eating potatoes
By Pat Law • Jun 1st, 2009 • Category: Features, The Lonely Travellor
Left to right: Lan Tian, Shi Xiaomei, Yuewai, Dong Hongsong
Danny Yung. Hong Kong. Experimental stage director, filmmaker, producer, multi-disciplinary artist, curator and founder of well-respected art association, Zuni Icosahedron. Possibly the last member of the Chinese Intellectuals from days when Nanyang existed. When Kuo Pao Kun was still alive.
Chen Ko-Hua. Taiwan. Ophthalmologist and a highly acclaimed writer. Made his writing debut in 1983. Has over fifty published works to his name. Speaks as though he is reciting a poetry he has just penned. Perhaps he is.
Shi Xiaomei. China. One of China’s most respected veterans in Chinese opera since Mei Lanfang. Distinctively beautiful, but so immaculately handsome, she played only male roles for over 3 decades, breaking thousands of fragile hearts along the way. Watching her as she was getting made up as a female for the first time was my greatest honour.
Danny and I at breakfast
Chen Ko-hua and I
The ever so lovely Shi Xiaomei and I. Guess how old is she?
For 3 days in Rotterdam, my ignorant, culturally deprived, narrow-minded soul was in the company of these rich, culturally evolved beings. I struggled badly with my mediocre command of the language, Mandarin, while they sang poetry effortlessly. I will have you know that for the first time ever, I was truly ashamed by how disgustingly handicapped I was, of my own mother tongue.
Like a good number of Singaporean Chinese living in our multi-cultural society, I identify myself as a Singaporean before I do, as a Chinese. And I will admit to this – when I was younger, I suffered from severe superiority complex when travelling to less-developed neighbouring countries. I mistook my ability to communicate in English for supremacy. Yes, I was an ignorant prick. Sadly, some of us still are.
I was educated under a system that essentially implied that English was more important than my mother tongue. I could afford to fuck up my Chinese and get away with it, but if I did the same for English, I would have to kiss my education goodbye. Pronto. It wasn’t as though I didn’t try – bless those endless nights of Chinese tuition, but language isn’t something you could learn overnight, is it? My peers spoke Chinese as crude and clumsily as I did, and my teachers were a bit too preoccupied trying to ensure the passing rate was maintained to bother to waste any time trying to make us appreciate the language instead. The latter is an investment not all’s willing to make, I suppose.
I think we Singaporeans sometimes forget how young we are as a country. For fuck sakes, Beijing Opera alone is about 170 years older than Singapore. We all belong somewhere else, some time ago. What gave us the right to disregard, or belittle even, the place we originally came from? Capitalism? Hollywood?
I won’t go as far as to say I hated Chinese growing up, but yes, I was called names because of my disregard of my heritage.
She’s a Yellow Banana.
Yellow on the outside, white on the inside.
This girl eats potatoes only.
As opposed to rice, as favoured by the Chinese.
I wasn’t flattered, but I wasn’t insulted neither. I was indifferent. The colour of my skin never mattered much to me, considering how multi-racial and intercontinental my family is. It was only when I had the opportunity to hang out with these fine souls that I realised how much I’ve been deprived of, no thanks to my preconceived judgement. For the record, not all Chinese are into stealing people’s husbands or producing counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags.
The Government invests a good amount of money each year, marketing Chinese as a language all Singaporean Chinese should use. It’s cool, they said. How so? The television commercial is memorable, no doubt, but does it really make me want to use the language? Let’s not even talk about the posters. What? Chinese is cool because some Singaporean singer says so? My apologies for being harsh, but that’s not about to make someone as detached as I am convinced.
I’m thankful for the experience I’ve had in Rotterdam. I’m thankful for the exposure I’ve had with the true purveyors of the language. I can only wish that one day, you, my fellow yellow bananas, will understand how I feel, being a Chinese.
Beijing opera is more than 400 years old. =)
While it is true that we must be able to speak good English, this does not entail voluntarily offering our mother tongue on the sacrificial alter in exchange for a native english speaker’s tongue. As one linguistically inclined caucasion professor (pardon me for not remembering your name) once said, knowledge of languages should be an ” x AND y” rather than an “x OR y” situation.
I say this with first-hand experience from always having had to straddle the Franco-Chinoise see-saw: when a French looks at me, she sees my dominant colour gene – yellow = Chinoise = speaks Mandarin. Period.
Doesn’t matter that I’m Singaporean. Nor does it matter that 1/32 of my DNA helix is French. Sure, I am expected to utter a smattering of French. But, I am Chinese, I look Chinese and if I can’t or worse, refuse to speak it, well, I can’t blame the Parisiens for the snobbery.
At the end of the day, If I look down on my heritage, my lineage, can I honestly expect anyone else to look up to it?
“What gave us the right to disregard, or belittle even, the place we originally came from? Capitalism? Hollywood?”
e x a c t l y. i won’t deny that i’ve been at least a bit influenced by certain stereotypes but even so, i find it ridiculous how some singaporeans can so easily despise a culture-rich country from which their own forefathers came. sometimes the extent to which the locals repel the Chinese gets disturbing. like there was this time when i was involved in a verbal disagreement with a young singaporean. she mistook me to be a PRC and told me (in her exact words) to ‘go back to your country lah’. imagine my shock and disgust to hear something so racist from someone in her teens!
the ‘lan tian’ fella is uber shuai.
i totally understand what you mean. it wasn’t until i studied in australia that i realised my ‘potato-eating’ ways were nothing special, and how brought down to earth i became.
each language is steeped in culture, and no one is more beautiful than the other. i guess you could call it, beauty in the (communication) breakdown.