Rebel Son

Rana pulled me aside the oth­er day and told me, I under­stand your cul­ture now. I under­stand your deci­sion.

She elab­o­rat­ed on a woman at work who had sent her daugh­ter to live in China. It was soon after the baby was born, and the grand­moth­er assumed respon­si­bil­i­ty of par­ent. The moth­er nev­er went to vis­it, only send­ing mon­ey for her upbring­ing.

That day, the grand­moth­er and grand­daugh­ter came to work, hav­ing flown into Canada to vis­it. No one at work had seen the child, two years old now. The whole time, she was ner­vous and shy, clutch­ing the leg of her grand­moth­er. When the moth­er tried to hold her, she would­n’t budge, only cry­ing the rau­cous, uncon­trolled, unin­hib­it­ed tears of a child.

Rana told me this with sur­prise and con­fu­sion in her face. It was hard for her to believe that any­one could do this to their baby. I wish I could say that I was sur­prised.

This child was too young to know bias or bit­ter­ness. She only knew what she felt, a being of pure emo­tion. The woman who was sup­posed to be her moth­er was no clos­er than a stranger, and for the first time, Rana was exposed to this.

I’ve always con­fid­ed in Rana about my own rela­tion­ship with my par­ents. She’s one of the few who real­ly care, ask­ing me if there’s been any news on a reg­u­lar basis, espe­cial­ly since I cut all ties. We nev­er argue, but she’s nev­er ful­ly agreed with me. She always tried to give me a mater­nal per­spec­tive, being a moth­er of three her­self. I’ve admit­ted that I don’t under­stand what it means to be a par­ent, but that day, she real­ized that she nev­er under­stood what it means to be a child of the Chinese cul­ture.

It’s cold. It’s mate­r­i­al. Most Chinese par­ents can only express their love with mon­ey.

In this way, my par­ents showed me that they loved me. They prob­a­bly think they did the best they could, but as a child of the North American cul­ture, I felt noth­ing. I nev­er knew what it was to be loved.

And Rana said, You were the one who rebelled against this.

7 comments

  1. One of my room­mates 2 years ago described some­thing sim­i­lar to me. He was always vague­ly refer­ring to being sent to China for the sum­mer if his grades dropped. I liked to think he was jok­ing, but he said it hap­pened to his cousin. I imag­ine it’s hard when par­ents and chil­dren are from two dif­fer­ent cul­tures and don’t real­ly know each oth­er enough to pro­vide any oth­er con­nec­tion oth­er than liv­ing arrange­ments.

  2. You, your gen­er­a­tion lev­el, might be the first that real­ly “gets” love, because yours is the first where afflu­ence is not only achiev­able but assured. Your life is super­flu­ous to actu­al­ly sus­tain­ing any­one in your fam­i­ly (not how it used to be).

    My expe­ri­ence of 15 years of liv­ing with 2 Chinese fam­i­lies (as a white attach­ment) is that low­er class Chinese show much more love to to their chil­dren than upper class Chinese. But either way, sons have a heavy bur­den, both in being loved or not, in expec­ta­tions to per­form in the man­ner accept­ed by the par­ents, and only in that man­ner will you be reward­ed. Parents fig­ure their gen­er­a­tion did it; now it’s your turn. Daughters are either left in the dust or pushed to become beau­ty queen schol­ars and mar­ry wealth.

    But even in my expe­ri­ence, your par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion is harsh. My Chinese friends have made peace with their par­ents, but they still don’t relate to them much. Of course that’s after one fled home at an ear­ly age, and the oth­er near­ly beat up his mom before she got the point that he was inde­pen­dent.

  3. I can see that in my best girl­friend’s fam­i­ly too..
    buy­ing love, or tokens there of.
    ulti­mate­ly you got­ta do what sup­ports YOU, because noth­ing else makes sense…unless you live ‘for’ some­one else and their hap­i­ness.
    try­ing to live your life to make your­self hap­py, is NOT self­ish,
    it shows matu­ri­ty.
    Because if WE are hap­py, then we can infect the world…
    but if we live to cre­ate hap­pi­ness in oth­ers..
    it’s a hol­low exis­tence

    Its about heal­ing over the gen­er­a­tions…
    no mat­ter where they hail from.
    I’m glad your col­legue was able to gain some per­spec­tive,
    and there­by become more sup­port­ive of you.
    and
    least that lil girl has her grand­moth­er’s love
    at that age she would­nt even know the dif­fer­ence.

    cheers,
    from the best place on earth!

  4. @Reno — I always hoped that love was uni­ver­sal, some­thing that worked cross cul­ture. Maybe it’s just defined dif­fer­ent­ly in each one. It may have been as hard for my par­ents as it was for me, but I real­ly don’t know. I did my best to be the “good son”, and they seemed pret­ty sat­is­fied. It made me feel like a tro­phy though.

    @Xibee — I’ve nev­er thought about the fact that afflu­ence, or sta­bil­i­ty as the way I see it, is assured for my gen­er­a­tion. I’m guess­ing that most par­ents try to pro­vide for their kids every­thing that they did­n’t have, and in my expe­ri­ence this is true, even for Chinese peo­ple. Of course, I also used to joke that kids were a very long term investe­ment for the Chinese.

    There’s an inspi­ra­tional non-fic­tion book I’ve been read­ing called From Me To We, where two broth­ers trav­el the world for char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions, and going from one end of the eco­nom­ic spec­trum to the oth­er, they real­ize that the poor­est peo­ple are also the most hap­py. Maybe there’s some­thing about the pur­suit of mon­ey, where the kids are left behind. At one point I could go a whole week with­out see­ing my dad, just because he was moon­light­ing and worked long hours.

    You’re right about the sons hav­ing the biggest bur­den. I hap­pen to be the old­est son, an only child, and sec­ond-only male for my gen­er­a­tion. This prob­a­bly com­pound­ed the pres­sure some­what sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

    I always thought that I would make my peace one day (in fact, I thought I reached it at one point), but not any­more. Things have sim­ply gone too far. It’s unfor­tu­nate, but it’s not worth the poten­tial pain.

    @Amy — You’re right, Amy. Prostrating myself for my par­ents, putting all my feel­ings aside, has only made me bit­ter and resent­ful. It still affects me to this day. I can’t speak of cer­tain expe­ri­ences in my child­hood with­out break­ing down. It’s time to for­get all that. I’ve lived my life for my par­ents since I was born, but it’s time to live for myself.

    The good side is that even though this has ruined any mean­ing of a “blood bond”, it’s strength­ened oth­er rela­tion­ships. My friends are my fam­i­ly now.

  5. As always, I’m just glad you have friends and col­leagues around who sup­port you and try to under­stand. I sup­pose it’s still hard for me to “get it”, because while my moth­er has always been there for me, I see her great­est sac­ri­fice was work­ing like a dog to give us kids every­thing we need­ed. I know how unhap­py that made her and how unhap­py it would have made me but she did it just the same. I guess it’s vast­ly dif­fer­ent because she gave me every­thing she could that I need­ed (emo­tion­al and finan­cial). There are always gaps that can’t be bridged between gen­er­a­tions but she tried *real­ly* hard. As for the cul­tur­al thing, I’ll prob­a­bly nev­er under­stand that, even though I spent most of my teenage years in sub­urbs and schools dom­i­nat­ed by asian fam­i­lies (of course, it’s prob­a­bly wrong to lump all of Asia togeth­er as well). It’s also fan­tas­tic that you can use your blog to help sort out your feel­ings and share them with all of us. Thanks Jeff.

  6. Yours is the most stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful blog I’ve come across in years. I’m so glad you’re list­ed in OttawaStart. I’ve read months of your posts today (like a gour­mand at a gourmet meal) and your artic­u­late­ness, video, music, pho­tog­ra­phy and will­ing­ness to express your­self leave me at risk of being unseem­ing­ly effu­sive.

    And so far as what you actu­al­ly said here, so far as divorc­ing the fam­i­ly, some­times rela­tion­ships reach that point. We believe we can leave friends or spous­es or God but par­ents are exempt some­how?

  7. @Bean — My par­ents gen­er­al­ly did try very hard to make sure they had mon­ey, but it was­n’t so much of a sac­ri­fice for them as a dri­ve for more, like a thirst or greed. I know that part of it was to make sure that I was set­tled finan­cial­ly, and for this I’m grate­ful, but I do believe that if they tried as hard on the emo­tion­al end, I would­n’t feel such acri­mo­ny.

    @Pearl — Thanks for your gen­er­ous­ly kind com­ment. You’re absolute­ly right about divorc­ing fam­i­lies, some­thing I’ve nev­er real­ized. Since they’ve just divorced, it would be pret­ty hyp­o­crit­i­cal for them to judge me on nev­er want­i­ng to deal with them again.

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