She wants her kids to know their heritage
Jul 19, 2007 04:30 AM
Qiao Shan
Special to the Star
This year’s Chinese Lantern Festival is a chance for Li Huahua to reaffirm her Chinese culture and convince her two Canadian-born kids of their common heritage.
Last summer, Li accompanied son Jonathan, 15, and daughter Karina, 7, to China for a couple months of intensive Mandarin-language study. This year, the Caledon family is taking its heritage lessons closer to home.
“This is the easiest way to guide them in learning about traditional Chinese culture,” says Li, in Mandarin, anticipating the festival at Ontario Place.
When Li decided to immigrate 14 years ago, following her husband David, who was already in Canada, she says she knew that a bigger challenge would be passing her heritage and culture to their children.
She has spent several summers with Jonathan touring the wonders of China, from the Great Wall to the terra cotta warriors guarding the tomb of the Qin dynasty emperor.
Li usually speaks to Jonathan and Karina in Chinese.
“I want them to know that if they can’t speak their mother tongue, then they cannot communicate with their mother,” says Li.
“Hua deng,” she enunciates to her children, the word for “lantern” in Mandarin.
Li Huahua, right, of Caledon sees the Chinese Lantern Festival as a way to teach her daughter Karina, 7, and her son about their heritage.
Li wants Jonathan and Karina to keep their ability to communicate in Mandarin, fearing neither can afford the price of not knowing Chinese.
She sees a future full of hope for her children, in Canada or in China or perhaps both countries, as trade across the Pacific increases.
If Li and her husband have to fight to keep their Chinese identity while living in Canada, a similar struggle is happening in China where people are benefitting from a booming economy after decades of hardship and isolation.
The social changes in China are evident everywhere, says Li.
“I visited my old neighbour who decided to send his daughter to English kindergarten, English school and then to a foreign university,” she says.
“Honestly, the parents don’t pay as much attention to the girl’s Chinese as they do to her English,” she says. “I think it is so sad.”
Dr. Cheung Ming-Tat, chair and president of the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto, agrees that traditional values are slipping away. He tries to explain that recent generations may have lost their way, after mass experiences like Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution that swept the mainland in the late 1960s.
“At that time, everybody was afraid to talk about Chinese culture and history,” he says.
“I have experience talking with people from China. We think they probably should know (Chinese history and culture) more than we do, but in fact, they know less,” Cheung says.
Now, however, things are changing for China and for Chinese people around the world, he says.
“Because China is stronger now, people suddenly have gained self-respect and self-confidence. Now they gradually are starting to do all the celebrations of the old traditions.”
Long Yong, a veteran lantern maker from Zigong here for the festival, is prototypical of China’s new citizenry, eager to venture out into the world. “I think China has changed dramatically,” he says. “The reason why we want to promote the Lantern Festival is to help Chinese (immigrants) understand China better.”
http://www.thestar.com/article/236920
