Today is Chinese New Year. I sort of forgot about it until last Friday when that Chinese lady, the one that left mysteriously and in a dramatic fashion, mumbled it to someone. She really didn't work very much, chatting constantly. I then got emails from my little sister about any celebration this weekend with the family. We usually just go over to Granny's, but after conferring with our parents, my other sister said it was too dangerous to drive and, more to the point, there was no place to park in the snow-packed streets of Brooklyn. So no celebration there.
On the one hand, I was a little relieved not to do anything with the parents. Not because I am loathed to do so; I no longer feel any antipathy toward spending time with them. But it would be a huge hassle. And I am really tired. Yesterday I nearly fell asleep at work. Partly because there wasn't much to do. When there was suddenly something to take care of in the late afternoon, I was up and awake. The main reason, of course, was lack of sleep. Four hours after Sunday night milonga, then preparing the lavender cheesecake Tuesday night. I don't know what I did Monday; I think I was preparing food for the week?
Anyway, I am starting out this switch of the lunar year pretty tired. I was reminded again of the Chinese New Year yesterday when I overheard a Chinese woman talking to another (in English) about the Chinese in the company getting together. On the one hand, I felt left out. I was left out because I was a newbie and I didn't know any Chinese, except for this woman working in the department of which our group is a part. I could ask her. But on the other hand….
Do I really want to hang out with Chinese people? I never did. They are as foreign to me as Indian people are. I don't know if their behavior annoys me because we are really very different people culturally, or they remind me of my Mother. I don't really know. But the thought of being in the middle of a group of Chinese is not altogether pleasant. First they would all be speaking Mandarin. These are "real" Chinese, not the immigrants who've got one butt cheek in the US and the other somewhere uncertain but in China, so we don't know where we crap. These "real" Chinese know really about the celebration; they know what the symbols mean, what the rituals are, what this year could mean. They would talk about their family, their children, because Chinese people almost always have family. It is a rare and novel phenomenon that Chinese from Mainland are unmarried, and even if they aren't married, they are a couple who have just decided the marriage was a hassle.
So those are the things the divide me from the people that come from my cultural heritage. What connects us, though? Chinese New Year? I am not sure how I am so different from one of my friends who likes Chinese New Year. To tell the truth, I can't remember how my own family celebrated it in China, or here. I can't remember anything amazing, besides being forced to make phone calls to relatives because my Mother never liked to seem rude, to be considered a bad mother who didn't raise their children well.
Suddenly a squall of snow engulfed us, our train. Weird. It was blue skies just half an hour ago. Weird start of the Chinese New Year. It's weird how this holiday reminds me of my identity dilemma. I say "weird" because even though it seems obvious that it would remind me of that dilemma, I don't think about it at all, and what's weird is that it sneaks up to me every year. Every year I would not think about when Chinese New Year begins, and then boom, when it happens, I feel weird.
I don't know how to celebrate it. My sister said there's some cake she would make for the celebration. I can imagine that cake in some Chinese restaurant, super sweet, made of water chestnut starch. My Western mentality doesn't allow me to really see the joy and beauty of eating it. It's sad, really. I just know I prefer not to be alone. I think it's not so much about not celebrating it alone. I think it's more about not having to deal with the identity dilemma alone. Although I don't need to talk about the dilemma, I feel that my flesh and blood shouldn't be alone while the heart tries to deal with this cultural conflict.
I will need to call my parents today, not sure when. But perhaps today or whenever I see them or talk to them more at length, I can ask them, or my Dad, how we celebrated Chinese New Year before. I remember asking my Dad this very question a few years ago. I don't remember the answer. But I remember being unimpressed, almost disappointed, with the answer. "Underwhelmed" as some people say (I don't consider that a real word even though it is in the spell-check dictionary.) My identity, sadly, seems now to be defined largely by my relationship with the people I've met. If someone asks me who I am, I think about the friends I have met, those I've lost, the women who had given me hope and then taken it away. The closest thing to Chinese culture I can think of is my family, all of whom, in their own ways, have taken some unique distance from Chinese culture. But then, none of them have shaken it off, not even my little sister who is born here, who had come closest to hating a culture imposed onto her by a draconian mother. My other sister, while she might know about that cake eaten on Chinese New Year Day, doesn't really speak much Chinese, nearly nothing in terms of reading and writing. And she is married to a white man and she feels a strong bond, stronger, perhaps, with her Christian in-laws out in the conservative upstate region of New York. It's not my place to evaluate how Chinese she is, but she is definitely very American. After all, she was younger than me when we all came to adopt this new culture.
I think I will wish happy Chinese New Year to that one Chinese person I talk to in the department. If she offers anything, I would be open to it. But if nothing happens today, it wouldn't be so different from all the twenty some odd Chinese New Years I have spent in this country, especially the past nine ones.
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