children in the United States. The children can listen to Jiangmen and Xinhua, and can speak Cantonese, but the two children speak English to each other.
We are used to defaulting to "Chinese" as "Mandarin". Under such circumstances, do these two Chinese children in elementary school count as "knowing Chinese"?
We need to be realistic about the problem and find a solution.
The important thing is to keep an open mind and interest, instead of setting an ideal state of "proficiency" for children first, children should be actively encouraged to understand China through the language, information and academic research they are currently familiar with; encourage them to learn about China through Learn about China through English news and information sources, as well as academic research and perspectives; learn about China through courses in history and political science; learn from Chinese movies with English subtitles, documentaries shot in the United States, etc.
Language cannot be a hindrance in the cognitive process.
Knowledge of history is integral to understanding any culture.
Because any culture is formed by long-term accumulation in the historical process.
Overseas Chinese teenagers experience the game of disassembling and assembling a bucket arch.
Photo by Wu Junjie
Reporter from China News Agency: The second generation of Chinese descent learns Chinese, and more importantly, it is to understand and recognize the culture of the country of origin. In the process of learning Chinese, how do they deal with the pull of identity, cultural identity and emotional identity between the country of residence and the country of origin?
Wu Guo:
When it comes to academics, personal issues, and such complex identity issues, parents and children should have more equal and candid dialogues and trust each other.
When my son was in elementary school, he asked, what kind of person am I?
I answered clearly at the time - Asian American (Asian American).
"American" or US citizen in the sense of nationality is his first identity, but because of his parents, all the second generations of Chinese Americans naturally inherit the racial characteristics, cultural characteristics, ways of thinking and Living habits, and it is unique and worthy of pride, because other children around me do not have it.
Even they will have a sense of rejection of some lifestyles and habits of "American (white) people".
Chinese youths in New York, USA participated in the celebration of "CHINA DAY" in Manhattan's Chinatown.
Photo by Liao Pan
In fact, the second generation of Chinese Americans is more typical than the first generation, embodying a kind of "cultural complex" in the anthropological sense of flow.
However, after clarifying the reality identity and emotional bond, from the perspective of children, our generation sometimes needs to get rid of the "middle X" (the X here can be the United States, Canada, Australia, which are more destinations for Chinese immigrants. and Britain, etc.) binary thinking, as if there are only two countries in the world where parents keep going back and forth and entangled.
In fact, there are many other countries, regions, languages, and cultures that have unique values and can become the objects of attention of the next generation of Chinese Americans.
Only when different cultures are included in the field of vision can we have a global perspective.
(Finish)
Respondent profile:
Wu Guo, originally from Sichuan, received a Ph.D. in History from the State University of New York in 2006. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of History and director of the China Studies Program at Allegheny College.
Published 3 monographs in English: "Zheng Guanying: Merchants Reformers in Late Qing China and Their Economic, Political, and Social Influences" (2010), "Talking about Southern Minorities: Politics, Disciplines, and Public History" (2019), "Confucian Humanity Academic Investigation: Ritual, Emotion, and Reason (2022).
Since 2020, he has published 40 Chinese current commentaries on Lianhe Zaobao in Singapore.