My father's Chinese identity paradox

你好! I have to thank my reader Rithvik Paul for this rather interesting question. This is what he asked me recently:

rithvik paul12 January 2014 07:45

Alex, just wondering out of curiosity, how does your father view the mainland Chinese? I mean i've heard a lot about the tensions between Singaporean Chinese and their mainland counterparts but then again, reading about your father, that becomes a great irony because your father could not possibly be more culturally Chinese himself. I know there are differences between the communities but i'm interested to know whether he reacts to them in the same way as he does to all other things 'foreign'.

Thank you  for the very interesting question Rithvik. To begin with, I have to give you a little history lesson to help you understand my father's mindset when it comes to his relationship with China and his Chinese roots. My father was born in 1938 and grew up in Malaysia through WW2 (including the Japanese occupation of British-Malaya). He was sent to the Chinese High School for his further education in Singapore as a teenager and when he had completed high school, he chose to train as a Chinese teacher. He started teaching around 1960 and taught a range of Chinese schools where Chinese was the language of instruction for all subjects (as opposed to English).

China was a very different place back then. After Mao Zedong came to power in 1949, he shut China off to the rest of the world. Foreigners were kicked out of China as China pursued the path of self-sufficiency, choosing to put up the famous 'bamboo curtain', shunning trade with most of the world and from the period of 1950 to 1980, it was very much isolated from the world in those decades. Few tourists were granted visas to go to China back then. People didn't travel much in those days anyway - foreign holidays were a luxury only for the very rich. My parents went as far as Ipoh (yeah Ipoh, I kid you not, fucking Ipoh) for their honeymoon in 1967, visiting various Malaysian towns along the way and that was a big adventure for my mother, who had never left Singapore until then.

Thus my father's relationship to China in those days was almost purely academic - he was educated in the Chinese language and he hated the English language. Sure he was bludgeoned through some English lessons whilst at school, but not only did he hate the English language - he hated white people in general and was unreservedly racist towards whites. His identity was Chinese first and foremost; Hakka second, Singaporean third. Don't forget, he wasn't born in Singapore - he was born in colonial British-Malaya and then naturalized as a Singaporean citizen when Singapore was granted independence, so his concept of hometown/homeland/where he is from is a little less straight forward when you look at the historical context of the changes between his birth in 1938 and the time he finally naturalized as a Singaporean citizen. Thus culturally, he chose to identify with China through not just the language, but through the culture which was a big part of his job as a Chinese language teacher.

My dad's cultural identity was very Chinese.

Without being able to set foot in China, my father drew upon Chinese literature and poetry to inspire and encourage his students to take pride in their cultural heritage, explore their ethnic roots and study the Chinese language. He picked and chose his favourite highlights from Chinese culture to bring into the classroom, to make the Chinese language come to life and despite his strong Malaysian accent (which he could never get rid of), he was a pretty good Chinese teacher. Now I have bitched a lot about English teachers in Singapore not being able to speak English properly, but at least in the case of my dad, his command of the Chinese language was pretty stunning (Malaysian accent aside).

My dad longed to visit China, but it simply wasn't that easy back in those days, not before the mid 1980s anyway. He did make some trips to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan with my mother, but each time he returned from those trips - he expressed a longing to visit the real China. He spent his days in the classroom, telling his students why China has such a glorious history, why they should be proud of being Chinese, why the Chinese language is relevant to their lives today - yet he had not set foot in China until the mid 1980s.

My dad taught Mandarin all his life.

Until the fateful day my dad actually set foot in China, he saw the motherland through rose-tinted lenses: after all, he ignored the political situation in communist China and focused on his favourite aspects of Chinese culture. Never mind the lack of freedom for ordinary Chinese citizens, never mind the poverty in China then, never mind the millions who suffered and died during Mao's Cultural Revolution, never mind all the problems China had in those dark Communist days - my dad's blind spot was pretty darn big and he chose to see what he wanted to see whilst ignoring any evidence to the contrary. In his eyes, China was the motherland, was wondeful, was paradise and heaven.

At this point, I'd ask you for your sympathy and empathy. Yeah imagine a potato-eating jiat-kentang kid like me with a father like that. No wonder we had a huge generation gap. One only wonders how a father who was so extremely Chinese in his cultural identity could have raised a son like me who has totally rejected anything Chinese in my cultural identity. Oh I am a total banana: yellow on the outside, totally white on the inside. But I digress.

Chinese history fascinated my dad.

So that was my father up till around 1985 - that was his view of the world then, but the world changed. What happened next? Well Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms slowly transformed China from the communist state that Mao left behind upon his death in 1976 into the modern, vibrant, capitalist country that it is today where you have the freedom to make money but not the freedom to criticize the government or choose who gets to rule China. It is a unique Chinese blend of capitalism without any democracy. Elections? What elections? Who needs elections?

My dad first visited China sometime in the late 1980s (sorry, I cannot remember the precise year). He went with my mother and some friends I seem to recall - he didn't take me or my siblings along. The excuse was that China was a very backward country, the journey would be long and hard and that it was not suitable for children. I didn't mind or care - I had no desire to go to China anyway and would have rather gone on a holiday to America or Australia. My grandmother took care of us whilst my parents visited China and we used to have crazy parties just because we could. My sister organized this "midnight feast party", where we could get out of bed after midnight, go into the kitchen and eat copious amounts of ice cream, chocolates, cakes and biscuits. (Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.)

My dad tried to get me to read this - with no success.

When my parents returned from China, my dad had only great things to say about China but my mother was a bit more down to earth. I remember her complaining about the toilets - how there were no doors in the toilets, how uncomfortable she felt having to use the toilet without any privacy whatsoever and how everything from the hotel to the tour bus to the restaurants was just "dirty" compared to what she was used to in Singapore. My dad was quick to defend the Chinese and he said that China was just beginning to welcome foreign tourists so there was bound to be a gap between our standards in Singapore and their standards: we simply had to give China a few years and it would be just like in Singapore. My dad had high hopes for China to evolve and become just like Singapore eventually.

Throughout the next two decades that followed, my parents made many trips to China - I can't even remember all the trips they took but my dad had a bunch of friends (all of whom were Chinese teachers too) who loved holidays in China, thus he could always go with them. I'm not sure if my mother enjoyed those trips as much as my dad did - but she was the kind of woman who was happy to let her husband make such decisions.

Going to China on holiday was a cultural pilgrimage for my dad.

I only went to China once with my parents in 1993 (I have returned to China far more recently, without my parents of course, but that's another story for another day)  and it was tough traveling with them as we often argued in those days. We went to Yunnan and Guizhou - I actually enjoyed traveling in China then as both of these locations were pretty amazing. It was December and very cold - we encountered snow in both Yunnan and Guizhou. I was so thrilled with the winter weather but my mother complained non-stop that it was too cold. I was like, "mum, please lah - complaining about the cold isn't going to make you feel any warmer. You may as well get up and jump about, run around a bit or I can go get you some hot tea. That will actually make you feel a bit warmer."

My dad has hoped that my trip to China would make me feel more Chinese but it had the opposite effect. I encountered real Chinese people and couldn't have felt more different and less Chinese in contrast to them! I remember browsing in a market in Kunming whereby this shopkeeper tried to speak to me in English. I told her, 我会讲普通话。And she was pretty darn impressed that I could speak Mandarin because she was convinced that I was not Chinese. She probably thought I was Filipino, Vietnamese, Thai or Malay. I tried telling her that I am indeed of Chinese ethnicity, but I was brought up in Singapore - but she looked at me as if I was lying because I didn't look, talk or act like a Chinese person at all in her eyes. I came across as a foreigner who has learnt how to speak Mandarin.

PRCs attempting to speak English usually lead to hilarious results.

I missed western civilization on that trip - oh boy. I craved for good coffee and hey, back in 1993, in Guizhou and Yunnan, you were lucky if you could get instant coffee. I remember listening to U2 on my Walkman (see video below) whilst looking out of the window of the tour bus. Every time we got to a hotel, I would check if one could get any English language channels on the TV. And as much as I love good Chinese food, it was impossible to find any salads (I have always loved salads) in that part of China then - even beansprouts were boiled to death. I remember keeping a diary on that trip and it was written in English of course, my dad tried to get me to write in Chinese instead and I remember trying a little just to humour him, but soon gave up and went right back to English because I simply couldn't express myself as well in Chinese. My thoughts, my inner monologue was in English anyway and it felt strange to have to translate them into Chinese, rather than just write exactly what I was thinking.

As more and more PRCs came to Singapore to work (and also to settle), my dad had a very positive attitude about their presence in Singapore. For example, he used to get along very well with the PRC coaches at my gymnastics club - often giving them lifts home after training and I think he was just so pleased that I was spending most of my free time in a very Mandarin speaking environment especially since I was speaking English almost all the time when I was at school.

I left Singapore in 1997 and there was no suggestion at that stage that my dad's positive attitude towards PRCs had changed at that point. However, it took just one major incident to change my dad's attitude towards PRCs. I have a nephew who is autistic and my parents are extremely protective of their one and only precious grandson - mercy on anyone who dares to harm their one and only beloved grandson. Well, this happened some years ago when I was already well and truly settled in London. My family had gone to a restaurant and my nephew has a rather short attention span - he would not be able to sit still throughout the average time a family spends having dinner. He would get up, wander around, then come back to the table, eat a bit more, then get up and walk around again. It's really no big deal as we would trust him not to go very far when he got bored.

My nephew would often leave the dinner table and wander around.

On this occasion, he wandered off and disturbed this PRC woman having dinner with her husband. I don't recall the precise nature of her complaint but apparently he had bumped into her (or something like that) and being an autistic child, he was unable to appreciate just how upset she was and how she had expected him to apologize. Anyway, my nephew ran back to my parents crying after this PRC woman told him off and my parents were like, "what have you done to my grandson, why have you made him cry?" This PRC woman got very defensive, oh no, she was not prepared to be made to be the villain here - so she went on the warpath. She screamed at my parents, my sister and my brother-in-law, complaining to them about what my nephew had done to her and that they had failed to instill any manners in him (remember, we're talking about a very young boy with autism here). Boy, she was very, very angry indeed.

My parents were probably somewhat to blame as well for that confrontation - when you are faced with someone who is emotional like that, you can either escalate the conflict by raising your voice and mirroring her emotional outburst, or you could try to calm things down by lowering your voice and trying to pacify the other party, so as to reduce the tension. My father's protective nature kicked in and he raised his voice at this PRC woman - a shouting match in Mandarin ensued and neither my mother nor this PRC woman's husband could calm either party down. It got ugly, like, really ugly. The incident was resolved when my sister and mother decided the best thing to do would be to get my nephew out of that restaurant as quickly as possible as the whole incident was very stressful for him. They whisked him out, my brother-in-law paid the bill and once my dad had realized that everyone else had left, he felt a bit more vulnerable and decided to leave as well. They were that close to throwing punches.

My dad is very protective of his grandson.

It was clearly a misunderstanding that spiraled way out of control, but no matter - someone had dared to scold my dad's beloved grandson and that was it. And I'm sorry if I am painting a rather crude picture of my dad, but if one PRC person dares to verbally abuse his grandson, then that's it. He will hate all 1.3 billion Chinese people in China because one PRC woman lost her temper with my nephew. Yeah, my dad's like that. It's emotional, it's irrational and it doesn't make sense - by all means, vent your anger on that PRC woman in that restaurant if you must, but to hate all PRCs as a result of her? Go figure. But that's the kind of person my dad is, I'm afraid. He's not always rational.

What is going on actually? Is my father really that simple minded? No, he isn't - allow me to explain. For years, he has seen what was wrong with China and PRCs, for so many decades but he had conveniently chosen to ignore anything negative. But no, choosing to ignore something is not the same as being blind. This PRC woman was the last straw the broke the camel's back - her rather extreme reaction to my nephew gave my dad the license/permission/reason to start hating PRCs with such passion. Boy, some of the things he has said to me about PRCs and the PAP for allowing these PRCs into Singapore were pretty extreme. It seems like he has had all this pent up aggression, frustration and hatred that he has locked up in him for quite a few decades - he had chosen to ignore them because of his cultural identity and his job. But now as he is retired and no longer has to go into a classroom to convince students that they need to study Chinese, he has since changed his mind on the issue.

Of course, it's never an easy process for him and the result is pretty confusing: yeah, I guess you could say my dad's a rather confused man at this stage. He would still come up with statements praising Chinese culture and then in the same breath, curse and swear at the PRCs who have flooded into Singapore. He does contradict himself, a lot - and sometimes I struggle to figure out where he stands on the issue. I think it is hard for a man his age (he will be 76 this year) to change his cultural identity - whether he likes it or not, he's as Chinese as they come. Well, Singaporean/Malaysian-Chinese I suppose as opposed to authentic PRC-China-Chinese (who he officially now fucking hates). Hating Chinese people for him would involve an element of self-hatred and so that's why his hatred towards PRCs is confusing to say the least for him. (But I don't challenge him on that.)

My dad now talks a lot about how PRCs are very different from Singaporeans, I listen to him rant of course and I just nod and listen. I don't need to fuel his hatred, he just needs a listening ear. Anyway, that's where my dad stands on the issue of PRCs in Singapore. He hates them but still remains steadfastly Chinese in his cultural identity - which is a paradox really, but there's no real mystery behind this paradox. He's just a confused old man, that's all. Heck, had it not been for that crazy PRC woman in that restaurant, it would have been something else. Someone else, another PRC, would have come along, sooner or later and have been that last straw that broke that camel's back. This just makes me wonder: if someone as steadfastly Chinese as my dad could crack under pressure, what about other younger Singaporeans who hardly feel any cultural affinity to China and PRCs then? How are they reacting to the massive influx of PRC migrants? Did my dad overreact on the issue of PRCs because of this PRC woman?

Let me know what your experiences are: please leave a comment below, thanks!

PS. Akan datang: I will have to write about Stephanie Koh's Youtube controversy. I think she absolutely rocks and it is a brilliant story to write about, but I want to deal with the issue of pride of one's country, rather than talk about Stephanie Koh per se. You're all entitled to your opinion about her but I am appalled at the kind of crap arguments that so many of her haters have come up with. It's all just really lame crap whilst Stephanie is actually really intelligent, articulate and presented a really coherent argument. I actually didn't realize that her epic video was nearly 14 minutes long as she totally captivated me. This will be such a fun topic to blog about this weekend!