Is it pronounced LEE CHEE or LIE CHEE?

Here is an excerpt from an article called Decolonizing the Classroom by Wayne Au from the book "Rethinking Multicultural Education".

Like many history teachers, Mr. Anderson talked about his trips to places we studied. During our unit on China, I remem- ber him telling us stories about his trip there, including the excit- ing fruit he ate, something he called “lee-chee.” I knew what he was talking about. I loved lychee. Available only about six weeks a year and costing up to $8 a pound, lychees were a rare treat in my family. After my parents divorced, my father would take me to San Francisco’s Chinatown during summer vis- its, where we bought bunches of the syrupy sweet fruit with translucent flesh. Sitting in the park, cracking the lychee’s rough, deep red skin and feeling its juices drip down our chins and fingers, my father told me stories of his childhood in Hawaii, about how he would sneak into the lychee groves to get the precious fruit at the risk of getting shot by farmers guarding their crops.

But in my family, we said it differently. We called it “LIE-chee.” Knowing that the translation between Chinese and English is dif- ficult and imprecise, I raised my hand and tried to tell Mr. Ander- son how my family pronounced it. He wasn’t having it. This white teacher had been to China and knew better. So he told me (and the class) that I was simply wrong, that I didn’t know what I was talk- ing about. Never mind my memories of lychee, never mind my father’s stories, and never mind that my Chinese grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins all pronounced it LIE-chee.

Now that I have been both a high school teacher and a teacher of teachers, when I reflect back on his class, I see that Mr. Ander- son taught us some basic lessons about multicultural education, albeit by negative example. For instance, in Mr. Anderson’s class, student knowledge about communities, cultures, and diversity didn’t matter, especially if it contradicted his own. Further, Mr. Anderson’s contempt for student knowledge revealed no sense of curiosity about the experiences and stories that might lead to a dif- ferent perspective than his. The lesson to learn here is that multi- cultural education should be grounded in the lives of students, not only because such a perspective provides a diversity of viewpoints, but also because it honors students’ identities and experiences.

This story hits home for me. I remember countless times when I pronounced something correctly in Chinese, a fellow classmate would correct me by telling me that the right way to pronounce it is [insert western pronunciation]. There was even a student that had the nerve to tell me that my own last name is called “Lao” when in reality, my grandparents and everyone in my family has taught me that it is called “Low”. I realized that kids nowadays are in some ways being “white-washed”. They are taught to believe certain things westerners believe to be absolute knowledge, but in actuality, there are different perspectives – different “right” ways of thinking. It is ignorant dismiss the countless possibilities of saying a word. My last name, although it is of Chinese origins, can be borrowed and modified and it is still considered “correct” in different contexts. People need to bear in mind other cultures and be aware of the implications of being close-minded. Its all about perspectives!