Year of the Tiger Celebration

Yesterday the Northwest Chinese Cultural Association celebrated the Year of the Tiger with what seemed like our second largest turnout since we began attending in 2006. We started the event off with a thank you to our outgoing board members and a welcome to our incoming board members, with Savannah and Baden happily standing on the stage with me.


For the first two hours we were entertained with music, dance and an opera singer. The highlight for Savannah was watching the Silk Road Dancers. I honestly think she could watch them for hours without complaint. When I asked her what she loves the most about watching them she has told me that it's their costumes and the fans they dance with, in the case of yesterday, their ribbons. A couple years ago I asked her if she was interested in learning to dance like the Silk Road Dancers and she laughed saying "No. I just want to watch them." There is now a group of young dancers who have been inspired to start a dance troupe called the Skylarks and they were incredible. One of the funniest moments came when the woman who sang opera was on stage. Savannah looked at her, leaned in towards me and said "Mom, I really like her dress but her voice hurts my ears!"

Baden performed several songs with other kids from Mei Hua school, softly bouncing in time to the music. He is a funny boy at times. Just when you think he wouldn't be brave enough to take the stage, he's the first one running up there. I loved watching him perform, the expression on his was so serious as he sang. Watching him reminds me of an e-mail I received from the head of the ex-patriot Shekou Women's Group while we were waiting for approval to come get him. She'd e-mailed me that she'd seen Bing Bing in the hall that day when she and the other volunteers were visiting. The class he was with stopped to sing the new song they'd learned to sing and she described his face as beaming with pride, so much joy in his little body. He does love to entertain.


I'd organized a kids craft project which proved to be a big success... lanterns. I'd found this project off of a web-site called Kaboose (http://crafts.kaboose.com/lantern1.html). I'd also picked up some foam sticker letters for the kids to spell their names, or whatever they chose, to decorate them. Hao Yuan, the Chinese university student who had taught Mandarin at the kids school for the first few months of the school year last year, and who had lived with my parents during that time, is back in Bellingham attending Whatcom Community College. Yuan joined us for the celebration and was a huge help with the kids craft project. Savannah and Baden loved spending all this time with Yuan and introducing her to their friends.


Hong Bao, lucky money envelopes, were handed out to all the children at the celebration by one of the older couples in attendance. For the kids, receiving hong bao is like Santa arriving on Christmas morning... a seriously big deal.

The NWCCA has been welcoming to us as adoptive parents and this year it was great to see the ethnic representation include the families who have adopted from Guatemala, Russia and Ethiopia join in. Our group is resembling one that is about celebrating Chinese culture and not just celebrating being Chinese.

For me it's wonderful watching my kids interact with our local Chinese community members. One of the dads I know scooped Baden up and played with him a bit while the two of them chased after his own daughter, who was laughing and giggling away. In two years this little girl will be attending Wade King Elementary as a kindergartner, and my kids can wave at her as she walks past their second grade classrooms to her kindergarten class. David, the owner of the kids' favorite Chinese restaurant, was there and happily greeted the kids. I loved watching Baden look at David and say "I know you!" with a big smile lighting up his face. Several months ago we learned that David and my Grandpa Morrie used to golf together at the Bellingham Golf & Country Club. Yet another connection crossing the generations.

One of the other reasons it is so important to me to have my kids comfortable in their local Chinese community came about while I was working at Nordstrom.com in the late 90's. I was a manager in the call center at the time and had a team of around 28 people who answered the phone for people calling to place catalog orders. Most of my team was made up of college students and recent college grad's. The overall diversity of the call center pretty much reflected what we have in Seattle - a large Asian population (Thai, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese and Vietnamese) that was about as strong as the Caucasian mix. A large part of my team was Asian and knew about my connection to Asia through my nephew who was adopted from South Korea. They all got along and outside of work many of them were friends as well. There was one girl that I remember in particular. She was often asked to join her co-workers to get together after work, and each time she nicely declined... smiling, but not seeming comfortable at the same time. One day she looked at a picture I had on my desk of my two older nieces and Jeff that was taken in their Christmas outfits. She looked at Jeff, then me and said "Is he adopted?" I smiled and said yes, that my sister and brother-in-law had adopted him from S. Korea. With a thoughtful look on her face she smiled at me and told me that she was adopted from Korea as well. We looked at each other with a new common bond, one that gave me a new perspective as I watched my team members interact. I began to consider that perhaps she felt uncomfortable with her co-workers who came from Asian families because she didn't know how to fit in and felt more comfortable with the Caucasian group because their experiences were more similar to hers.

I thought about my own experience as someone who is the near spitting image of my mother, only 24 years younger. For me I'd go around Bellingham as a teenager and hear "Oh, you must be Margie's daughter. You look just like her." My daughter won't ever hear that about her resemblance to me. When people see her, without me or her Dad around, and before they know anything about her they will know that she is Asian and assume that she comes from an Asian family, with all of the cultural traditions that are part of that. They won't immediately know that she was adopted, that her parents are white, that she loves her Grandma Joyce Olsen's Oslo Kringler as much as she loves a bowl full of noodles and making jiaozi (potsticker dumplings).

For both of my kids I want them to feel comfortable in both worlds. I want them to feel like they belong in the Chinese community and have a sense of the traditions that are part of their birth culture and are able to incorporate those into the Swedish, Norwegian, English, French, Canadian, Ukrainian and basic American traditions that we have brought to their lives.

Today the kids' school kicked off their celebration of Chinese New Year with their weekly Monday morning school assembly. One of their Mandarin teachers, and mother of a classmate of Baden, presented a slide show about Chinese New Year and talked about the traditions behind the celebration, adding some of the things she did growing up in China. The students who take Mandarin after school got up and did the Lion Dance for everyone. My two were excited about it, though Savannah was also nervous. At the last second one of the lion dancers told his mom he was too nervous to do the dance and Baden stepped in to join his friend Shen as the lion. The two of them ran around the group of students who were gathered on stage perform, scaring away all the bad luck in the process. Then they joined all of the kids and did their dance. Last week some of the boys in the class weren't so keen on doing a dance... that is until I pointed out that they were actually doing something from kung fu. I asked them if they were feeling like Po from Kung Fu Panda and they asked me what Po had to do with it. After pointing out that the name Lion Dance only referred to a specific set of kung fu moves they were a bit more intrigued. I wish I had pictures to share. I came to school with an extra camera battery... only the camera was left at home. I can tell you that they were good and very entertaining. I loved watching my two children, my youngest niece and my cousin's little boy dance their hearts out.

In Savannah's class we made the same Chinese lanterns that I'd done with the kids on Sunday at the big celebration. The kids decorated their lanterns today, most putting their names on them, one of them adding Happy New Year around the bottom and one made hers for her brother. I think the kids had a good time and the classroom definitely looks like a celebration is going on. Later in the week we're going to do something similar in Baden's classroom and Baden can't wait to share his lantern knowledge with his classmates.