Musings

I'm always very bemused at how our ST journalists never fail to write reflective pieces on their sense of Chinese-ness (or lack of) during Chinese New Year. Some of them sound almost confessional and/or guilty, as if they're writing these to alleviate pangs of uneasiness at not having been more 'Chinese' prior to Chinese New Year. I conclude that it must be the garish 'in-your-face' kind of Chineseness during the festive period.

I assure you, I am rather sick of all this talk about being Chinese or not. I remember writing in this very same space a few months back about how Singaporeans seem besotted with the idea of 'purity' of racial identity--whether Chinese, Malay, Indian or 'Others'--even though we should in fact be embracing our very diverse, and thus rich, mixed heritage. I blame this on the government, whose CMIO policy of managing racial relations has actually in many instances highlighted differences and divisions precisely because there are only four 'pure' categories. Surely racial identities are much more complex than cheongsams for 'Chinese', baju kurungs for 'Malays' and saris for 'Indians'? And when you can't fit the Peranakan Chinese, Eurasians, Sikhs, etc. into any of the three above, there's always 'Others,' the one-size-fits-all label that neatly places those you can't quite place into one single imaginable group. (I can almost imagine the then minister or government scholar who came up with this CMIO model looking utterly pleased with himself for his ingenuity.)

My question is: at the end of the day, does it really matter whether you're a yellow banana or not? I thought that because we are a country that was constructed out of a mix of cultures and in fact, exhort and congratulate ourselves for a fine multi-cultural society, we should be more open-minded than that. Indeed, why should my cultural identity be equated with a fruit???

If I must use a fruit analogy, I can never decide whether I'm a yellow banana, or a 'reverse' yellow banana (yellow on the inside, white on the outside). In one of our many intellectually stimulating conversations, my sister and I both agreed that many Singaporean Chinese are actually reverse bananas, in that we tend to look very 'angmoh pai' on the outside but tend to be quite Chinese at heart. For me, I sometimes actually think I'm more 'ang-moh' in my orientation and outlook on life than 'Chinese', but I also hold steadfastly to my 'Chineseness' and profess to looking down on those who are too 'angmoh pai.' I can never decide which fruit I am.

Thus, I get very puzzled when I'm labelled 'cheena' for having gone to a 'Chinese' school. True, I listen to Mandopop and speak decent Chinese (in fact, so decent, somebody once mistook me for a mainlander Chinese/Taiwanese), but I also listen to Michael Buble, Clay Aiken, Vonda Shepard, Dido, etc. and speak pretty decent English, thank you. I watch Taiwan Ah Seng, Taiwan Thunderbolt, Channel 8 dramas, but I enjoy too CSI and the various editions of it, the Practice, American Idol, Amazing Race, etc--all-American shows. I also resist it when people think I'm very 'ang moh' for having gone to RJC; hey, I was the one who kept on whining about having no fellow RJCian listen to Chinese songs except the photocopying shop auntie.

The point is, it shouldn't matter at all which fruit you really are. Everyone else can call Singaporeans cross-breeds or even freaks (I personally have no preference). But Singaporeans have a unique culture that we should be celebrating instead of doubting. Ultimately, whether you're Singaporean Chinese, Malay, Indian or Other, as long as you're comfortable with your own cultural identity and know what you really are (mixed or pure), it shouldn't matter what label people put on you.