Home is a Roof Over a Pig

April 23, 2012
American teacher Arrington (editor, Saving Grandmother’s Face) nicely demystifies the Chinese language for English speakers in this down-to-earth memoir chronicling her family’s stint in the Chinese province of Shandong on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. Moving to the edge of Tai’an, a university town at the base of Mount Tai, south of Beijing, Arrington and her career Army husband had finagled jobs as English teachers at the Taishan Medical College, located in a gray, polluted backwater where they were issued an exceedingly small apartment for their five-person (three-child) household. In fact, their middle, kindergarten-age daughter, Grace, was adopted from China, initially prompting the author’s interest in learning Chinese. Arrington’s subsequent straightforward lessons in very basic and key concepts proves a fascinating entrée into the Chinese mindset, for example, terms such as population (she stimulated an uneasy discussion in class about the skewed male-female ratio resulting from China’s one-child policy); the dreaded exam, dictated by the one and only one textbook; and the notion of God, which was rendered as “the emperor above.” Arrington was frankly shocked in the rural province by the rudimentary “squatties,” lack of heating, and unenlightened view about women’s leadership abilities (one proverb ran: “Hair long, worldview short”), though she was ultimately charmed by the decent, good-hearted folk and the romantic, practical ramifications of home rendered in the Chinese character as a roof over a pig. Agent, Alexis Hurley, InkWell Management.

June 15, 2012
A miltary wife turned ESL instructor's sharp-eyed account of how the adoption of a Chinese baby girl led to her family's life-changing decision to live and work in rural China. Soon after Arrington adopted her Chinese-born daughter Grace in 2004, "something began to nag at [her]." She knew that she would be giving the child a family and opportunities that would be unavailable in China, but at the same time, she would also be taking away an essential part of Grace's identity. Consequently, she and her retired military husband decided to become ESL teachers and move their family to China. "Grace's adoption gave a Chinese heritage to our whole family," she writes. In 2006, they traveled to the city of Tai'an in rural China, where they took jobs at a small medical college. Assimilation did not come easily: Not only were they Westerners, but they were also a "three-child family in a one-child world." Arrington became fascinated by her adopted country and its contradictions, but many aspects of its culture, including the authoritarianism and disparaging attitudes toward women, disheartened her. What especially troubled her as a teacher was the way the students, whose minds she had hoped to change, clung to parochial ideas and practices, especially regarding matters of education and politics. Gradually, however, she realized that the freedom she so cherished as an American was an abstract concept that paled in comparison to "real things like family and security" for the Chinese. Arrington neither romanticizes nor demonizes Chinese culture, and she learned to love it despite its limitations. Candid and heartfelt.

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August 1, 2012

When her husband retired from the U.S. military, Arrington (editor, Saving Grandmother's Face: And Other Tales from Christian Teachers in China) followed her dream of moving to China with her family. Her memoir includes the typical scenes of Americans trying to learn a new language and adapt to the customs of an unfamiliar land, but it is unique in other ways--for example, in Arrington and her husband's adoption of a Chinese daughter before their move. The book covers the family's first two years in China, with their three young children in elementary school and Arrington and her husband teaching at a Chinese college. Each chapter is arranged around a specific Chinese word that articulates the theme of that chapter, as the family experiences culture shock, settles in, and comes to love their new home with its rich history and difficult language, and as Arrington comes to appreciate the sense of freedom living in China has given her. VERDICT A delightful tale of an American family trying to find the real China. Readers of travel literature and those interested in Chinese culture and history will find this an entertaining read.--Melissa Aho, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis

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