Also let's get this bitterness out of my system
Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate it! Call up those folks who will forever be disappointed in your choices as a human being and take every opportunity to shame you for your happiness and not being Asian enough! You know, because Asians are all about supporting family, just usually only in one direction.
I think this is mostly me reacting to the bullshit I keep seeing on Tumblr about how fucking great and non-sexist China is and how Asian culture is so family-oriented and I kinda just want to say Go back to reading your Amy Tan bullshit, white people. Except it's not just white people, because I see it from fucking Asians, too, usually western-born. The problem is Chinese culture as I have experienced and witnessed it is not about "family," it's about constantly paying back your parents and "ancestors" for the BEAUTIFUL GIFT OF LIFE THEY GAVE YOU, with an almost obsessive disregard for the fact that you as an individual might actually have, gasp! Your own individual wants and needs.
I can't go a month without my mother basically asking when I am going to "grow up" and leave The Sheepman, who I have been involved with for nearly a decade. My grandmother is constantly trying to introduce me and anyone else of marrying age in the family to another fucking Chinese person, meaning the son/daughter of some other Chinese person she barely knows and only maintains a relationship with because they, too, have offspring of marrying age. I had the Chinese father of a friend of a facebook friend proposition me ON MY FRIEND'S PAGE in the hopes of introducing his "rich doctor son" to me as soon as he found out I was a Chinese-American 20-something female, and then had to endure some of the rudest comments I have ever received about how "you young Chinese women keep getting involved in relationships where no one will want to marry you" and how I need to basically grow up before I die unmarried and alone. FUCK YOU.
And don't give me this bullshit about it just being "part of the culture" and how I just need to "understand where they're coming from." NEWS FLASH, FUCKHEADS: UNDERSTANDING WHERE SOMEONE COMES FROM IS NOT A ONE-WAY FUCKING STREET. I made a concerted effort to understand where my family was coming from and give them the benefit of the doubt for the majority of my life, and what did that get me? Two fucking breakdowns in the span of a week where even CASUAL CONVERSATION WITH THEM is too much for me to handle now, because the system I put in place to understand and identify with them had completely shattered from the stress of maintaining it.
So don't give me this bullshit about how "I know it's hard, but your family does this out of love for you!" because I bought into that garbage for my entire life and it has taken a long time for me to realize that that is NOT AN ACCEPTABLE WAY TO LOVE SOMEBODY. I don't care what your Asian-American Studies 101 class or your single year teaching ONE CLASS OF PRE-TEENS in China or how much you LOOOOOOOVED Avatar: The Last Airbender taught you about Asian culture. You try buying a plane ticket to see your Grandmother after she begged you to come visit her since it had been ten years, only to have her completely dismiss your existence upon every subsequent interaction until the night of the party came and she introduced you to her friend's unmarried son.
I know this is the shit that makes for a great indie comedy someday, but right now, this is my fucking life and I am fucking sick of people who have no fucking place offering their myopic opinion on my culture like they are some great authority on the inner workings of it when they haven't been burdened with that bullshit firsthand for their entire lives.
So, yeah. Happy fucking Lunar New Year, everyone.
This entry was originally posted at http://jnp.dreamwidth.org/2350.html:
I think this is mostly me reacting to the bullshit I keep seeing on Tumblr about how fucking great and non-sexist China is and how Asian culture is so family-oriented and I kinda just want to say Go back to reading your Amy Tan bullshit, white people. Except it's not just white people, because I see it from fucking Asians, too, usually western-born. The problem is Chinese culture as I have experienced and witnessed it is not about "family," it's about constantly paying back your parents and "ancestors" for the BEAUTIFUL GIFT OF LIFE THEY GAVE YOU, with an almost obsessive disregard for the fact that you as an individual might actually have, gasp! Your own individual wants and needs.
I can't go a month without my mother basically asking when I am going to "grow up" and leave The Sheepman, who I have been involved with for nearly a decade. My grandmother is constantly trying to introduce me and anyone else of marrying age in the family to another fucking Chinese person, meaning the son/daughter of some other Chinese person she barely knows and only maintains a relationship with because they, too, have offspring of marrying age. I had the Chinese father of a friend of a facebook friend proposition me ON MY FRIEND'S PAGE in the hopes of introducing his "rich doctor son" to me as soon as he found out I was a Chinese-American 20-something female, and then had to endure some of the rudest comments I have ever received about how "you young Chinese women keep getting involved in relationships where no one will want to marry you" and how I need to basically grow up before I die unmarried and alone. FUCK YOU.
And don't give me this bullshit about it just being "part of the culture" and how I just need to "understand where they're coming from." NEWS FLASH, FUCKHEADS: UNDERSTANDING WHERE SOMEONE COMES FROM IS NOT A ONE-WAY FUCKING STREET. I made a concerted effort to understand where my family was coming from and give them the benefit of the doubt for the majority of my life, and what did that get me? Two fucking breakdowns in the span of a week where even CASUAL CONVERSATION WITH THEM is too much for me to handle now, because the system I put in place to understand and identify with them had completely shattered from the stress of maintaining it.
So don't give me this bullshit about how "I know it's hard, but your family does this out of love for you!" because I bought into that garbage for my entire life and it has taken a long time for me to realize that that is NOT AN ACCEPTABLE WAY TO LOVE SOMEBODY. I don't care what your Asian-American Studies 101 class or your single year teaching ONE CLASS OF PRE-TEENS in China or how much you LOOOOOOOVED Avatar: The Last Airbender taught you about Asian culture. You try buying a plane ticket to see your Grandmother after she begged you to come visit her since it had been ten years, only to have her completely dismiss your existence upon every subsequent interaction until the night of the party came and she introduced you to her friend's unmarried son.
I know this is the shit that makes for a great indie comedy someday, but right now, this is my fucking life and I am fucking sick of people who have no fucking place offering their myopic opinion on my culture like they are some great authority on the inner workings of it when they haven't been burdened with that bullshit firsthand for their entire lives.
So, yeah. Happy fucking Lunar New Year, everyone.
This entry was originally posted at http://jnp.dreamwidth.org/2350.html: