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Aside from all the uncertainties of a teenage day, for me there is one thing I can always count on. One thing rain or shine I know will never fail me. It is the inevitable fact that as long as I am with my parents, I will have rice for dinner. And until a certain point in my life, the question of “Why every night?” had never occurred to me. I simply accepted it as tradition. Tradition is a hard foe to face, but eventually I looked in its stubborn eyes and insisted on Tuesday night being “Campbell’s Chunky Soup night”. For those of you who might remark, “It’s not worth the fight over Campbell’s Chunky Soup,” you have to realize that an issue far greater than taste is at hand. I do not dislike rice but rather object to what it stands for. And to me what the rice represents is a tie to a culture I don’t identify with, and of which I do not feel a part. This shackle placed on bi-cultural adolescents without our consent, is the pressure to identify with our culture rather than assert our individuality. My parents are fairly untraditional parents, and I feel that it is because of this that I am given the perspective into who I am and who I might have been. They are not untraditional in the sense that they preach “un-Chinese” views, but rather they understand them even if they don’t agree. The keystones of the Chinese culture are knowledge, hard work and humility, while personality, social skills and a sense of individuality take a back seat. Need proof?
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