The Power of “Hybrid” Familial Bond and the Chinese-Filipino

On many previous instances in this blog, the idea of familyas the center of Filipino life and identity has been visited andrevisited.  The lengths for which the concept of family matters here, in all matters from having large number of kids and cousins, to business connections and political patronage, are omnipresent and omnipotent.  In a place where social safety net is primitive and sense of trust in civic society is low, those family ties become necessary preconditions for many issues to be resolved.

However, even after these extensive observations of howpowerful the family can be, a much closer look at it shows that what bind the family together as basic social units are not simply a matter of mutual benefits and a lattice of individual interests among its members.  It is actually also genuine intimacy among the members, whose closeness allows honest interchanges of personalities, habits, and even vices at levels of openness those from East Asian and Western traditions may find absolutely shocking.

For the author, nothing illustrated this phenomenon than finding four siblings of different genders and rather vast age gaps (one of whom was underage) going clubbing, dancing, smoking, and getting drunk together (although much like what coworkers seem to do here as well).  Although the negative influence the older siblings are having on the younger ones can raise more than one eyebrow in this situation, the sight of such is still a curious one to witness.  If anything, this may be one of those rare “culture shocks” the author haven’t had chance to experience in a long time.

In the individualistic Western tradition, the family is more than a biological bond and logistic support for growing up.  Maturity symbolizes ability to throw off its yoke of familial oppression and ad hoc guidelines.  Siblings take different paths to search for themselves, independent of one another.  Their paths may cross and coincidentally their similar interests may bring them closer, but ultimately, individual seeks to be independent, and any excess display of family ties is only a show of lacking independence.

In the East Asian tradition, on the other hand, the siblings rather take on a role of competitors fighting for limited resources of theirparents, whether attention, support, or money.  Any display of intimacy is to be taken with a grain (or more realistically, a pretty big chunk) of salt.  There are perceived to be fake, measures to buy time for outmaneuvering or extract vulnerabilities for leverage and blackmail to be used later.  The usual stoicism of the East Asian family demonstrates the underlying competitions.

So, it is even more curious for the author to note that the four siblings in today’s subject are all ethnic Chinese born and bred in the Philippines, a country with a people that often prides themselves in long history of exposure to Westerntraditions.  And they seem to display characteristics of both sides: openness to Western culture (clubbing, English, American pop music, to name a few) under the watchful eyes of Chinese traditions (strict parents who forbid smoking, going out late at night, and disapproving romances, so the author has heard)

Then, the intimacy of sibling relations on display here may be thought as more than just another episode of Filipino family power.  It could be, in a way, Western-style rebelliousness against Chinese cultural dominance at home, but expressed in a highly non-Western collective conformist fashion.  But thoroughly Filipino, the conformity is displayed with family as unit rather than communities of equal social class and wealth, as is so often the case in East Asian societies.

For the author, though, simply coming face to face with this sort of situations caused by cultural hybrid is in itself fascinating.  For a strong believer in “glocalization,” there is no subject more fitting for the label than a Tagalog-speaking Chinese girl wearing Western-style clubbing dress, exposing her Chinese name tattooed on her back.  The question now is how do these three influences interact and shape the person and all her intimate bonds with her siblings…