Happy Chinese New Year you all! Quick disclaimer: this post will be kind of depressing, but I’m sure most of you can relate. I’d really appreciate it if you can reach out to me and let me know how you deal with this; any suggestions or advice would be helpful.
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It’s Chinese New Year again, and I’m feeling conflicted and torn about it. Usually I feel homesick during this time of the year, because I think about all the happy and fun festivities of CNY back home and kind of miss it.
Growing up, it used to be the best time of the year for me - you get two days off, but really you’re celebrating for 15 days (and the preparation and anticipation leading up to it makes it feel more like one month!) It’s like Christmas for us, but way better, it’s fun with all the best and yummiest food and goodies and bakkwa and pineapple tarts! It’s reunion and time with family and people I love, it’s getting actual money (not just gifts) and it’s buying new clothes and shoes and playing happy music and the beginnings of spring and celebration! It’s at the start of the year but after we’ve had a month or so of school, so we get something to look forward to, to get over back-to-school blues.
But now I feel like it’s something I’ve grown apart from, that I’m no longer quite Chinese or Singaporean, but a lot more Americanized. I had the sudden realization that I missed talking in Chinese, missed listening and singing along to the Chinese New Year songs, and that my kids are going to lose a lot of this Chinese culture and experience. And it’s because I’m making a life choice to move away from my Chinese and Singaporean identity. My kids are not going to learn the CNY songs or all the customs or the Chinese legends / myths and festivals because of me.
I feel lost, like I don’t belong back home or here. I feel like I’m losing my language, culture, identity, and I don’t know what to do in life anymore. How do I recreate my life compass and identities? It makes me afraid to think that I’m losing something I’ve always been holding on to as a child - in fact I probably already have - and now where do I begin? Where do I go from here?
I know it’s part of growing up and realizing that I want something more individualistic and not quite what I’d been taught to believe in as a child, but this is a difficult struggle. How do all of you deal with your clashing of ideals and values, of past present and future, of things taught of old vs what you’re discovering for yourself now?
There are things I don’t like about CNY now, and I feel sad about it. It’s things like how my relatives will always be asking the same two questions (at a minimum) - When are you moving home? When are you getting married?
If I don’t have a boyfriend, they’ll ask why don’t you have a boyfriend? Like it’s a crime to be single and happy. As though it’s my moral obligation and filial duty to be married and have kids and keep all my family’s mind at ease. I bristle at the thought of defining success so narrowly, that we have to be following this ladder of success - college, job, marriage, house, kids - in order to be considered “happy” and “successful”. Anything that deviates from this path is considered a failure, that you’re not filial or doing what needs to be done to make your family happy. Perhaps it made sense in the past, when family units were the best way to survive and do well in society, but now there are so many other ways of living and thriving! I just want to rebel and go against all these expectations, and question the assumptions behind them, whenever my relatives ask during CNY.
But no, I don’t engage in this fight, I just let it slide. I smile and make peace and say yeah no boyfriend yet, or yeah I have a bf but not married yet, or yeah maybe I’ll move back in a few years. I nod and smile and let things go.
There are other questions that hurt more sometimes, such as “you’ve grown fat/bigger!” I think the reason I’ve started to avoid going home for CNY is to avoid dealing with awkward questions like that - how do you respond to opinions/advice/judgment from your relatives, that are really passed off as rhetorical questions? I don’t really want to go home just to be judged for who I am, or what I do. But maybe that’s what family is about - you owe it to yourself and to them to explain who you are, that it’s ok for me to be different, that I can be happier the way I am.
I’m lucky that I’m not so different from the expected social norms...I shudder to imagine what some of my friends have to deal with given that they’re walking the less trodden path.
In the US, I’ve seen funny thanksgiving commercials where relatives argue over contentious issues like religion or political beliefs, but somehow those sort of things don’t hurt me personally. Only things that my family and relatives say about me can make me feel insecure, because they’re attacking my identity and self-image directly, and I do care about their opinion of me. I guess people here also have to deal with judgment from relatives too, and it’s not a unique issue to me - everyone grows up and changes who they are over time.
I’d love to hear what all your thoughts are, how you’ve dealt with your struggles, maybe how you’re dealing with them even now. I don’t want to lose my family ties and closeness to my relatives - maybe I just need to have thicker skin and not be as affected by what others say or think. I think I’m getting stronger now, and that I’d be emotionally and mentally ready for Chinese New Year next year.
What do you all think?
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