New Year away
Fri, Jan. 21st, 2011 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterWritten for Potluck.
Note: I didn't double check my pinyin, so the spelling here might be atrocious.
Late January and early February is always a bad time for me in the US. I never mind spending Thanksgiving or Christmas with friends or away from home, and half the time I don't do much for Christmas anyway. But New Year is different.
I wasn't always like this. When I was growing up in Taiwan, we did get December 25th off... but because it was the ROC's Constitution Day. We would celebrate in school by giving classmates cards and presents on Christmas Eve, and my family was one of the ones that had brought our artificial tree back from the US. I think every year we lost an ornament, and I refused to buy any in Taiwan because they were plastic, not glass. Eventually, my parents got sick of setting up the tree, and it was just me and my sister, then finally, just me. After I moved to the US for college, I stopped too. It seemed important when we were in Taiwan; the bulk of people at my school had grown up partially in the US before moving to Taiwan.
For Thanksgiving, the moms would occasionally set up a potluck lunch, where we would bring mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, and, for some reason, 米粉. No one knew how to make anything, and frequently, the mashed potatoes and gravy were from packages or powder. The turkey was difficult to find; I'm fairly sure we always got a pre-cooked one, since very few people had an oven large enough to fit one.
My first "real American Christmas" (quotations because it's not like my Christmases in the US with my family pre-Taiwan were fake) was with my white American boyfriend's family, in which they had a real tree, nutcrackers, a giant feast, stockings, and the whole deal. Ditto my first "real American Thanksgiving." I think that's when I stopped trying to celebrate Christmas in Taiwan: it was clearly not my holiday in the way it was for other people here, and I didn't care enough to try and adopt it. My family has never done the giant Christmas feast, nor has almost everyone I grew up with, and though we had our potluck lunch Thanksgivings, it wasn't with commercials and sales and crowds at the grocery store, turkey and cranberries everywhere. For us, we didn't have cranberry sauce for a while until they started imported the canned stuff (which, btw, I love).
Chinese New Year, though... New Year was different (specifically "Chinese" and not "Lunar" or another adjective, since all our traditions were Chinese*). We had the traditional 除夕 dinner at my 奶奶's house with 叔叔, 嬸嬸, and their kids, with an additional dinner with 姨媽 and 姨丈 and their kids later in the week. All my other relatives were in the US or Hong Kong, so my New Year was less busy than most of my classmates'.
Highways everywhere would be completely congested right before the holiday, and though Taiwan stores also got into Christmas spirit with a lot of plastic decorations, New Year meant everything was covered with red, sales everywhere, all the stores selling candy to put out, tinny "恭喜恭喜恭喜你呀" playing from speakers everywhere. There was a period when department stores sold bright red bras and underwear.
除夕 dinner always had fish, and occasionally other traditional New Year food, and we'd sit around the living room eating 瓜子 and 梅子, watching TV or talking or playing 麻將 or this gambling dice game I've forgotten the rules of. Later on in the week, my mom would let us buy something special from our 壓歲錢 before saving the rest of it in our post office accounts, the bills always new and crisp and perfumed.
I've always wondered how they perfumed it and how many new bills the banks printed out each year.
I don't much remember what my 奶奶 would cook anymore; we stopped having it her house when Alzheimer's hit and got worse during middle and high school. I remember 除夕 dinner in restaurants and in 叔叔's house, almost always with banquet food like 螃蟹 and chicken soup that had been cooked for hours and hours. I suspect, given my family, that our dinners weren't extremely traditional, and it always seemed like my other classmates did things much more properly than we did. Still, we would go visit my dad's old teacher and 拜拜 at my 爺爺's picture, and later at the Buddhist temple where his remains and my 奶奶's were interred.
Since my 叔叔 moved to 上海, my parents have occasionally spent New Year alone, one year even going out for steak because no one else was around. And me, I spent it in school with other friends from Taiwan. Once I moved to California and got a job, the first thing I did was plan on spending New Year at home, which I hadn't done for four years. Grad school meant New Year in California and potlucks with friends again. The worst, though, the worst was always being home for Christmas and Gregorian New Year, being able to see all the New Year decorations and sales go up, and to know exactly what I was missing every year.
I'm privileged in that I have the resources to go home, and in that my memories of New Year are of New Year as the biggest holiday of the country, where you get a month off at school and three days off from work, where everyone else was doing the same thing, where I never had to explain any traditions except ones specific to my family, where nothing I did was taken as an example of what every single Chinese person does for New Year ever. I grew up parading around the neighborhood with lanterns for 元宵節 and experiences of making 鹹湯圓 at school, as opposed to the 黑芝麻湯圓 we'd eat at home. I grew up knowing there was a variety of traditions and cultures and ways to celebrate, and though I vaguely remember New Year at Chinese church in the US, most of my memories are of 放鞭炮 in my 奶奶's yard before Taiwan outlawed them and how loud they would echo in the streets (people still set them off anyway), of lion and dragon dances everywhere, all the doors covered with red 福倒 or 春倒 signs and 春聯, the streets littered with the paper remnants of 鞭炮.
Like I said, I don't mind potluck Thanksgivings and Christmases with friends, or just me and my sister at home watching kdramas, but I've been hanging out more in Ranch 99 in the past week, partially to prep for my own party, but a lot because I'm so homesick right now, and the red decorations and cheesy music alleviates it somewhat. But I was looking for 春聯 and other decorations to buy, and they are tacky and ugly but still expensive, and I could only find them after asking someone in a general goods store after visiting several Chinese bookstores and grocery stores, there's only a few types of New Year decorations around, probably all made and imported by the same few companies. There's no red anywhere except in the Chinese stores, and although I can find some of the snacks I ate as a kid, I miss the mounds of goodies at 迪化街 and the 菜市場, the fake chocolate gold ingots and dried squid and 橄欖, the dorky cute zodiac animal of the year displayed everywhere and cut out in shrubbery or in giant posters. Witness!
Being in the US during this time, even with other hyphenates and sourcelanders and immigrants, with other non-Chinese New Years, it reminds me that this isn't the holiday everyone celebrates here, not like the holiday season just a month or so before, that it's still marginalized and on the edges. And that's why it's so much more important to me to have even more traditional food for 除夕 here.
If I celebrate with steak in Taiwan, it's just me, but with so few of us celebrating in the US, I feel like every bit has to count, and the weight of representation is heavy. The one thing that does help with the homesickness is knowing that it isn't just me and it's not just Chinese New Year at this time, that it's New Year throughout the year with different people and different traditions.
* ETA: Eh, what I meant and expressed horribly was that all our traditions and etc. were Chinese and I don't want to overwrite other cultures' New Years by taking the title of "Lunar New Year" when our practices are so specific to a single culture.
Note: I didn't double check my pinyin, so the spelling here might be atrocious.
Late January and early February is always a bad time for me in the US. I never mind spending Thanksgiving or Christmas with friends or away from home, and half the time I don't do much for Christmas anyway. But New Year is different.
I wasn't always like this. When I was growing up in Taiwan, we did get December 25th off... but because it was the ROC's Constitution Day. We would celebrate in school by giving classmates cards and presents on Christmas Eve, and my family was one of the ones that had brought our artificial tree back from the US. I think every year we lost an ornament, and I refused to buy any in Taiwan because they were plastic, not glass. Eventually, my parents got sick of setting up the tree, and it was just me and my sister, then finally, just me. After I moved to the US for college, I stopped too. It seemed important when we were in Taiwan; the bulk of people at my school had grown up partially in the US before moving to Taiwan.
For Thanksgiving, the moms would occasionally set up a potluck lunch, where we would bring mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, and, for some reason, 米粉. No one knew how to make anything, and frequently, the mashed potatoes and gravy were from packages or powder. The turkey was difficult to find; I'm fairly sure we always got a pre-cooked one, since very few people had an oven large enough to fit one.
My first "real American Christmas" (quotations because it's not like my Christmases in the US with my family pre-Taiwan were fake) was with my white American boyfriend's family, in which they had a real tree, nutcrackers, a giant feast, stockings, and the whole deal. Ditto my first "real American Thanksgiving." I think that's when I stopped trying to celebrate Christmas in Taiwan: it was clearly not my holiday in the way it was for other people here, and I didn't care enough to try and adopt it. My family has never done the giant Christmas feast, nor has almost everyone I grew up with, and though we had our potluck lunch Thanksgivings, it wasn't with commercials and sales and crowds at the grocery store, turkey and cranberries everywhere. For us, we didn't have cranberry sauce for a while until they started imported the canned stuff (which, btw, I love).
Chinese New Year, though... New Year was different (specifically "Chinese" and not "Lunar" or another adjective, since all our traditions were Chinese*). We had the traditional 除夕 dinner at my 奶奶's house with 叔叔, 嬸嬸, and their kids, with an additional dinner with 姨媽 and 姨丈 and their kids later in the week. All my other relatives were in the US or Hong Kong, so my New Year was less busy than most of my classmates'.
Highways everywhere would be completely congested right before the holiday, and though Taiwan stores also got into Christmas spirit with a lot of plastic decorations, New Year meant everything was covered with red, sales everywhere, all the stores selling candy to put out, tinny "恭喜恭喜恭喜你呀" playing from speakers everywhere. There was a period when department stores sold bright red bras and underwear.
除夕 dinner always had fish, and occasionally other traditional New Year food, and we'd sit around the living room eating 瓜子 and 梅子, watching TV or talking or playing 麻將 or this gambling dice game I've forgotten the rules of. Later on in the week, my mom would let us buy something special from our 壓歲錢 before saving the rest of it in our post office accounts, the bills always new and crisp and perfumed.
I've always wondered how they perfumed it and how many new bills the banks printed out each year.
I don't much remember what my 奶奶 would cook anymore; we stopped having it her house when Alzheimer's hit and got worse during middle and high school. I remember 除夕 dinner in restaurants and in 叔叔's house, almost always with banquet food like 螃蟹 and chicken soup that had been cooked for hours and hours. I suspect, given my family, that our dinners weren't extremely traditional, and it always seemed like my other classmates did things much more properly than we did. Still, we would go visit my dad's old teacher and 拜拜 at my 爺爺's picture, and later at the Buddhist temple where his remains and my 奶奶's were interred.
Since my 叔叔 moved to 上海, my parents have occasionally spent New Year alone, one year even going out for steak because no one else was around. And me, I spent it in school with other friends from Taiwan. Once I moved to California and got a job, the first thing I did was plan on spending New Year at home, which I hadn't done for four years. Grad school meant New Year in California and potlucks with friends again. The worst, though, the worst was always being home for Christmas and Gregorian New Year, being able to see all the New Year decorations and sales go up, and to know exactly what I was missing every year.
I'm privileged in that I have the resources to go home, and in that my memories of New Year are of New Year as the biggest holiday of the country, where you get a month off at school and three days off from work, where everyone else was doing the same thing, where I never had to explain any traditions except ones specific to my family, where nothing I did was taken as an example of what every single Chinese person does for New Year ever. I grew up parading around the neighborhood with lanterns for 元宵節 and experiences of making 鹹湯圓 at school, as opposed to the 黑芝麻湯圓 we'd eat at home. I grew up knowing there was a variety of traditions and cultures and ways to celebrate, and though I vaguely remember New Year at Chinese church in the US, most of my memories are of 放鞭炮 in my 奶奶's yard before Taiwan outlawed them and how loud they would echo in the streets (people still set them off anyway), of lion and dragon dances everywhere, all the doors covered with red 福倒 or 春倒 signs and 春聯, the streets littered with the paper remnants of 鞭炮.
Like I said, I don't mind potluck Thanksgivings and Christmases with friends, or just me and my sister at home watching kdramas, but I've been hanging out more in Ranch 99 in the past week, partially to prep for my own party, but a lot because I'm so homesick right now, and the red decorations and cheesy music alleviates it somewhat. But I was looking for 春聯 and other decorations to buy, and they are tacky and ugly but still expensive, and I could only find them after asking someone in a general goods store after visiting several Chinese bookstores and grocery stores, there's only a few types of New Year decorations around, probably all made and imported by the same few companies. There's no red anywhere except in the Chinese stores, and although I can find some of the snacks I ate as a kid, I miss the mounds of goodies at 迪化街 and the 菜市場, the fake chocolate gold ingots and dried squid and 橄欖, the dorky cute zodiac animal of the year displayed everywhere and cut out in shrubbery or in giant posters. Witness!
Being in the US during this time, even with other hyphenates and sourcelanders and immigrants, with other non-Chinese New Years, it reminds me that this isn't the holiday everyone celebrates here, not like the holiday season just a month or so before, that it's still marginalized and on the edges. And that's why it's so much more important to me to have even more traditional food for 除夕 here.
If I celebrate with steak in Taiwan, it's just me, but with so few of us celebrating in the US, I feel like every bit has to count, and the weight of representation is heavy. The one thing that does help with the homesickness is knowing that it isn't just me and it's not just Chinese New Year at this time, that it's New Year throughout the year with different people and different traditions.
* ETA: Eh, what I meant and expressed horribly was that all our traditions and etc. were Chinese and I don't want to overwrite other cultures' New Years by taking the title of "Lunar New Year" when our practices are so specific to a single culture.
(no subject)
Wed, Jan. 26th, 2011 03:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 27th, 2011 01:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Wed, Jan. 26th, 2011 10:51 am (UTC)I didn't mind not being able to fly home for Chinese New Year while I was in college (well, I mostly didn't mind), but I just knew that with Lunar New Year approaching in Seoul, with my days off that I wouldn't get to use, while everyone is doing all sorts of New Year's things and visiting family, I would feel extra homesick. Unlike Christmas/Thanksgiving, this is a holiday people celebrate here, and that I would like to celebrate at home, and that being alone with nothing to do next week would be depressing. (Fortunately, my friend is visiting from Taiwan, so it won't be so lonely after all!)
(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 27th, 2011 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Wed, Jan. 26th, 2011 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Jan. 27th, 2011 01:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Sat, Jan. 29th, 2011 03:13 pm (UTC)(Haha, the 恭喜恭喜恭喜你呀 song!)
(no subject)
Sun, Jan. 30th, 2011 10:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Sun, Jan. 30th, 2011 11:45 am (UTC)For when it comes -- 新年快乐!
(no subject)
Sun, Jan. 30th, 2011 11:11 pm (UTC)Also, awww, thank you, 希望你年年有餘!
(no subject)
Sun, Jan. 30th, 2011 05:02 pm (UTC):( I know what you mean.
Also sneaky you for backdating the post and thereby ensuring that I thought I had read it when I hadn't!
(no subject)
Sun, Jan. 30th, 2011 11:18 pm (UTC)But yes, and every bit of marginalization makes me want to cling to Taiwan and Chinese-ness and whatnot so much more.
(no subject)
Sun, Jan. 30th, 2011 05:56 pm (UTC)Thanks for the whole piece but for this in particular. Yes.
(no subject)
Sun, Jan. 30th, 2011 11:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Mon, Jan. 31st, 2011 01:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Tue, Feb. 1st, 2011 01:49 am (UTC)