CHINA / Foreign Media on China
To Give Children an Edge, Au Pairs From China
By Angel Franco (The New York Times)
Updated: 2006-09-06 08:55
In a conference room at a Holiday Inn last week in Connecticut, 167 young
women from 22 countries received a tutorial in catering to the needs of
the affluent American child. (Lesson 1: Turn off the television set.)
Kunyi Li, wearing glasses, and Man Zhang, next to her, at a tutorial last
week in a motel in Connecticut for au pairs from 22 countries. [The New
York Times]
Many of the women were German. But two drew particular attention, Kunyi
Li, 23, and Man Zhang, 24, among the first au pairs from China.
Their services are in great demand, in part because so many Americans
have adopted baby girls from China. Driving the need more aggressively is
the desire among ambitious parents to ensure their children��s
worldliness, as such parents assume that China��s expanding influence
will make Mandarin the sophisticates�� language decades hence.
��Our clientele is middle and upper middle class,�� said William L.
Gertz, chairman of the American Institute for Foreign Study, which
oversees Au Pair in America. ��They see something really happening, and
they don��t want to be left behind.��
The last two years have seen an astonishing increase in the number of
American parents wishing to employ Mandarin-speaking nannies, difficult
to find here and even harder to obtain from China.
Au Pair in America, the 20-year-old agency that sponsored the two young
women in Connecticut, had received no requests for Chinese au pairs until
2004, said Ruth Ferry, the program director.
Since then, it has had 1,400.
The agency said it expected to bring 200 more au pairs to this country
before the end of 2007, and other companies in the business are beginning
to recruit in China, all taking advantage of relaxed standards for
cultural-exchange visas for Chinese.
Hongbin Yu, 23, of Harbin, north of Beijing, who like many other Chinese
college students studying English gave herself an Anglophone name,
Cecilia, was the first Chinese au pair to land in the United States.
She arrived in March through Go Au Pair, one of the 11 such agencies
sanctioned by the Office of Exchange Coordination and Designation at the
State Department.
Her employer is Joan Friend, a former president of a technology company
in northern California who had been having her two children, Jim, 5, and
Paris, 6, tutored in Mandarin for several years.
��The tutors just played with them,�� Ms. Friend said from her house in
Carmel Valley, Calif. ��They thought I was crazy because the children
were so young.��
After her son and daughter began to learn the sounds of Mandarin, Ms.
Friend sought more intensive training and repeatedly asked Go Au Pair for
a Mandarin speaker to live with the family. But visa problems and a lack
of contacts in China left the agency unable to place anyone with her.
Ultimately, Ms. Friend found Ms. Yu on her own, through an acquaintance
in China, and Go Au Pair handled the paperwork.
��I��ve never been to China,�� said Ms. Friend, a single mother who is
retired.
She added that she considered China central to the future of global
economics, saying, ��I think China will rule the banking world in my
children��s lifetime, and I want them to be able to participate in that
if they want to.��
Like Ms. Friend, Jean Lucas, who lives outside Tampa, Fla., had been
frustrated in finding a Chinese au pair for her four children. She is now
obtaining one through Au Pair in America who will arrive in a few weeks.
Ms. Lucas said her husband, Sky, a manager of a hedge fund, initiated the
search because he did not want to raise culturally narcissistic,
monolingual children.
��My husband had been following China for some time,���� Ms. Lucas said,
��and he simply believes that it would be better for international
relations if we all put some time and effort into learning Chinese. I��m
not expecting this girl to come in and lecture. My children wouldn��t put
up with that. But I want them to have an introduction, and I want it to
be fun.��
Since she has been with the Friends, Ms. Yu, who studied English and
tourism in college in China, has been reading to the children in Mandarin
and teaching them to count. In turn, Ms. Friend, in addition to paying
her expenses and a monthly stipend, has taken her on trips to Arizona,
San Francisco and farther down the coast to Newport Beach.
Begun in 1986, the State Department Au Pair program requires that young
nannies work no more than 45 hours a week and return to their home
countries after one year. Host families have to provide their charges
with a window into the American experience. It is only in the last few
years that au pairs have been actively recruited outside Western Europe.
Among Chinese-Americans, it is difficult to come upon young women
interested in child-care careers, nanny agency representatives say.
��This is not a field they evolve into,�� Amy Hardison, founder of Nanny
on the Net, said. ��We just have a very hard time finding Chinese
nannies.��
In China��s new culturally progressive climate, biases against such
domestic work prevail. Ms. Zhang, one of the au pairs who arrived last
week and moved in with a family in New Hampshire, said her parents had
initially disapproved of her decision, especially because she was then
working in customer service for Continental Airlines in Beijing.
��There are prejudices about being a baby sitter,�� she remarked. ��They
said: ��You have a great job coming out of college. Why would you want to
go to America to take care of children?�� ��
It is Ms. Zhang��s hope to open a nursery school in China. And she would
like to immerse herself more deeply in American culture, she said, beyond
the knowledge she has acquired of it from watching ��Friends.��
As for American cooking, she foresees it as a challenge.
��I don��t hate it but I don��t like it,�� she offered. ��I had pizza
yesterday. It��s better at home.��
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