Poignancy

I was at my grandmother’s place for the recent Mid Autumn Festival. Usually I would go to festivities with a book to read or something to do because I see the whole idea of having a family gathering is to merely show my face. But this time, something has gotten into me. Perhaps it was a guilt of having been disrespecting tradition for so many years. Perhaps I was longing for a get away from all the books that I had since drowned myself into all these years. And so deliberately I left the pile of books that I had gathered at home before I leave.

It was hard at first to do absolutely nothing, because barely 5 minutes into sitting down on the couch staring at relatives arriving one after another and saying hi to some while avoiding eye contact with others, my hands were itching for something to do, so I grabbed the newspaper and began reading. But I managed to put it down a while later. Newspapers these days can’t be read, especially those with an overtly pro-establishment agenda. That’s another blog post altogether.

There is a sense of emptiness that pervaded my heart that night. Nothing seemed to excite me. Such gatherings felt different each time I attended them. We have a very big family and my grandmother has about 7 children and each of these children in turn have their own children. As a child I was really looking forward for such gatherings. So many people, so many conversations, so much joy. I once designed a house where we live together under one room and each nucleus family had a section of their own. But for the past few years, the number of family members had become countable. Grandfather had passed away in recent years. My cousin brother whom I grew up with is studying in the US. A few cousins got married to somewhere far away. A few can’t make it home for some unknown reasons.

Even among those present, we increasingly grew apart. A few cousins entered the teenage years and would rather stick their Ipod earphones to their ears rather than mingling around. My dad and uncles have their own issues to talk about as adults. The kids are busy with their games and playful acts. We simply grew into our own world.

I watched as the young kids of the family light up the candles (a Mid Autumn Festival tradition), burning anything like dry leaves or papers or basically anything within their reach. I remembered doing that as a child. Together with my cousin brother who was about the same age, though he was older, we were the notorious duo of the family. I remembered that childhood urge of “annihilation” when I was a kid. The enthusiasm had indeed waned over the years. I don’t feel like getting my hands dirty anymore. Watching from afar and rekindling the olden days were more than enough to overload my heart with a kind of poignancy and yearning for some unreturned nostalgic childhood events.

The family had indeed outgrow itself. I am now a young adult and I have my own things to care about. Ambitions, challenges, career, and future was all I think of. I could no longer stay carefree as I was as a child. Same goes to the teenagers, the adults, and the older ones. We were all compartmentalized in some ways. It was as if we had all been assigned roles by society, trying to live by the rules that the roles stipulate. In the absence of someone to talk to, I sat next to my grandmother. I don’t talk often with her anymore. We rarely meet up and even if we do, she has hearing problem can’t seem to hear what I said. She rarely spoke. She just sat at a corner and watched people.

My grandmother watched everyone, and that was somehow enough to put a smile on her face. She derived fulfillment from the mere presence of the family members, even though there are less conversations with her, less laughters about her. Listening to their voices, watching their faces, and knowing that they are still here and in the pink of health was her source of amusement. Out of nowhere she would tell me cousin X is taller now and cousin Y has grown fatter. Oh, I was also told I am now a good looking young men *brushes hair aside* which I am *clears throat* used to anyways. Grandmother was perhaps the most ardent audience of the family’s growth and changes. She perhaps understood more than me that changes is inevitable and the present is transient, gone in an eye blink. And she is quietly savoring every single moment of it.

As much as I like changes, there are certain things, certain good times that I wished could be eternized or immortalized. Such was what I felt about those good old days. Indeed it is now gone, existing only as immaterial state of mind, resulting in an emotional vacuum in the bosom of my heart.

The moon cakes tasted a little different that day. But it adequately fills the void in my stomach, and my heart, as I put each one of them into my mouth, knowing that very soon, modern day innovation would rendered the future moon cake in a different shape, smell, color, and content. For that, I savored every bite of it and indulged in the sweetness oozing out of the lotus paste. Just like how my grandmother had savored every moment of our presence.

On Language

As an ethnic Chinese who speaks both English and Mandarin, I must say there is indeed an unofficial “hierarchy” in the community that divides the English speaking ones and those more fluent in Mandarin. As it turns out, the English speaking ones are generally viewed as a class above their Mandarin counterpart.

When I was little, I attended a school where the medium of instruction was Mandarin Chinese. I recalled vividly that for some reasons I love writing essays in Mandarin. I would often take great lengths to incorporate Chinese idioms or words that screamed “verbosity” in my various composition.

Then, I went to high school. The medium of instruction was no longer Mandarin Chinese and it was of course a less homogeneous schooling environment. Mingling with people who spoke English with relatively high degree of proficiency admittedly aroused my inferiority complex. As a result, I constantly strive to improve my English proficiency. In the last few years of my teenage years, I had officially became westernized. I swapped Hong Kong drama for American TV series. I read all things English and shunned all things non-English. I mingled with English speaking people. I initiate conversations in English. And ultimately, my thoughts are couched in English. In the process, I begin to develop some sort of disdain for people who cannot converse well in English. Read the rest of this entry »