Cultural Sensitivity and Ethnic Identity: the Unintentional Politicization of Chinese New Year's
For someone who has lived outside the the Chinese-speaking world for the past however many Chinese New Year's, the author already lost a real concept of what Chinese New Year's ought to look except hearing frequent news of people who accidentally injure themselves with fireworks. But thankfully, walking around the old town of Taipei on this warm New Year's eve, he felt that, for some reason in the back of his mind, what he saw is what Chinese New Year's should look like if it is authentic. The crowds praying at temples and buying New Year's snacks like pumpkin seeds looks legit enough.
Reflecting back two years ago, on the streets of London Chinatown, the author was lamenting something else it seems. The catering of the occasion for shopping and lame excuse for "cultural tourism" made the celebration not a cultural event but simply a string of overt, stereotypical symbols strung together for the foreigner's satisfaction with witnessing "oriental exoticism." And unfortunately as it seems, the author, walking down the people-filled streets, found himself, shockingly even for himself, squarely in the ranks of these foreigners looking for superficial symbols.
All the more interesting when one scans Western media outlets of the past couple of days. Plenty of articles are devoted to not just coverage of the Lunar New Year events, but are full of opinions that this holiday is now an "increasing global phenomenon being celebrated across the world by different peoples." Of course, this being Western media, the majority drew the causality back to "an increasingly powerful China on the global stage." But a real question remains, at least in this part of the Sinosphere: do people even want the concept of Chinese New Year's to become universalized?
Indeed, the very term "Chinese" New Year can be a sensitive one, considering similar celebrations occur in Vietnam, Korea, and here in Taiwan. Some very similar customs exist (getting together with family, giving gifts, eating good food, blessing others) but none of it is particularly unique to Chinese culture, and to be honest, unique to this particular holiday (don't people do pretty much the same thing for Christmas, Eid, Hanukkah, and of course, regular New Year's?) It should be said that the idea of Lunar New Year being Chinese is a Western construct, originated from the West's first exposure to it.
So given its weirdly ethnocentric nature outside of its native regions, Chinese New Year's cultural identity would become more contentious as people try to inform outsiders about it. Here in Taiwan, particularly, there needs to be a careful balancing act between the fact that Lunar New Year is part of local cultural identity and making sure outsiders understand that the Taiwanese cultural identity is a distinct one from China or any other Chinese societies out there. It makes for a much tougher task than explaining the clear-cut economic/political differences lied down in practice, law, and sovereignty.
To the untrained eyes of the author, and perhaps to the million of others who trekked through different parts of the Chinese speaking world, the Taiwanese attempt of making a uniquely Taiwanese Lunar New Year's seems not yet successful. Like what it does with many of its "native cuisines," the locals here seem to be taking what comes from other parts of the Sinosphere (not just foods from China, but also street snacks from Singapore and Hong Kong) and accentuating certain qualities about them, calling such methodologies "uniquely Taiwanese" in this process.
The problem is, for something like Chinese New Year's, the Taiwanese knack for taking multiple cultural influences (especially Japanese and American) and molding them together does not work. After all, it is something that does not exist much in those foreign cultures the Taiwanese have came to contact with. Force to draw inspiration only from the Chinese-speaking world, celebrating the occasion becomes even more culturally sensitive. The ambiguities of exactly what about the celebrations here that make it unique only to here challenges the independence of local identity.
If the author has to give a suggestion, he would say the Taiwanese is probably making the wrong efforts in this whole fiasco. Think about it. Christmas is no longer foreign to many Asian countries, including Taiwan. It does not have to be simply something imported to people who are not of European origin. The same can become true for Chinese New Year's. There is no reason to simply think of it as just local. It, as so mentioned in Western media, something universal that just have slightly different adaptations in different places, just like Christmas. This, ultimately, is what we should strive for for propagating this holiday, for ourselves as members of the global Sinosphere, and humanity.
Reflecting back two years ago, on the streets of London Chinatown, the author was lamenting something else it seems. The catering of the occasion for shopping and lame excuse for "cultural tourism" made the celebration not a cultural event but simply a string of overt, stereotypical symbols strung together for the foreigner's satisfaction with witnessing "oriental exoticism." And unfortunately as it seems, the author, walking down the people-filled streets, found himself, shockingly even for himself, squarely in the ranks of these foreigners looking for superficial symbols.
All the more interesting when one scans Western media outlets of the past couple of days. Plenty of articles are devoted to not just coverage of the Lunar New Year events, but are full of opinions that this holiday is now an "increasing global phenomenon being celebrated across the world by different peoples." Of course, this being Western media, the majority drew the causality back to "an increasingly powerful China on the global stage." But a real question remains, at least in this part of the Sinosphere: do people even want the concept of Chinese New Year's to become universalized?
Indeed, the very term "Chinese" New Year can be a sensitive one, considering similar celebrations occur in Vietnam, Korea, and here in Taiwan. Some very similar customs exist (getting together with family, giving gifts, eating good food, blessing others) but none of it is particularly unique to Chinese culture, and to be honest, unique to this particular holiday (don't people do pretty much the same thing for Christmas, Eid, Hanukkah, and of course, regular New Year's?) It should be said that the idea of Lunar New Year being Chinese is a Western construct, originated from the West's first exposure to it.
So given its weirdly ethnocentric nature outside of its native regions, Chinese New Year's cultural identity would become more contentious as people try to inform outsiders about it. Here in Taiwan, particularly, there needs to be a careful balancing act between the fact that Lunar New Year is part of local cultural identity and making sure outsiders understand that the Taiwanese cultural identity is a distinct one from China or any other Chinese societies out there. It makes for a much tougher task than explaining the clear-cut economic/political differences lied down in practice, law, and sovereignty.
To the untrained eyes of the author, and perhaps to the million of others who trekked through different parts of the Chinese speaking world, the Taiwanese attempt of making a uniquely Taiwanese Lunar New Year's seems not yet successful. Like what it does with many of its "native cuisines," the locals here seem to be taking what comes from other parts of the Sinosphere (not just foods from China, but also street snacks from Singapore and Hong Kong) and accentuating certain qualities about them, calling such methodologies "uniquely Taiwanese" in this process.
The problem is, for something like Chinese New Year's, the Taiwanese knack for taking multiple cultural influences (especially Japanese and American) and molding them together does not work. After all, it is something that does not exist much in those foreign cultures the Taiwanese have came to contact with. Force to draw inspiration only from the Chinese-speaking world, celebrating the occasion becomes even more culturally sensitive. The ambiguities of exactly what about the celebrations here that make it unique only to here challenges the independence of local identity.
If the author has to give a suggestion, he would say the Taiwanese is probably making the wrong efforts in this whole fiasco. Think about it. Christmas is no longer foreign to many Asian countries, including Taiwan. It does not have to be simply something imported to people who are not of European origin. The same can become true for Chinese New Year's. There is no reason to simply think of it as just local. It, as so mentioned in Western media, something universal that just have slightly different adaptations in different places, just like Christmas. This, ultimately, is what we should strive for for propagating this holiday, for ourselves as members of the global Sinosphere, and humanity.
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