Eleanor Sue recently found her life coming full circle through a child.

Her 5-year-old granddaughter, by marriage, proudly claimed to her class that she's Chinese because she has a Chinese grandmother. This granddaughter, along with her siblings, are not actually Chinese by blood but are curious about things like the zodiac years and other pieces of Chinese culture, something that pleases Sue, an instructor at the Avenidas Chinese Community Center.

On Feb.15 from 12:30 to 2 p.m., Sue and other American-born Chinese older adults will celebrate the Lunar New Year and the Year of the Dragon at the Avenidas Community Center in Downtown North. Sue and others will do so freely and openly along with her many Chinese and Taiwanese friends, something many of them kept hidden as they grew up.

Unlike her grandchildren, Sue, a child of Chinese immigrants, said she could not celebrate her culture in public while growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in Fresno, a mostly non-Asian community that was not very open to other cultures.

"We all did our best to assimilate, try not to be different. We had our celebrations, but we had it within our family," Sue said. She, along with her four siblings and parents, would celebrate traditional Chinese holidays like the Lunar New Year behind the closed doors of their home. Her mother would make moon cakes and other Chinese foods, and her parents would hand them red envelopes of money, but no one outside of their home knew it.

"My mother would make dishes such as 'Buddha's delight', which is a vegetarian dish. She would make a crescent-shaped puff pastry filled with sugar, peanuts and sesame seeds, hand-rolled and braided pieces of dough — both deep-fried and delicious. She would make almond cookies and red bean paste treats as well. All these were special, not a regular, everyday treat."

Sue would eat rice or Chinese stir-fry meals at home with chopsticks, but bring American-style sandwiches to school or buy school lunches and eat with a fork and spoon.

Sometimes her family would make the trek to San Francisco's Chinatown to resupply their pantry but be laughed at by Chinese restaurant workers who heard their Cantonese.

"What happened was that we didn't quite belong because we weren't American enough, yet our language skills weren't well developed, and we weren't Chinese enough ... we were between two worlds, not feeling accepted or belonging in either."

Fast forward to today. Sue, 70, has a curious wife whose two sons' families are very interested in Chinese culture, which brings her joy.

She volunteers at Avenidas Chinese Community Center to teach American Sign Language (in English) using a Mandarin interpreter.

Many members of Avenidas have perhaps come to California late in life from another state that has fewer Chinese people. They've maybe sold a home to be closer to grandchildren and are now interested in connecting to their culture as their families begin to ask questions about their roots. Or they may be older adults who have been adopted by American families who are not familiar with Chinese cultural traditions.

Pinki Feng, the director of the Avenidas Chinese Community Center, said the center offers celebrations like the fall Moon Festival and Lunar New Year events as well as an array of dance and exercise classes for older Chinese adults to foster a sense of belonging. The Lunar New Year celebration on Feb. 15 will feature dances, drumming, food, "loud voices" to drive away evil spirits and other traditional elements to engage the community, Feng said.

"Overall, it's important for people [to engage and feel connected with others of the same background," Feng said. She said, oftentimes, no one has open conversations about why they do or don't feel comfortable celebrating traditional holidays, so the community center tries to provide opportunities for connection.

Like Sue, the Avenidas community is home to a myriad of people who have reconnected to their Chinese culture. Born in South Africa in the 1930s, Gladys Low, 86, was the third generation in her Chinese family to live in Port Elizabeth, where her family ran grocery stores selling South African products. Under apartheid, Asians were largely segregated from white society.

Her family didn't celebrate traditional Chinese holidays, although her grandparents would give her and her siblings red envelopes at the New Year.

At 5 years old, Low suffered severe burns to her face when her dress caught fire from flames from a pot-bellied wood stove. At 17, she was sent to England for plastic surgery, involving a series of 20 operations to heal her face. Because South Africa was under British rule, her health care was free.

She lived in England for three years, and it helped change her worldview. "People were freer. (In South Africa), you're brought up with this mentality that you're a second-class citizen," she said. That's hard to shake, but her experience in England and then the U.S. helped change that.

She was invited by an aunt to come to San Francisco for college at San Francisco State University, where she saw firsthand the Chinese celebrations in Chinatown. She joined a family association, a common organization in Chinatown where people with the same surname can find support and network.

After college, Low moved to Palo Alto for a research assistant job at Stanford Hospital. As an older adult, she was familiar with Avenidas, but not until the pandemic did she become aware of the Avenidas Chinese Community Center. She began with a Cantonese class over Zoom and then a class on Chinese culture.

Like many others, Sue said she's always appreciated her "Chineseness." But "there is much more richness in my understanding of my culture because of the ACCC," she said. Where before she "never felt I belonged in the American culture," now, she said, "I feel like I've found my tribe." n