Posted By
hazydays on
7 Mar 10, Sun |
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Now I'm so far away, I get nostalgic for anything that has to do with home, and especially in the last few weeks, I'd been going around the house in a mopey kind of way, thinking, where's the atmosphere? No bad Chinese New Year songs playing in department stores, no red and gold Bee Cheng Hiang shops belching the smoky smell of barbecued pork, no Mandarin oranges, no crowds in Chinatown. No nothing at all.
The new year passed like any other weekend for us, that is to say, in a kind of stupor. Out of a half-hearted sense of duty, I suggested we eat Chinese for reunion dinner at a modest restaurant in Durham that I am fond of. The place was packed, though not with Asians. Apart from the servers and two adopted little girls at the next table, mine was the only Chinese face in the joint. But we had steamed flounder and kung pao prawns and when the cheerful "auntie" server wished us xin nian kuai le and plied us with extra fortune cookies, I felt a tiny frisson of being among my own people. What was happening to me?
I'm as western as they come but as I get older, the memories of past new years have become suffused with some kind of sugar frosting. I've become enthusiastic about the rituals we had to endure as children -- such as the wearing of scratchy new clothes, the getting into a hot car for the visits to distant relatives, the over-indulgence in F&N orange and pineapple tarts. I look back at all of it with great fondness.
And after we moved, I told myself that I would have to keep up some traditions for the children, so that they did not lose sight of their Asian heritage. Obviously, Chinese New Year was the big one. Well, we've had two and really, they haven't been much like how they were in Singapore. I let the new clothes slide and the visiting consisted of dropping in on my in-laws, which wasn't like doing anything different from our usual, apart from the navel oranges the children showed up with (in lieu of Mandarin) and the "gong xi fa cai" that they practically whispered.
The one thing that didn't slide? The hongbao. I don't know how but even thousands of miles away from the source, the kids still did darn well with their takings. Between us and their grandparents here and in Singapore, they chalked up enough to buy a plane ticket to New York.
Does this mean that for my kids, the New Year will forever be associated with wealth and prosperity, specifically one's own? Okay, maybe that's not so far off the mark, since the smell of new dollar notes is one of my favourite memories, but I wondered to myself why I kept that particular tradition and let nearly everything else slide? Why? Could I have been -- gasp -- bribing them subconsciously to keep a positive mindset about Chinese New Year?
As a desperate parent, I am not above resorting to dirty tricks. But in my more reflective moments, I realise that roots and traditions are a vital part of one's identity. Here in North Carolina, I am struck by the pride that people have in their Southern way of life and culture. They preserve the landscapes and ways of doing things that have been handed down to them over generations. In fact, younger people are reinventing them and keeping alive and relevant for today. I'm referring to the day to day of living and working but the big things are also not allowed to slide. For instance, next month there will be a reenactment of an important surrender in the Civil War that took place in a humble farmstead just a few miles from here. It was the largest surrender of troops in the war, and helped to propel the end of the war. I didn't know this till recently but North Carolina supplied more soldiers for the Confederacy than any other state in the south. Now, if you ask me, it is a dark period of history and perhaps better forgotten. But I guess if only to make sure the same mistakes are not made again, today's generation has to know where they came from, who their forbears were, and the blood that was spilt in the defence of this land.
Myth-making, as a columnist pointed out in The Straits Times recently, is vital to pass down the stories of nation-building. He is so right about that, and for me, personally, it is my job to hand down the traditions that make my children part of who they are. So, in the end, I got my act together and we had a party for Chap Goh Mei for our friends. For most of them, it was the first time they had been invited to celebrate the Chinese New Year and it lent a festivitiy to an occasion which would otherwise have gone unmarked. I guess we've started a new tradition and I'm happy about that.
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