Like the vast majority of first-generation Chinese American parents, we very much wanted our children to be bilingual. We took care to speak to our first born only in Mandarin and were pleased that she was fluent at age three. Smug in our naivete, we thought our good work was done and the nursery school would simply serve to round off the English portion.

A few weeks into nursery school, her conversation began to resemble the Christmas tree in our family room: Its trunk was still genuine, but its branches were dangling with more and more foreign objects. One day when she was describing the happenings at school, I observed with alarm that the "tree" was covered entirely with "decorations." While the "ornaments" sparkled, I could see the "tree" itself was withering, soon to suffer the fate of all Christmas trees after the holiday season. I felt compelled to interrupt:

Well this was a bit difficult. Here, if a teacher takes the students out of school to go any place, it’s a field trip. In Chinese, if you take a hike, it is "yuan zhu;" but if you go to a museum, it becomes "can guan."

She got me again. During all the years I spent in China and Taiwan, I had never seen or heard of a pet shop. It was an idea as foreign as "family room" for which there was, at that time, no ready translation. I had to improvise. After having to stop frequently for reinforcements for her newly-inadequate Chinese vocabulary, she announced in frustration, "I don’t feel like telling it any more."

That was potent ammunition indeed. Speaking Mandarin and mother-daughter communication were mutually exclusive? I was quick to capitulate, not realizing that with one step backward it was all the way down. Our dream of bilingual children was lost forever.

The next major confrontation took place at the dinner table. Chinese cuisine is loved the world over. While I never flattered myself for being an excellent cook, my limited culinary skills were more than sufficient to impress our American friends. One of my husband’s colleagues, after having dined at our house, often mused wistfully at his dinner table: "I wonder what the Lius are having tonight." Little did he know the Lius were having a revolution. What he would give a great deal to savor, our three-year-old refused to touch. The little tyke who used to eat almost anything began to reject all stir-fried dishes, then anything that did not resemble standard American fare.

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