[KarenInCa]

Lissa, I'm the first to believe you when you say that you try to celebrate her Chinese heritage. We do the same with Cady. Perhaps not as much as you do with Liddy, but there are a lot of Chinese-Americans in my area, and many of the children in Cady's preschool are Chinese-American.

The girl Cady spends the most time with at preschool is Chinese-American, and her grandmother lives with them, and speaks only Cantonese. Contrarily, our elderly next-door neighbor is Chinese-American. She was raised in San Francisco, and does not speak Chinese at all. I don't think she feels like she has lost something along the way, although I have never asked. She does, though, have her family, and in a sense has her own Chinese-American culture because her family is Chinese-American. And perhaps our children, being adopted, might need more Chinese saturation by their non-Chinese parents than children that have not been adopted. I really don't know, and that's why I posed the question.

I think, though, that culture and heritage are distinctly different. Even though they're similar, and can be inter-changable, I don't think they always are. Culture is a way of life, a daily routine. It's something that is so engrained in the child or family that it comes to them like breathing or drinking water. Heritage, on the other hand, is what our children will have, no matter how hard we try to show them the culture. She is Chinese-American and I am not. I can show her pieces of her heritage but can I really give her Chinese culture without being Chinese?

However, my question is not really directed at whether we should/should not....introduce and show interest in their Chinese heritage, but more directed at whether or not her taking in-depth Chinese language classes is/will be important for her to find her identity. Or are the basic words, and introducing (embracing) Chinese heritage enough?