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ELDER CHINESE STRUGGLE IN US
By: Peter Schworm
Boston Globe, October 21, 2001
FRAMINGHAM - In China, explains Aiya, a sad-eyed woman in her 60s, they were somebody. Respected by their peers, cherished as elders, they supported extended families, gave lectures, lent counsel.
Here, she and other elderly Chinese immigrants admit, in voices strained by stung pride, they are just old people, people who don't speak English, people who hold up lines. They left their homeland to give their children better lives, but found their new lives hard and unsettling. Isolated by cultural and language barriers, their former status stripped away like a corn husk, many are struggling to find their way in a place where routine tasks - filling a prescription, depositing a check - are often frightening ordeals.
"We came here and now we feel like we've just been born," said Aiya, who asked that her last name not be used. "We understand many things, but we cannot do anything."
"It is true," agreed Liwe Yang, a former scientist. "There we were teachers; now we are pupils."
Yang, like some 15 other recent immigrants from the People's Republic of China who gather Friday mornings at the Callahan Senior Center, speak through Ma
Ya, a 38-year-old woman who established the group in May to give elderly Chinese-Americans a place to be among their peers. Ya teaches the group English in their native language, helps them navigate bureaucracy and fill out medical forms, and explains cultural differences that many find baffling.
More important, Ya says, the weekly meetings give them a sense of community. They arrive early, eager to learn, but also eager to talk, about the difficulty of starting over late in life, about the shame and guilt of being a burden to their children, about old times and growing old.
"In China, they were doctors, engineers, university professors," Ya said. "Here, people look at them like they are nothing. They have no self-esteem anymore. Mostly, I am trying to make their lives as positive as possible."
Turning to scan the room, a clamor of good-natured chatter, Ya smiles. "Friday mornings, you can see, they have very high spirits."
Ya's mother-in-law, Zhang Jingbin, a former biology professor, came to America with the family in 1988. Soon after, she got a job tending to sick and disabled people in their homes. For months after her arrival, she was depressed by her new station in life.
"In the beginning, I was very sad," Jingbin said. "I used to have people taking care of me. I cried a lot. But then I came to realize, here it doesn't matter what you do. Now I am happy I can support myself with my own hands."
Accustomed to providing for their family financially, many seniors are loath to accept money from their children, though many in the younger generation have secure, well-paying jobs. And though it helps to have their children along for difficult errands, to translate and lend support, they hesitate to ask them to take time away from work.
"Many of the children have some money, but it hurts the parents' pride to accept it," Ya said. "They feel very guilty, like they are begging. They've been giving, all their lives."
That guilt, coupled with the stress of daily life in an unfamiliar culture, causes many seniors to recoil from the world.
"China and here are totally opposite," said one woman, her eyes and voice insistent. "Everything is backwards. So I stay at home."
The need for a place to go, for a place to talk with peers, has spurred attendance at the weekly group from five to 20 people in just a few
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