It's a chilly early spring morning and Li Chen crouches at the side of her yellow aluminum-sided house, digging at the barren ground and planting flowers to make her new Eastview Terrace home a little bit cozier. Gardening shovel in hand and East College Avenue-traffic noise just a few houses south, she tries to understand the questions I ask.
"Do you have any children?" I ask. I know she's married, because everyone living in the campus' Eastview Terrace and Graduate Circle -- the University's family housing units next to South Halls and across University Drive -- has to be married to live there.
Her eyes light up -- she knows what I'm talking about. Like most family housing residents, English is Chen's second language.
"Yes, one children," Chen says, giggling.
"Son or daughter?" I ask and Chen looks puzzled. "Girl or boy?" I try again.
"Oh!" Chen nods. "Girl."
As Chen and I try to understand each other, her husband comes outside. Through the rusty screen door, I see half-unpacked boxes and colorful rugs piled up in their house. Chen and her husband, Zhen-sheng Cao, are embarassed about "the mess" inside, but are eager to try to talk to me in the front yard.
Chen, Cao and their 2-year-old daughter just moved Wednesday from a one-bedroom apartment in the campus's Graduate Circle into a two-bedroom home in Eastview Terrace. Cao said although there isn't much selection for student families like his, his family is happier with the larger on-campus apartment they have been anticipating for two years.
"Lots of waiting," said Cao (graduate-nutrition). "Everybody wants to live in campus."
For the 300 graduate students living in family housing, the majority of whom are Chinese, an unusual community has developed. This isn't the East Halls quad decorated with neon beer signs and clueless freshman. This is a neighborhood of backyard laundry lines, orange Big Wheels and sagging volleyball nets.
This development of renovated army-barrack housing has become a kind of a little Chinatown on campus -- complete with Chinese New Year celebrations, garden plots sprouting Chinese vegetables and Chinese as the dominant language.
In the sunny Eastview laundry room or at programs such as Mommy and Me, a Grad Circle and Eastview mother-child program, Chinese families share news from home and plan for traditions specific to their native country.
One of the most prevalant Chinese customs in Eastview and the Grad Circle benefits new mothers. When Chinese babies are born, their grandmothers move in to take care of the mother and her infant for a month. Those grandmothers even participate in Mommy and Me.
"They don't usually speak English, but we manage," said Gail Storch, Mommy and Me director. "We smile and we wave and we have someone to interpret."
Interpreting different Chinese and American parenting techniques and showing the Chinese residents how Americans celebrate Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July brings the two cultures closer together.
The Chinese mothers taught Storch to play mah-jong -- a Chinese game played with tiles -- with a set she bought in Hong Kong. And Storch learned how to make the tea most commonly associated with Chinese restaurants from the graduate dads.
Food is one of the big common cultural denominators in Little Chinatown. There's a high demand in the spring to rent garden plots near Beaver Stadium to plant ethnic vegetables among the Eastview and Grad Circle residents.
Jeannie Huang couldn't get a plot, so she does the next best thing -- she grows vegetables and flowers right outside her front door.
"It really is a lot of fun to plant something," said Huang, who has a 7-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter. Huang, whose visa from Taiwan states that she won't work, spends her days with her daughter, Jenny. Huang does her housework as Jenny watches "Tiny Toon Adventures," sitting on a couch next to an English-Chinese dictionary and her father's Chemistry of Hydrocarbon Fuels textbook.
While most graduate and undergraduate students worry about juggling classwork and a social life, the daily grind for these residents boils down to a double-credit load -- raising a traditional family and earning a degree at the same time.
Across University Drive in the Grad Circle, a frazzled student hunches over a pile of books and calculators in a ground-level apartment. The smell of cashew chicken drifts out of the window above and into the courtyard that gives the circle its name.
The various Oriental-food smells may be delightful in the open air, but when the windows are closed, Eastview apartments aren't as pleasant because they don't have fans, said Ling Shen (graduate-mathematics).
The lack of fans isn't the only inconvenience for the student families who live in Eastview Terrace and the Grad Circle. Huang said Eastview is really noisy in the summer because of College Avenue traffic. She tells me the walk to her children's bus stop -- the corner of Hastings Road and University Drive -- is pretty far.
Married undergraduate Scott Stipe said the rent -- $275 a month for a one-bedroom apartment -- is expensive for the quality of living in family housing.
"You know they didn't pay much for them to begin with," said Stipe (junior-dairy and animal science). Stipe, who isn't Chinese, added that most of the family housing residents keep to themselves and different languages cause a neighborhood barrier. About 80 percent of family housing residents are Chinese, and the remainder of residents are a diverse group, with backgrounds ranging from Indian to African to American.
The houses are small and look like rooted trailer homes that could use a fresh coat of paint. The neighborhood's brown grass is littered with rusty trash cans, bicycles, plastic wagons and toy trucks, and splintery picnic tables with peeling paint.
The Office of Housing and Food Services Operations plans to put exhaust fans into Eastview Terrace, said Glenn Mulberger, assistant manager of Family Housing, adding that a lack of state money is the reason renovations are slow.
"It would be nice if we could run into a Donald Trump to donate money to family housing," Mulberger said.
Eastview Terrace and the Grad Circle may not be the most glamorous places to live, but they are the most convenient and cost-efficient for the married students living there. And the Chinatown community has found unique ways to overlook the drawbacks and create a warmer environment.
"We share and communicate, we try to improve the environment," Cao said.
