This is Bill Tsutsui with another Postcard from Asia from the Center for East Asian Studies.

This Postcard is brought to you from New York City where Fu Qian has just had her bat mitzvah at a synagogue on the city’s Upper West Side. Of course, now she’s called Cecelia Nealon-Shapiro, having been renamed 13 years ago when she was adopted from China. The party included the expected: a reading from the Torah, a speech, some dancing to Hava Nagila; and the unexpected: yinyang yarmulkes, Kiddush cups in the shape of dragons, kosher lo mein. Cecilia is by no means the only Chinese adoptee to mark the traditional rite of passage into Jewish womanhood. “Most of my Chinese friends are Jewish,” she says. Well, as Confucius might say, “Oy vey.”

With thanks to Randi Hacker for this text, from the Center for East Asian Studies, I’m Bill Tsutsui. Wish you were here.