As many of you know, I became a mom just a few months ago. My son, carried by a gestational surrogate, was born in October, five weeks early. He was healthy, and “big” for his gestational age (over six pounds), but he still had to be in a special care nursery for 11 days, just so he could learn to eat.
Recently, we celebrated his 100 Days with a dinner at a private club. Yes, we did NOT have a Chinese banquet. This isn’t too unusual with the Canadian generation (as many of us still want to honour heritage), but make changes so that it would be closer to things we like rather than what our parents expect. Of course, sometimes, it isn’t without a fight (my parents were okay with a non-Chinese dinner, but tried to get me to give out REAL red ginger eggs (i.e. hard boiled eggs) rather than egg shaped gingerbread cookies). We had about 45 people, made up of family and close friends dining on a buffet dinner of beef, fish, pasta and more.
I’m sure some of my parents’ friends were a little critical, but they definitely didn’t show it. They were polite and really enjoyed themselves. I’m also sure that outsiders looking in might find it odd as well. Usually these people come in the form of overly politically correct individuals who love to write about appropriation. I guess you can’t really appropriate your own heritage, but you sure as heck can bastardardize it. Would those egg-shaped gingerbread cookies be bastardization? To some, yes (though the bakery I ordered from thought it was a pretty cool twist on tradition). Someone I spoke with recently said fusion cuisine was “ruining” cultures and that one shouldn’t be “messing” with culture. If that’s the case, then I’ve been guilty many times over (see my cheddar mooncakes) and celebrity chefs like Susur Lee are even MORE guilty. Why is it wrong, anyway?
Many cuisines are twists. Hong Kong milk tea (black tea with condensed or evaporated milk and sugar) is a twist. So is yeen yeung (Hong Kong milk tea with drip coffee. Basically a simplified dirty chai). Most cha chaan teng dishes are twists on western cuisine. We don’t consider it “fusion” as it’s very low bar, diner/greasy spoon types of cuisine. It’s kind of “reverse” North American Chinese food. Fusion cuisine is very class-based. And yes, I find it sad that the over politically-correct find it wrong. Is it a millennial thing to correct the past? We can’t do that. We can only discuss why we think views of the past were wrong in our context and why we need to overcome what was done. We can’t erase it and expect all of us to do things the old way. What if we don’t want to?
I really don’t want to raise my son in a world of such hostility. I’m already feeling it myself and it’s extremely stressful. In fact, it’s ignorant to expect a child of immigrants to ONLY adhere to the old culture and do things the “old world” way if we are living in 2019 and exposed to many different cultures (especially when you’re living in a city like Toronto). Diversity is important, but we can’t sort and separate different cultures into different boxes. That’s called segregation and I thought that ended a long, long time ago. You sort and organize, say, socks. You don’t Kondo people or cultures. Cultures also change overtime. And I think so-called “diversity experts” don’t quite understand this. Fusion is cool.
What are your views on this? Was what I did “wrong?” Should I have done this the “traditional” way?
