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| Eating dim sum before my wedding |
Family ties are very important in Asia,
as are social customs and roles. In the Chinese custom, there are
specific names for everyone in the family; for example, cousins have
different titles based on whether they're on your father's or
mother's side, and whether they are younger or older than you; it's
often considered rude to call aunts and cousins by their first names. For an
outsider, these customs can be difficult to learn. Attendance at family
get-togethers can be a non-negotiable. In our case, being here in
Canada gets us off the hook for some of the filial responsibilities,
but I sometimes feel stressed because I don't know if I'm messing up
without even realizing it, missing opportunities to call and
congratulate on holidays I didn't know existed.
It is said that women are the bearers
of culture. Because women tend to spend more time with children,
they are typically the ones that teach language and tradition to the
next generation. This comes into play with my marriage because Gil
doesn't really care about traditions. For the past few years, I asked
him whether he wanted me to buy something or do something for Chinese
New Year, but he has never cared to celebrate it. He is, to
paraphrase Dr. McCoy from Star Trek, “a doctor, not an
anthropologist”. He pays little attention to traditions or
cultural differences, so he rarely informs me of how our own
traditions differ, and what my role should be in his family. For now
that's not a big issue, but it may be harder when we have children.
While our kids will be a typical Canadian mishmash of backgrounds, I
don't want them to feel alien to their own family and culture.
Last year I read the book Secret
Daughter by Shilpi
Somaya Gowda. Though so much of the book is thought-provoking, I was
particularly impacted by a scene in which an American woman and her
Indian-born husband go to India to see his parents. She goes outside
for a walk and comes back with half of a sandwich, which she leaves
in the fridge. She has no idea that the meat in the sandwich is
defiling the whole kitchen for her in-laws. Her husband gets angry,
because she should have known that as the in-laws are strict
vegetarians, they can't have any meat in the house. I was really
moved by the scene, as it seemed like something that could happen to
us. When you're from that culture, it probably makes sense that
vegetarians = no meat in the whole house. Being from Canada, I would
never expect an extreme reaction like tossing out all the defiled
food. I would assume that at
most,
the in-laws may not appreciate meat in their fridge. Should the wife
have known? Maybe, but it seemed to me that the husband had not
adequately prepared her for his parents' culture and expectations,
and I was surprisingly offended about it. The scene captured one of
my biggest fears: That I would deeply offend my new family
unknowingly.
This
is a bit of a rambling entry, because I really don't have any
answers. The number of Canadians invoved in inter-racial and/or
inter-cultural marriages is rising rapidly, so there must be many of
us in this situation. (See for example this and this.) We can be thankful that, unlike the characters
in the scene above, we have access to Google and can at least read up
on our spouse's traditions; this is why I'm working so hard to learn Mandarin. Sometimes the most we can do, however,
is extend grace to each other and to ourselves as we navigate a new
world.
Are you in an inter-cultural marriage or relationship? How do you try to bridge the cultural gap?
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