The double generation gap

Hi readers, there was something that I mentioned a few blog posts ago but I thought I'd expand upon shortly today. I feel that the generation gap I have with my father is doubly big - it often feels like the generation gap one would expect between a grandfather and grandchild, rather than a father and son relationship. I am just wondering how many of my readers actually experience the same thing? Or is it just me?

Is the generation gap is getting bigger and bigger?

Let me explain why this generation gap is especially large. Firstly, there is a huge language divide. My dad's family in Malaysia is Hakka speaking and he spent his formative years growing up in a Hakka speaking environment. Along the way, he picked up Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese - even though he did study some English at school, he hates speaking English and would avoid speaking it at all if possible. As he is fluent in Mandarin and Malay, he can use those languages to communicate with most people in Malaysia and Singapore and he would only resort to using English should he meet an Indian or Filipino person.

Now apart from Hakka, I speak all the other languages that my dad speaks but not to his standard of fluency. The primary language I use with my dad is Mandarin - now my Mandarin is pretty respectable, but it is rusty. I find it a lot harder to express myself in Mandarin than in English because I have not used Mandarin on a daily basis for communication since moving to Europe in 1997. Let me give you an example: I wanted to express the concept of "affinity" to my dad. The dictionary definition of that word is, "a natural liking for and understanding of someone or something." I couldn't translate the word "affinity" into Mandarin - I had to use a bunch of words in a longer sentence to try to convey that concept. It was frustrating to say the least.

I have problems expressing my ideas in Mandarin.

My first language is definitely English because of the fact that I was educated in English - the main implication of that is that the media that I consume is mostly in English: I read in English, prefer watching movies and TV programmes in English, read websites in English and I blog in English for a simple reason. I think in English. My dad consumes media mostly in Chinese - he reads Chinese newspapers, watches Chinese language TV stations and listens to Chinese language radio stations. Thus our cultural influences couldn't be more different.

I suppose when I was a child, I would still get some Chinese cultural influences - for example, when my dad was driving and I was a passenger, I would gladly listen to the Chinese radio stations of his choice (93.3 FM or 95.8 FM) but since moving away from Singapore in 1997, those Chinese radio stations are but a distant memory and I would go days without hearing a word of Chinese until I speak to my dad on the phone or on Skype.

Sure I still speak Mandarin, but it is rusty today.

This generation gap is also affected by our relation to technology - my dad is in his 70s and wants as little as possible to do with modern technology, anything to do with computers scares him. He barely knows how to use a mobile phone and he would punch in the numbers manually rather than try to look up a phone number stored in the phone. I wouldn't claim to be an expert with technology, but at least I do live in the right century when it comes to using  modern technology. My dad seems to be stuck in a time warp where he would be highly reluctant to use anything invented after 2000. He seems quite content to know virtually nothing about this thing called 'the internet'.

My dad's reluctance to embrace the unfamiliar is pretty extreme - let me give you an example. When I was last in Singapore, my family went out for a meal and I suggested going to a Vietnamese place. I love Vietnamese food and it is hard to get quality Vietnamese food in London - my sister was like, "no, I'm not sure if pa would like it..." I was like, "it's so similar to Chinese food, we will find something on the menu that will be to his taste." I was wrong.

My sister ordered a beef Pho for my dad and my dad didn't like it at all. Now I had the exact same beef Pho and I thought it was a very respectable Pho with generous slices of tender beef. My dad complained that it was not like the beef noodles we could get in Ang Mo Kio - that very same hawker stall which has been there since the 1990s and is still going strong today. I tried to reason with him: this is a Vietnamese version of beef noodles, it is not the same as the Chinese version you're familiar with - it is bound to be different but in a good way. No, my dad disagreed. He couldn't get his head around my concept of "different but in a good way". He was quite happy to spend the rest of his life avoiding anything that was in any way vaguely unfamiliar with what he had already been totally accustomed to.

So yes, in hindsight, my sister was right and I stand corrected - it was a mistake to take my parents to that Vietnamese restaurant to subject them to beef noodles that were ever so slightly different from what they were used to in Ang Mo Kio. Go figure. Duh. This is a far cry from the way I would behave in such a situation - I remember wandering around the Djemma El-Fna bazaar in Marrakesh, Morocco. I was looking at all the most unfamiliar, exotic North African foods on offer and I was totally fascinated by this opportunity to sample something totally different from what I was used to. I would wander from stall to stall, engaging the hawkers in banter, "Qu'est-ce que vous avez la? Puis-je gouter un peut?" (What do you have there? Can I taste a little?) My dad would have been horrified by Africa given how unfamiliar it was to Ang Mo Kio - but that was the very same reason why I wanted to go to Africa.

The friendly Moroccan hawkers in Marrakesh

Don't get me wrong - there are things from my childhood that I yearn for, that mean a lot to me. There are certain tastes and smells which immediately make me think about Ang Mo Kio or Singapore - I can get nostalgic about Singapore sometimes and would spend hours in my kitchen trying to recreate those certain smells and flavours that I grew up with. But this is quite different from the mix of outright fear and hostility that my dad has for anything foreign or different. I can understand why he is like this - it doesn't mean I condone his attitude or like it.

I know what some of you are going to say - old people being set in their ways and rejecting the unfamiliar has nothing to do with being Singapore, it is universal trait that most old people seem to have. I suppose there is an element of truth to that, but not all old people are the same. If an older man has spent much of his life traveling around the world, learning about different cultures and countries - then he would be far more familiar and comfortable with a lot more than a man who has not had the opportunity to travel as much. And I'm afraid my father's mental map of the world does not extend beyond Singapore and Johor state - hence his rather hostile reaction to anything he encountered in the Vietnamese restaurant and believe you me, that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his xenophobia.

What is your mental map of the world?

I have a British-Chinese friend Anne who related to me the following, "I have grandparents living in KL (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) and they barely speak any English. I do visit sometimes and there's a huge language barrier - they speak Cantonese, Mandarin and Malay but only have a very basic command of English. I did learn some Mandarin when I was younger but it is rather rusty now and I can't really express myself very well in Mandarin I'm afraid. Sure I can have a pleasant conversation in Mandarin with them and we'll talk about what we want to do tomorrow, what we have eaten for lunch, how hot the weather is - things like that, but if I want to talk about more profound issues, like what my ambitions are with my career, what I would like to achieve in my professional life - I can't have that conversation in Mandarin. I just can't find the words. I suppose I could just speak English but I worry that my grandparents will not understand and just switch off, you know, just not participate in the conversation."

Anne's experience sounds only too familiar, but the only difference is that she is experiencing that double generation gap with her grandparents whilst I am experience that same double generation gap with my father. It's like we skipped a generation. I wonder how rare my experience is? After all, I remember a conversation from my army days. I was studying French then and I ran into my friend Chris and his mother - Chis told his mother that I was studying French and his mother (who couldn't have been more than 10 years younger than my mother) just switched to French mid-sentence and we started chatting in French. Turns out, she studied in Switzerland years ago and then spent several years in a French-speaking environment. She said, "you won't believe how many times I have tried to get Chris to learn French but he's just not interested! Then we can all speak French together, yeah?"

French is my second language.

My parents would never understand how I could embrace a language like French, let alone study it to the point where it became much better than my Chinese. But that's just the tip of the iceberg - there are so many things about me that my parents will never understand and I have long accepted that this is a result of the huge generation gap between us. I look at my friends like Chris and of course, there's a bit of jealousy because he has a great relationship with his parents and the generation gap he faces is a lot smaller than mine. It also feels like everyone just expects me to understand my parents and always see things from their point of view - yet no one ever expects them to make the slightest effort to try to see things from my point of view.

Where does this leave us? There's just this status quo I guess - where I have this respectful, cordial but very distant relationship with my parents. I guess there was a time when I wanted to share with my parents all this wonderful has to offer (such as Vietnamese Pho) - but I've long accepted that they're just not interested in anything unfamiliar or new. Sorry if this sounds blunt, but damn that's a pretty awful and sad way to live one's life! Good grief.

There's a wonderful world out there, just waiting for you to explore.

But let me end on a positive note: at least my parents do respect the fact that I do not want to live my life like them and they have allowed me to do what I want with my life. Well, let me paraphrase that: they have not stood in the way of me making important decisions for myself, even when I had made decisions that did not sit well with them. Whilst they have not been supportive, they have not been obstructive either. They have been... indifferent, I suppose. Objecting to something means taking a stance on the issue - being completely disinterested is a different reaction and that is pretty much what I have had from them since I was a teenager. Indifference, but the root of this indifference was simply because I had embraced so many new challenges in life that were totally alien to them - thus, their inability to take an interest in any of those things, since they were pathologically conditioned to reject the unfamiliar.

And hence we've drifted apart, further and further, in the last 20 or so years. Am I the only one who has found myself in this position? Or am I simply unlucky... if I had been born 10 or 15 years earlier, I would not be speaking English as a first language but would be far more likely to speak Mandarin/Hakka/Hokkien as a first language like my parents. Certainly when I look at my sister at my nephew - they clearly both speak English/Singlish as a first language, so there is no language barrier at all between them. How many people actually have such a language barrier with their own parents, making an already big generation gap even bigger?

Please leave a comment below, let me know what you think and what your experiences are. Thanks for reading.