Getting Ready for the New Year

The Year of the Tiger, Mama's own year, is fast approaching, on Valentine's Day. And we're thinking about getting ready. As I've written before, we celebrate Chinese New Year in several ways--most importantly with Mama's family, but also at school and sometimes with our playgroup.

For school, a Vietnamese friend of mine (for whom I try really hard to call it Asian or Lunar New Year. She calls it Tet) and I will read a children's book, perhaps The Great Race, a children's book about the establishment of the Chinese Zodiac, and then do a craft--maybe a lantern, but perhaps some kind of tiger mask--with a tiger dance, maybe.

We've been trying to connect the kids to their Chinese roots beyond take-out meals and "Ni Hao, Kai Lan." And though Chinese lessons are on hold for awhile, they are not completely out of the picture as we try to keep up with the vocabulary we did learn. Our library of Chinese tales--Red Butterfly, Ruby's Wish, etc--is growing slowly, as is our CD collection of music. And then we try to go to things, like the Warriors and the Silk Road exhibitions and the Chinese Theater Works performance, that explore and celebrate Chinese culture. Thankfully, at least once a year, at New Year's, American culture (hmm, that sounds so unified and homogeneous!) embraces Chinese tradition and we find it very easy to discuss and discover China. Which means I just might be making the scallion pancakes featured in Family Fun this month!

Personally, I'm boning up on my understanding of Chinese cultural traditions. Mama bought a book entitled The Moon Year, which is a reprint of a 1927 account of Chinese rituals, both special and everyday, written by two Westerners living there, before many of the "old ways" were suppressed by the Communists. It's fascinating reading, even if you get a strong sense of Western prejudice against Chinese religion ("superstitions") and a fascination with the "exotic" over the everyday (they love to detail what seem to be obscure rituals involving splattering chicken blood). We've also learned a lot from Every Grain of Rice: A Taste of Our Chinese Childhood in America by Ellen Leung Blonder, though we haven't actually cooked any of the recipes. I also found the book I'd seen in Houston at the Terra Cotta warriors exhibition, The Good Luck Life by Rosemary Wong, a recounting of Chinese-American traditions, which focuses on holidays and special occasions. (I'm thinking about getting the children's equivalent of this book, with activities and tales, Moonbeams, Dumplings, and Dragonboats by Nina Simonds.) And for fun--though, the stories can't actually be described that way--there is always Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, both of which I've picked up recently.

Of course, as Ar-ma pointed out, because her family is a mixture of Chinese heritage and Thai upbringing, no book exactly fits their family's beliefs or behaviors. But the books help me understand and then explain Chinese culture to both the kids and people who ask me. As the mom of two half-Chinese kids, I've become something of a resource for non-Chinese people in our community, which is both exciting (to learn and to explain) and awkward (since I'm not Chinese). Interestingly, the kids don't realize I'm not Chinese, though I explain that my ancestral roots are European (and a melange at that). And, oddly, I know more about Chinese history, art, architecture, and religions than Mama does, though my knowledge is academic and hers is experiential. But she is Chinese and will be able to connect with the kids on certain issues in a way I can't. Basically, we're all trying to figure out how to be a bi-racial,multi-cultural family. And this time of year, with red and firecrackers and dragons everywhere, becomes the highpoint of our efforts.