Illustration by Ashley Wong
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As a kid, I had a love-hate relationship with playing the piano and Chinese lessons. The importance of both was drilled into me by my parents whether I enjoyed them or not. And since they interfered with my Friday nights and after-school social times, I resented both.
Why couldn’t I join my friends who didn’t have to sit through Chinese classes or practice hours and hours at a piano? In typical Chinese fashion, I fumed silently but obeyed outwardly, dutifully attending years of mandatory “enhanced extracurricular education,” which also included study strategy and math class.
Growing up CBC – that’s Canadian-born Chinese – to parents who came from Hong Kong, I was quick to shed my ancestral identity in order to be accepted by my Canadian peers. Once when I was 12, I was admitted into Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and thought I was in heaven, eating hospital dinners of meatloaf, mac and cheese and chicken fingers instead of the steamed rice, bok choy and braised black bean spare ribs my mom would make at home.
Leaving our homestead for the last time was tougher than I expected
Since diversity is viewed as a strength in Canada, it wasn’t too long into early adulthood when I started to reclaim the Chinese parts of my identity, which I had eschewed earlier in life.
Now I am a mother. And from this vantage point, it’s clear that I took those piano lessons and Chinese classes for granted. Not only did they teach me how to play the piano and communicate in Cantonese, but they also taught me discipline and the opposite of instant gratification since both skills take years to master. Looking back, my parents only did what they thought was best for my sister and me. Now, when I look at my son, the “musts” my parents impressed upon me are also finding its way to him.
It’s amazing how being a parent distills your life values when you’re responsible for raising another human being. In fact, I’m surprised at how strongly I’ve returned to my roots. The teenager in me, who all too readily traded what made her distinct for what made her common, would be shocked.
Language, in particular, is essential to taking up cultural identity. In my anthropology undergrad, I read tomes detailing the lives of traditional and modern civilizations. My linguistic studies showed that across time and space, when language was restrained or banned from use by a people, the results erased the cultural and sometimes national identity that language is affixed to.
Language isn’t just the medium by which a people communicate with each other; it is the key (or “code,” as anthropologists call it) to accessing an entire world of rich nuance, meaning and belonging to one another that only a community member would understand. Think back to a time you travelled to a country where you didn’t know the language – how successful were you in really intimately understanding where you were and why the dynamics around you were important? In Canada, the challenge is not integrating and becoming Canadian – that’s easy since we live in full immersion. It’s retaining what makes you culturally distinct. Language is critical to staying connected with your roots.
Which is why I am concerned that my son might lose touch with his Chinese background.
I am happily married to a Canadian man, so my son will always have that wonderful mix in his identity. But we don’t speak a lot of Cantonese at home, and living in small-town Ontario, the nearest Chinese lesson is at least an hour drive to the city. What if I cannot effectively cultivate the Chinese part of his identity?
I often think about my relatives who still reside in Hong Kong, especially with protests against the Communist Party in the news so often. What does it mean to be a Hong Konger? On a subconscious level, their struggle to balance the “one country, two systems” way of life heightens my resolve to imbue Chinese identity to our son.
If people can risk losing their freedoms and values to state forces, which they have limited control over, how much more would I encourage the Cantonese language and Chinese values to our son, to whom I have motherly influence?
Sure, he can learn a second language – Cantonese or French would be an obvious choice as a Canadian student. But to learn a language from your mother, from which we derive the phrase mother tongue, is something altogether elemental, native, instinctual.
Learning the language of your mother is as primal as giving birth. From a mother tongue, children learn creature comforts, personal habits, an orientation of the world, taste memories and icons that inform nostalgia.
Why does it matter that my son may lose touch with his Chinese roots? Because he could lose all the richness a Chinese heritage can offer to his mixed identity. I want him to be proud to be Chinese Canadian. I want him to be able to explain why we eat moon cakes; to be able to communicate with his Pau Pau and Gong Gong (maternal grandparents); and honour his elders by serving them before helping himself.
Ultimately, I know that he will make his own choices. But as a parent, I don’t want to diminish the opportunity to inform him of his mother tongue. Hopefully, he will be able to answer to all of who he is. And if it starts with piano and Chinese lessons – and all the complaining that may ensue – then I’m willing to take that risk.
Valerie Lam-Bentley lives in Orangeville, Ont.