Bedtime Book Club - Folk Tales of West Lake

We got this slim volume from our friends JM and Elena - JM's father worked for Northwest and traveled quite a bit in Asia - this book was put out in Beijing in 1981!  Each chapter is a different folktale from the Hangzhou area in east-central China... lots of supernatural stories, a few ghosts, wise judges and clever inventors. Wynn is fascinated with the tales. I am noticing how most of the stories seem to end with 'and you can visit such and such place today'. (As if this were an advertising series put out by the Hangzhou Chamber of Commerce in the year 1581...) We both are picking up on some parts of these stories being used in other contemporary books we've read, and that's what is really neat about reading with Wynn - how she pulls together ideas from things she experienced a year or more ago!

Using her language skills at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Kind of a bleh day outside, and we had a bad case of cabin fever, so we went out to lunch at United Noodles and stopped by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (also in South Minneapolis).  The MIA has the largest collections of Chinese and Japanese art outside those countries of any museum in the world - so we always have something new to discover. Traditional clothing from various ethnic groups in China, above.

Ceramic figurines of a wedding party, as gifts to that wedding party, over a thousand years old.

 Outside of how amazing the artworks are in their own regard, we particularly appreciate the MIA for helping us present and talk about Wynn's birth culture in a wonderful way. If we lived anywhere else in the U.S. we simply couldn't do this.

As an unexpected bonus, today the museum had activity stations in various places where people could handle items from the collections (or reproductions) and talk with curators and academic specialists. In the Chinese exhibit we got to hold 3,000-year-old artifacts, learn more about ink and brushes, and Wynn talked for about 5 minutes IN MANDARIN with this curator!  She did very, very well!

"A Passage to China" at the Mall of America

For six years now in April, the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN has hosted "A Passage to China," a 2-day festival put on by Minnesota's Chinese Heritage Foundation and local newspaper China Insight. This year's festival involved over 45 organizations & businesses - some there to sell merchandise, others to talk about programs they put on, and others to grow membership.

There were demonstrations of cooking, dance, martial arts, singing, painting, calligraphy, and many other crafts - kids received a "passport" and would get a stamp at each booth they visited, then redeem the stamps for a necklace or bracelet.

It was great to see so many Asian faces and hear so much Mandarin in one place here in Minnesota - and it was heartening to see so many non-Asian faces watching the performances with interest and walking through the booths with their kids!

Wynn had a fine time, of course. Now that she's a little bit older and able to speak in Chinese for herself, she got a lot more out of this year's presentation:

Having the Starbucks in the background makes it more authentically Chinese ;)

Moulding-your-own Terracotta Warriors

Little Warriors for sale...  we're holding out to get a life-size one for the garden in the backyard

We stayed for a number of vocal performances and dance numbers

Paper-cutting, a traditional folk craft from Shaanxi province - it can get amazingly intricate.  (She did not pay any attention to the American Girl shop just beyond :)  )

Book recommendation: Home is a Roof Over a Pig

I recently finished reading an interesting new book, Home is a Roof Over a Pig, by Aminta Arrington.  She's also a blogger, a teacher, and an adoptive parent of a girl from China.

Instead of raising her youngest child through a "normal American life", however, she and her husband and their other two school-age siblings moved to China not long after the adoption.  It's an interesting twist on addressing the desire by adoptive parents to not let a child's birth culture slip away, and pretty gutsy.  The book is a fascinating read - I've posted a full review at weninchina.com -  and do recommend it especially for other families who are in the China adoption track.

Will we eventually move overseas?  Wynn's in a great school, and is getting lots of Chinese acculturation there.  (She doesn't even notice anymore when we're around Chinese families speaking Mandarin in places like IKEA ... it's completely normal to her.  Also, this happens a lot more now that we're living in the city...)  But, Yinghua only goes to 8th grade.  And Ann and I may want to do new things with our careers, too. (And jinkies, we just moved into this new house!) So, not today and not for a while. But it may happen, and this book gives us some insights into what that kind of transition might look like.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Year of the Tiger, of course

The full moon tonight marks the Lantern Festival and end to the 15-day Chinese New Year holiday season. This year, Wynn celebrated with a couple different activities.

A week ago Monday, we got together with the other family who traveled with us in Guangxi province, another family from our trip who went through Anhui province, and a third family who adopted through Sichuan last year. The kids colored dragons, listened to stories, and we all had a fine feast.

The Guangxi Girls - Wynn and Jenna - masters of The Force! Jenna is about a half-year older than Wynn. They both enjoy being in charge - they know the family routines; the rules of the games; what the pets should be doing; where we should sit. No need for whining or temper, as Guangxi Girls know how to get their point across matter-of-factly, using just enough charm or cool logic to convince you.

Last weekend, I took Wynn to Como Zoo. She specifically wanted to see the tiger (that's him in the first photo) and we wished him a Happy New Year. We also checked out the tropical plants in the Conservatory, noting which kinds grew in China; looked at the golden carp and talked about why they're considered lucky; and shared some stories about when we came to adopt her.

Quite a few other Asian families were at the zoo, too, doing the same things we were. I worry sometimes that we're not giving her enough exposure to her birth culture, but over the past two weeks of watching what other families are doing and seeing how Wynn interacts with other kids - Asian and everyone else - it feels like we're doing a good job.