I was in elementary school when The Joy Luck Club came out and my mom and aunt took my cousins (my age and one 4 years younger) and me to go see it. We didn't understand the significance of the movie, or even the cultural impact it had on my mom and aunt as they cried throughout the entire movie. We didn't even notice that most of the cast were Asian, just that they spoke some Mandarin here or there that we didn't need to read the subtitles to understand. My mom and aunt both raved about the movie. It was such a pivotal time for Asian Americans. Or so I heard.
When I got to college in 2000, I would watch The Joy Luck Club again and have a deja vu moment as I cried profusely throughout the entire movie. How did the movie know that I also felt like I was never good enough? How did the movie pinpoint the oddity of random Chinese American struggles so well? It wasn't even a recent movie by the time I was watching it in college. It was almost a relic with the hairdos and 90s outfits all the current daughter were wearing. And yet, I got it. It all made sense to me now. Something between the first time and second time I watched it, I had grown to understand the significant of the movie. The exploration of a cultural struggle to adapt and preserve one's identity. The desire to please your mom, not understand her fully, and to love her all the while. And even though I'm now a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and have been counseled not to watch rated R movies, I have to keep The Joy Luck Club in my collection. I just have to. It's symbolic of an entire generation of American born Chinese girls disappointing their immigrant moms, and when I need a good cry, I'll watch it again.
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Thursday, May 23, 2019
My Buddhist Culture
When we were in Hong Kong visiting the many Buddhist temples there, I had a flashback of my childhood. Not because we were Buddhists, but because as a Chinese immigrant child, you experience a lot of the cultural Buddhist stuff that is hard to distinguish between religion and tradition. As we walked up the steps in one Buddhist temple, we saw different Chinese Buddhist believers in the middle of the temple grounds on their knees, praying, shaking a cylinder can of incense sticks, holding incense sticks and ke-tou-ing or bowing reverently with their heads touching the ground. These are all things I mostly knew of, because of my Chinese upbringing.
I remember when I was about 6 or 7, my mom told me a God was coming to live in our home. She kept talking about this Shen (Chinese word for God!) who was going to come and bless our lives, bless my Dad's business dealings, and help us to be happier. We would be able to pray to him daily, and pray for our ancestors too. Our entire home had to be clean for when this God would arrive, including our dump room which usually had big black gardening trash bags of clean clothes and paperwork stashed away so the rest of our home appeared completely neat and orderly while this room housed all the junk. It was a big feat to get ready for the God to come. Only when he came, I realized, for the first time, He was just an acrylic figure of a Chinese God that is everywhere. He has a long beard, looks like Confucius, and stands with two fingers held propped up, and wears an elaborate long teal robe with red accents.
When he first got to our house, there was a shelf my dad had created for him to go on top of. The incense pot would also go there. It took some trial and error for our family to figure out we needed to line the ceiling above with foil since the burning incense would create a big black hole on the ceiling above it.
My mom burned incense for the God morning and night. Sometimes, she would offer me three sticks of incense to pray for my ancestors, my family, and bow three times while standing, before being able to insert the incense sticks. I don't know why the tradition exists, only that I obliged and followed along when needed.
The same went for when we visited grandparents at the grave site. In fact, I remember when my maternal grandfather passed, we met religiously every weekend at his grave. There were different ritualistic stuff we did, like bowing on our knees, touching our arms to the floor, burning incense, bringing food offerings (that we could consume later, once the incense was done burning), and then as the weeks passed, the rituals always changed and added more. We burned gold, or gold paper folded to look like gold bars, a constructed home, which would be wai-gong's house up above, and paper money which always confused me as it said Bank of Hell. Lost in translation? I sure hope so. We had these black bracelets that all the grand kids wore, and we were encouraged to wear them to school everyday for weeks. My mom finally told me I could take it off and just keep it close by and treasured, but I still never figured out the reason for it. I thought it was all just a Chinese thing. But then when my dad's father died years later, it was completely different. We wore white, people came and chanted some songs, and it was entirely different. We didn't have to go back to the grave site for seven consecutive weekends, but we did the same things with burning symbolic goods, incense, bowing, and bringing food offerings.
I never thought much of any of this. It was just what I was used to. About as normal as chicken feet on Saturday dim sum. Which I suppose isn't that normal at all. But now as a mom, I'm very particular about which Chinese traditions I want to make sure my kids understand. They know the Chinese Zodiac better than you. Definitely. They might even know the order better than you. I was consumed with which animal each of my family members was, and my kids are the same now. Even though language is lost among them, I am doing my best now to immerse them this summer, and make sure they at least have the tones down so when they want to learn more later. I have made very conscious efforts to introduce my kids to boba, seaweed, squid, Chinese candies, Chinese bakery bread, pig ears, and stomach lining. It actually tickles me excited that my daughter loves these as much as me. When she had tripe for the first time, she exclaimed, "it tastes just like noodles! Yum Mom!" My pickiest eater won't touch boba balls and even has a slight disdain for Chinese food in general, but he loves seaweed and ube ice cream. I guess I can compromise a bit.
As I navigate living in white Utah, I hope I can remember to continually shed light on the Chinese culture and traditions for my kids.
I remember when I was about 6 or 7, my mom told me a God was coming to live in our home. She kept talking about this Shen (Chinese word for God!) who was going to come and bless our lives, bless my Dad's business dealings, and help us to be happier. We would be able to pray to him daily, and pray for our ancestors too. Our entire home had to be clean for when this God would arrive, including our dump room which usually had big black gardening trash bags of clean clothes and paperwork stashed away so the rest of our home appeared completely neat and orderly while this room housed all the junk. It was a big feat to get ready for the God to come. Only when he came, I realized, for the first time, He was just an acrylic figure of a Chinese God that is everywhere. He has a long beard, looks like Confucius, and stands with two fingers held propped up, and wears an elaborate long teal robe with red accents.
When he first got to our house, there was a shelf my dad had created for him to go on top of. The incense pot would also go there. It took some trial and error for our family to figure out we needed to line the ceiling above with foil since the burning incense would create a big black hole on the ceiling above it.
My mom burned incense for the God morning and night. Sometimes, she would offer me three sticks of incense to pray for my ancestors, my family, and bow three times while standing, before being able to insert the incense sticks. I don't know why the tradition exists, only that I obliged and followed along when needed.
The same went for when we visited grandparents at the grave site. In fact, I remember when my maternal grandfather passed, we met religiously every weekend at his grave. There were different ritualistic stuff we did, like bowing on our knees, touching our arms to the floor, burning incense, bringing food offerings (that we could consume later, once the incense was done burning), and then as the weeks passed, the rituals always changed and added more. We burned gold, or gold paper folded to look like gold bars, a constructed home, which would be wai-gong's house up above, and paper money which always confused me as it said Bank of Hell. Lost in translation? I sure hope so. We had these black bracelets that all the grand kids wore, and we were encouraged to wear them to school everyday for weeks. My mom finally told me I could take it off and just keep it close by and treasured, but I still never figured out the reason for it. I thought it was all just a Chinese thing. But then when my dad's father died years later, it was completely different. We wore white, people came and chanted some songs, and it was entirely different. We didn't have to go back to the grave site for seven consecutive weekends, but we did the same things with burning symbolic goods, incense, bowing, and bringing food offerings.
I never thought much of any of this. It was just what I was used to. About as normal as chicken feet on Saturday dim sum. Which I suppose isn't that normal at all. But now as a mom, I'm very particular about which Chinese traditions I want to make sure my kids understand. They know the Chinese Zodiac better than you. Definitely. They might even know the order better than you. I was consumed with which animal each of my family members was, and my kids are the same now. Even though language is lost among them, I am doing my best now to immerse them this summer, and make sure they at least have the tones down so when they want to learn more later. I have made very conscious efforts to introduce my kids to boba, seaweed, squid, Chinese candies, Chinese bakery bread, pig ears, and stomach lining. It actually tickles me excited that my daughter loves these as much as me. When she had tripe for the first time, she exclaimed, "it tastes just like noodles! Yum Mom!" My pickiest eater won't touch boba balls and even has a slight disdain for Chinese food in general, but he loves seaweed and ube ice cream. I guess I can compromise a bit.
As I navigate living in white Utah, I hope I can remember to continually shed light on the Chinese culture and traditions for my kids.
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Different Childhoods
Sometimes, when my husband's family
play with my kids, I chuckle a bit. Him and I have very different childhoods. I only remember one uncle playing
with us as kid, and I can recall that he was our favorite because of
that. The rest of the family, they just fed us. Actually I lie, one other occasion, the Christmas all my cousins and I will remember, is when my uncle and his then girlfriend, now my aunt, played a game of Monopoly with us. We know now he was just trying to impress her, because he refused to play ever again, and she also wasn't excited to play again, but that has remained a part of my good memory pile from then on. It also sprouted my love for board games, and even though the only ones we played growing up were Monopoly and LIFE, both games I kind of sorta hate now, I also was exposed to some other games through school and friends, and in my adult life, have come unto actually legit games! HAHA I digress. So..., most of my family... they were all immigrants who had come from Taiwan to find the American dream in LA. And I'm not sure why but they just knew how to work hard and shower us with gifts and food, but they didn't really
know how to interact with kids. Not much has changed in respect to my uncles and aunts. They're still really good at feeding them. Like constantly shoving food into their mouths, bringing bread and desserts and snacks for them, and then giving them a ton of fruit when they're stuffed. My dad will provide them with big architect planning paper and tons of pens to draw something with. I remember doing this as a kid a lot too. I guess you could say they're really good at encouraging me to grow my creative side also. Don't get me wrong, my parents
love LOVE my kids, but they struggle to know how to be with them if they are not providing for them. It is oddly reminiscent of my own childhood. Even now as a grown up, my parents still aren't sure how to be my friend, and are still my parents. They still are in charge of me, provide me with food and shelter, and help me out financially whenever I visit. In fact, my dad has been known to "sponsor" our trips to Disneyland everytime we visit, but both my parents would not want to go to an actual amusement park with us, which is a stark contrast from my husband's more American family, where both his parents and his aunt and uncle have been to numerous amusement parks with us. My parents also freak out when we dine in an actual restaurant and the kid start acting up. You know, because they have to wait for food and are bored and want to get up and walk around. We prefer buy and sit to dine type of places, but my parents have taken us to many a fancy Chinese restaurants and then been mortified by my kids' very normal childlike behavior, which was completely appalling and unacceptable by my parents' standards (and made for a really boring childhood spent every weekend at dim sum). But I respect the differences and it doesn't bug me. I just find it interesting to note the differences.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)