This year, I sit myself, a person in a table of ten, finding the meal replaying in front of me, a series of replays, a set of repetitions that make up the Chinese Reunion Dinner.
The Chinese reunion dinner heralds the Chinese Lunar New Year. It is the vanguard of all traditions, it is the symbol of a year well-spent; you end a year with your family, and you start the new one with your family as well, all in one meal, in one sitting.
These reunion dinners are like well-rehearsed shows. The atmosphere is repetitive. We wear our best happy faces; the house is painted red if we can help it, swathed in red-gold New Year paraphernalia: lanterns, silk knots, plaques, calligraphy-ed blessings and cut-outs. The smell of fresh fruit for offering the gods perfumes the house, fresh flowers and new-year willows are arranged to welcome the relatives. The house is literally swept twice for good measure (no sweeping away new wealth on the first day of Chinese Lunar New Year!).
The second repetition of reunion dinners, is the food. On the menu: Fishprawnsandgreenshoots (amongst others) for wealthprosperityabundance (amongst others). But god, in our house, there must be white cabbage soup. Not any old soup, but the kind with the most superior stock, infused and sweetened by the flavours of fish maw, abalone, fresh meatballs, and chicken stock. It’s standard good fare. You don’t have reunion dinners with sub-standard. Everything is the best, and cooked in excess.
The day of the Reunion Dinner, routines are repetitive. The silk knot gets hung up, the soup brews, the relatives arrive. New babies are cooed at, children run skitter skatter, increasingly bored every year, adults mingle, talk is light-hearted. We then sit down for dinner. We sip wine (or F&N) and toast to a bountiful year. We finish dinner and we clear off. Same-same.
But I believe, the biggest repetition of reunion dinners are the natures of the attending personalities.
Take my parents for example, the hosts of The Reunion. The anxious hen of a mother (this feature dinner, she is the wife) trying not to literally pour the consumable contents on the table- a day’s worth of preparation -down the throats of her guests. The head-of-the-table-man-of-the-manor father, who shifts his shoulder onto table, points chopsticks into air- and calls out to everyone, “Tuck in, Cheers!”, his heart filled with a chauvinistic This is on me! kind of pride.
And the others: my overly-obliging-courteous but usually rebellious brother; the loquacious uncle with full of praise (yearly repetitive praise) for the food; his wife duly appreciative, requesting recipe proportions; and my other quietly-sombre uncle upon tossing his two-cents worth into dinner conversation –two cents mostly unheeded (he who is recovering from alcohol intoxication, recovering lost respect), along with his long-suffering wife full of due small talk. Their children beg the same personalities: Bryan is an insolent ten-year-old, his sister without-temper and naïve, baby brother a curious cat with a sweet disposition, the twins, one as boisterous as the other is calm, both as unwilling to recite the Tang poems their mother begs for every year.
The unchanging personalities include me. I re-discover I’m still the daughter, and that l certainly could still be the kid if I want to be. Non-alcoholic, non-gambler, non-conversationalist (children are silent at the Chinese dinner table), non-adult. Likewise, this year, no one expects me to change. And I don’t have to change if I don’t want to. This year though, sitting at that table, I wished at that moment, I could have been a bit more different, less a daughter, less a kid, more a woman, more an adult. Non-repetitive.
I suppose my observations of the repetitions should conclude and point to something meaningful here.
This is it. I suppose this. I suppose- that as a result of these repetitious atmospheres, food, rituals, and personalities- the yearly Chinese reunion dinner is a huge exercise for maintaining existing family hierarchy, achieving textbook harmony and order. If you were to watch a video-recording of our lives as a family, with all the other scenes cut out except the yearly Chinese reunion dinner get-togethers- you’ll realize the dinners repeat themselves almost seamlessly. There are minor blasé differences, but essentially, we are repetitive. After all the cuts, you would feel like our lives only consist of the same Chinese Reunion Dinners. Chinese Reunion Dinners that are the same, year after year.
As a family (extended or core), we might have strayed during the year, we might have had our differences, we might have fallen short of the image of the perfect Chinese family along the way, but if there is one time in a year where there is any perfect Chinese family to speak of, for us, it is during Chinese reunion dinners.
To young, perplexed Chinese persons around the world, Tuck in, Cheers.
January 22, 2009 • 4:03 pm 0
driving is a skill, driving instructors are metaphorical
My driving instructor is not a dislikeable man. In fact, being with him on the roads as a new driver is one of the safest feelings I own these days. He is an older man from days of the seventies, I think of him as sort of a radio. You know he says the same things at the same bends, gives the same advice and makes the same corrections for his students at certain junctions. Having been a driving coach for nearly three decades, he is like a long-suffering vehicle himself on the road, a man who lays out his speeches like well-planned roads and eatsbreathes diesel advice.
Whenever it gets too stressful for me as learner driver- over-paranoid on gear switching, stalling my engine in middle of a road, I invite forth his brand of heartland uncle banter. Whenever he gets too repetitive in his seasoned but confusing commands: ‘Switch gears now. The car is yours to control, so pace yourself. BUT switch gears NOW’, I switch his motor-mouth radio on. Suggestive conversation starters like, ‘So, the government just revealed the budget.’ Or, ‘Malayasian traffic is crazy.’ He will then start and go on and on with little to contribute on my part. Only a couple of mmms and yes-I-agrees and a smattering of conversational probes like, ‘oh why? ’ suffice.
Stories, opinions, beliefs then spill forth- topics that are well-oiled from coffeeshop discussions, beliefs strengthened from the consent of band of brothers in the drive-instructing circuit. He talks about pre-developed Singapore in its kampung days. Rising fuel costs. The uncorrupted white-shirted government and its cut-throat but wise policies. The theme of late: ‘Our kind is expiring’ he says. These days, everything seems to be in its last generation.
I secretly admire people like him. I imagine the way they think about life, and I think it’s a happy life they lead. It’s a kind of simplicity that disguises wisdom. It is a steadfast way at approaching all milestones on your path, a realistic way of approaching mean-hearted-trouble in life, sometimes, with a bit of mean-heartedness on his part.
As a safety ambassador on the road, he advocates road etiquette- giving way to others on the road, being responsible and giving appropriate signals to oncoming traffic. But ever so occasionally, you see a complementary but more steelly side arise in him. I am cutting into someone’s lane now for example– we move alongside the other vehicle for a while as my inexperienced driving-self begs for entry, but then my instructor becomes assertive on my behalf, he grabs the wheel and cuts belligerently into desired lane. The car behind me is annoyed, he honks (It is always a man who sounds the horn) we show him our Honda butt.
The instructor tuts. “Never mind him. I gave him so much time to proceed ahead and he didn’t. What’s he so mad about now? Hasn’t he been a learner before?”
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