This article from the L.A. Times makes exactly that point with regard to the upcoming "widow year", i.e. the year of the rooster in the Chinese lunar calendar, a year inauspicious for weddings. Whether or not young Chinese Americans are avoiding a 2005 wedding date depends upon a number of factors converging to form each individual's ethnic identity: sense of ethnic self, familial duty, joy in traditions, practicality, threshold for embarrassment, etc.
I'd never heard of the widow year before today, nor would my mother ever have mentioned it to me, much less expected me to abide by its dictates in setting a wedding date (to be honest, my mom would be glad to hear I'd eloped to Las Vegas, provided it meant that I'd married.) We never celebrated Chinese New Year; until I moved to San Francisco I never ate the traditional food, nor even knew what it was. Holidays, superstitions, medicines, so many touchstones of ethnic usage and ethnic identity my mother dismissed or avoided when it came to raising us. As a result, when I first got involved in the Asian American community in San Francisco, I felt like such a fake. There were so many things I didn't know that everyone else seemed to take for granted. I'll never forget the time I poured a drink for a Chinese American friend and he rapped the table with his knuckles and then had to explain to me that it was a mini-kowtow, a brief "thank you." A short time later, I saw my mom do it for some Chinese friends. Why hadn't she taught me this when I was a kid?
On the other hand, I had to unlearn serving other people at meals because I kept getting such funny looks and even rude comments. This is not least because those of us going to dinner as a group would always include a pan-Asian plethora: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, etc. I also forced myself to start taking the last piece of things if I wanted to -- everyone else did. My mom had drilled us in table manners and politeness to guests in part as a recognition of the fact that we would be called upon, in life, to attend a lot of strangers' dining tables in a lot of different cultures and would need to not offend them. But I suspect that it was also probably in part to prove to her Chinese friends and family that her mixed children wouldn't necessarily be crasser than their full blood ones. *Sigh* Sorry, Mom!
Anyway, for those of you still wrangling identity points, you have two days to hit Las Vegas before the widow year starts. If it was me, I'd be taking my red-silk-clad ass to the Elvis Chapel.
Comments