When You're Now "The Elder"

Why do I feel like I'm appropriating my own culture?

I’ve been privately musing about “traditions” for several years now, mostly observing and not doing anything about it. But the arrival of my little has laden the topic with more gravitas.

There are so many (arguably) more impactful things to consider around raising kids that make traditions look like a nice-to-have (that would actually be the truly authentic Chinese thing to do, iykyk). However it does make me die a little inside to imagine my daughter having a ho-hum cultural connection to Chinese New Year.

As someone with a BA in Anthropology, the factual phrase “in Chinese culture, this is what we do” shouldn't bother me— but it does!!

The best way I can describe it is like I’m explaining what a human being is by picking apart a cadaver that used to be a living person. I can describe the organs and what they did for the person but it’s really the “spirit” that animated this human that made the human… Human.

Or maybe I’m just a poor storyteller.

I can appreciate that this topic hits people differently. I can already hear other Chinese people telling me to 随便啦，不要想那么多 ("It's whatever, not that deep"). But ultimately I believe that ritual changes people and traditions are a form of that.

It's informal learning that imbues values, and shapes identity because it's not about what I tell my daughter— it's what I set up for her to experience because the message is the medium.

Becoming "The Elder” and thus a custodian of traditions shouldn't be a big deal. But being away from my big fat Chinese-Singaporean family I'm kinda left to my own devices.

And I'll freely admit that some of it feels performative.

But I'll finish this with a quote that I keep close to me. It's from a RedNote video by a 傩 (Nuo) shaman uncle. For context, 傩 folk culture has been very popular in China recently. RedNote is full of young people in China taking stylistic pictures with 傩-ish ritual dress and filming “ritual-esque” dances that look nothing like real 傩 rituals. All of it aesthetically pleasing but the commodification has stripped some of it's “authenticity” you could say.

To that, uncle had these wise words:

在选择“变化”和“消失”这两者之间，我们愿意选择“变化”。到时候没有了，我们真的什么都没有了。“变化”了我们还存在。

Between “change” and “disappearance”, we are willing to choose “change”. Because if we disappear then we truly are gone forever. With change at least we still exist.

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