40. IMPORTANCE OF CHINATOWN EXPERIENCES
Author B.J. Neblett opines about the influence of experience:
“We are the sum total of our experiences. Those experiences – be they positive or negative – make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives.”
I agree and emphasize that experience is idiosyncratic and becomes further tempered with memory.
Here are few threads teased from my mesh of experience in a quest for understanding.
From 1952 to 1971, I lived in Niagara Falls’ Chinatown. Was it Chinatown because that’s where I saw many Chinese reside, shop for Chinese foodstuffs and socialize or was it due to the egocentricity of being a child?
Young children often believe that the world revolves around them and being Chinese, I might have taken-for-granted the place where I lived was indeed the centre of Chinese life. At the time, I know I did not believe this to be true: my tong yan gai was but a shrinking shadow of the outside – non-Chinese – life that mattered.
My parents conveyed, implicitly, that I lived at the fringes of the privileged society and entry was to be attained through education, hard work, and obsequiousness towards authority.
My father did not speak of hardships. His absence from our Park Street home told us how long each day was. The restaurant stayed open late and opened early. Except for the hours my brother and I were in school – when my mother was available to help – there was just him to do everything.
On weekends and during summers when we stayed over at the restaurant, we could see for ourselves how much he did to provide for us. Occasionally my mother would mention how when she came to Canada in 1948 (after the repeal of the Exclusion Act) to be united with Father, they were so poor they did not even have bowls to eat from. There was really no need for her to tell us as each day we saw examples of her thrift.
At dinner, she ate a simple bowl of rice topped with steamed salted fish or leftovers while serving us a favoured dish made from fresh ingredients. In the evenings, my mother often sat taking apart old clothes to re-use the material to make new creations. So much of what we had was re-purposed.
Appearances did matter to our mother but her aesthetic was far removed from what my brother and I knew was valued outside of Chinatown.
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| Edge of Chinatown, Niagara Falls, 2007 (Photo courtesy of Loy Chong) |
In the outside world, we had school and friends while there. Television and radio at home added to impressions of non-Chinese/non-Chinatown life.
Was it because our Chinatown was so small and/or my parents’ particular notions of humility that I have a difficult time being large in the world?
I have contemplated this question a lot this past year for two reasons.
The first is because I’ve written and published a book: meaning I have to market the product and, indirectly, myself. Talking about how great my work is or acting as if it/I was superior were not the ways of being I was taught or encouraged to be. Growing up, I witnessed my mother refer to the can hei or sik baau demonstrated by others. The way she spit out these phrases conveyed her underlying intent – Don’t act like that!
As an adult, I reflect and think she may have been criticizing a Western-style face of self-assurance or confidence rather than what she perceived as unseemly boasting.
The second provocation came last September in the form of a visit. Distant relatives (a mother and her adolescent son) whom we had never met before came from Mainland China. Our connection to them came about in 2016 when my husband and I had spent time in Hong Kong and Kaiping with my cousins whom we did not know either.
Our time in China had been comfortable and as familiar to me as my own childhood family and growing up in Chinatown. Consequently, we were pleased to extend hospitality to one cousin’s daughter and grandson when asked.
Our guests surprised us. Here they were on their first visit to North America and they were so large – so entitled – I was shocked.
Since that visit, I have read about the fuerdai – a term used to describe the rich second generation of children in China. I’ve seen the movie Crazy Rich Asians. My relatives are certainly not that wealthy. Still, I wonder how one generation can be so different from the former. After all, I have more disposable income than my parents ever did.
Does it have more to do with the size of the Chinatown one grows up with?
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Richmond, BC where most of the population is Chinese. I had read up beforehand.
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| Richmond Signs |
“In Search of ‘Cultural Harmony’ in Richmond, BC – North America’s Most Asian City” (National Post, October 19, 2018), a sample article, reports on what happens when the minority becomes the majority: cultural harmony is threatened.
Is the threat due to the expectation of Westerners that Chinese are to act in a prescribed manner? From one interviewee: “What gets her now are the noveau-riche that have come with a ton of money. . . . ‘When I was growing up, all the corner stores were run by the Chinese families. They were humble, grateful, nice.’ ” Perhaps she was complimenting the early years immigrants on fitting in with the Canadian identity of being an apologetic people; but, perhaps not.
Neblett concludes:
“And, like a flowing river, those same experiences, and those yet to come, continue to influence and reshape the person we are, and the person we become. None of us are the same as we were yesterday, nor will be tomorrow.”
My family and Niagara Falls' Chinatown endowed me with specific beliefs, values and experiences that I continue to unravel, re-construct and re-imagine. Today I strive to be large in the world but also to discover what size suits so tomorrow . . . I can be comfortable, too.
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