We are the only Chinese family in Stephen’s class. There is one more that we know of for sure in another class but I’ve never seen another obvious-looking Chinese child in the school, which numbers around 200 children. That’s not to say Stephen’s school isn’t multi-cultural. In fact, it is extremely mixed in terms of race and income levels especially given the small student body.

On Thursday, I will be representing all Chinese people at the school’s reading week. I’ve been asked to read to the children the Three Little Pigs in Chinese as well as two other books in English that feature Chinese children - The Magic Paintbrush and Cleversticks. I’m not quite up to the task of reading aloud in Chinese and will have to do some practicing before the big day although my clever mommy friend said that no one would know if I were faking it.

IMG 4709But…I think Stephen might know. Over the past few weeks, we’ve made a conscious effort to introduce more Mandarin Chinese into our daily conversation. Since he loves to parrot us, it’s working out quite well. He can count from 1 to 10 in Chinese and takes a great deal of interest in our Chinese version of the Three Little Pigs, noting where characters repeat and asking for translations. He even likes to say that he’s speaking Chinese and comes up with sounds that vaguely resemble the language.

And then the other day, while at a friend’s house, the older boy was doing his homework. For some reason, Stephen wanted to do “homework” too and covered a piece of paper with hieroglyphics which he claimed were Chinese characters.

There’s hope yet. Just got to think about how to teach the whole family Urdu.