breakthesky.net » Family

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Manda — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:07:05 +0000

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, everyone! Enjoy a moon cake and light a lantern to celebrate this wonderful day.

This is one of my favorite Chinese holidays because I have some fantastic childhood memories associated with this festival. I remember standing on the back porch and my mom would light candle-lit lanterns. My brother and I got to snap brand-new glow sticks and wave them around in the air as we ran around the porch. Then, once we were exhausted from running around waving our lit glow sticks, we would go inside the house and eat moon cakes. My mom and brother would eat normal moon cakes, but my mom would always get me the kind without egg yolk because I dislike plain egg yolks. Those were happy, happy days. :)

Dinner With the Family

Manda — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 14:13:49 +0000

I grew up in a house where every member of my family would gather around the dinner table every night for a hot meal and eat together. My mother would suffer no excuses when it came to eating dinner as a family; it was a constant in her household. The only exceptions I can recall is that if one of us were not at home during dinnertime (frowned upon) or if one of us were sick (excusable).

I think a lot of her insistence on eating dinner together as a family is because it was a part of the day where everyone would gather ’round and eat, talk, and bond. It was her time to catch up with her children and for my brother and I to argue about something stupid. As my mom always cooked dinner, eating dinner together also had something to do with politeness and manners. She cooked the meal; it would have been the height of rudeness if one of us had taken a plate of home-cooked food and eaten it on our lonesome in our bedroom or something.

Now that I’m on my own and have a packed schedule, I find that I’m often eating dinner on my own, and usually on the go. I’ll grab a burrito at Chipotle and eat it once I get home from my internship. I’ll eat a bagel sandwich from Einstein’s Bagels during my afternoon shift at work. I’ll eat a bowl of Special K in the morning before I take off for the day. I’ll cook dinner for myself and eat it in front of the TV, saving leftovers for the next day. My schedule often allows me to get dinners with friends, but we almost always go out to eat.

I love the food and conversation I have with my friends when we go out to eat, but I miss the dinners at my house. I can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up in a house where family dinners didn’t exist. It’s not even the home-cooked factor (although I miss that dearly!), it’s the fact that I can’t understand how families don’t, or can’t, or won’t, come together for dinner. It makes me sad, because I have some great memories of dinners at my house when I was growing up!

Question of the Week: Does your family have family dinners where you all eat together? Or is dinner an individual occasion?

Nothing Beats Mom’s Cooking

Manda — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 03:17:11 +0000

Tonight, I made my first home-cooked meal in my apartment. Since I’ve been missing my mom’s home-cooked Chinese food, I decided to go with one of my favorite dishes of hers: chicken and broccoli stir fry. It’s incredibly simple to make, but it tastes really, really good.

I’m happy to report that my dinner was a success (the stir fry was served with a side of steamed white rice). However, it still didn’t taste as good as my mom’s. I guess nothing will ever beat my mom’s cooking – not even my own!

My Helicopter Mother and the Gynecologist Appointment

Manda — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:23:14 +0000

My mother insisted on driving me to the gynecologist this morning for my yearly check-up. While ordinarily this would have been an innocent enough gesture, the fact that she wanted to take me to the gynecologist meant only one thing: she wanted to know the details of my appointment.

Generally speaking, this is not always a bad thing. It’s good when a mother cares about the health of her child, after all. But it does have the tendency to get mighty awkward when it’s about gynecological health, because there are certain things about a daughter’s life that a mother doesn’t need to know about her daughter. Or at least, certain things MY mother never needs to know about me.

The awkwardness set in as soon as I returned to the waiting room after my appointment was over, where I found my mother reading a magazine.

How was it? What did she ask you? Did you have to have a pelvic exam? You have a bandaid on your arm – did you have a blood test? Why did you even need one?

I explained to her that I had a pelvic exam because they recommend all women to start getting them annually once they are 21, and that a blood test was routine. It wasn’t a lie (perhaps a lie of omission, at least for the first part; the blood test was actually routine) and it did the trick as she seemed satisfied with my answers. However, I can’t help but think that the whole situation could’ve been avoided if I could’ve just gone by myself to my damn gynecologist!

I Will Never Be Favored Because I’m Female

Manda — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 07:32:41 +0000

I’ve noticed something while traveling with my grandfather in mainland China: he always favors sons over daughters.

My mom once told me that my grandfather favored her brothers over herself and her sisters. I know that it is very traditionally Chinese for the males of the family to be favored over the females, but I could never quite understand why, even after all these years, my grandfather still favored my uncles over my mother and my aunts. His sons are the ones that have given my grandfather the most headache and grief out of all of his children; his daughters have done better for themselves in comparison. His daughters also look out for him more than his sons do. Whether that is because of a better sense of filial piety or because they are more capable of doing so, I can’t tell, but the fact remains that his daughters have caused less “trouble” (for lack of better term) than his sons.

This mentality of my grandfather’s has also passed down to how he views and treats grandchildren. The first of his grandchildren to go to university is male, the first who will get married is male, the first that went to study abroad is male, etc. Most of this has to do with the fact that most of my male cousins are older than my female ones, but even so, his granddaughters have done well for themselves but the grandsons are still favored.

The summer between high school and college, I went to Hong Kong to visit family. My grandfather congratulated me on getting accepted to university and I thought I had finally done something that was worthy in comparison of my male cousins, as I was the first granddaughter to go to university. Alas, turns out that wasn’t the case. My brother will start university in the fall, and my grandfather gives him extra care and attention that I never got the summer before I started college.

It’s not just about achievements like going to university, though. It’s about when we are at famous sites like Tiananmen Square or the Great Wall, my grandfather will want a photo with my brother, his grandson. Not with me, or my mother, or my aunt; he wants a photo with just my brother. Or when we are at dinner, and my grandfather will offer the last portion of rice or last piece of chicken only to my brother. If no one wants it, then he’ll take it for himself.

It’s not that my grandfather doesn’t love his daughters and granddaughters. He does, but it’s not in the same way he loves his sons and grandsons. It’s disheartening to know that no matter what I do or what I achieve, I’ll still be seen as inferior by my grandfather because I’m female. Not wholly unworthy, but not as worthy of attention and praise as the males in my family. It doesn’t matter if I get a doctorate or travel to Mars or become the first female president of the United States – I simply won’t ever be able to get the same kind of love that my uncles and male cousins receive.

Mahjong

Manda — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:21:14 +0000

Things I learned while playing mahjong with my family:

No way can a half-Asian newbie (aka me) ever beat family members that have been playing (and winning) this game for longer than I’ve been alive.
My brother has even less of a chance at beating my family members at this game than I do. Case in point: the one time I won a ton of money one round, he promptly lost it all his next turn (he and I were a team).
Never team up with my brother. When it comes to playing mahjong, two heads are not better than one!

Cavemen and Fire

Manda — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 02:44:24 +0000

“Our family is like cavemen and the camera is fire.”

So said my wise brother during a two-day family excursion to Guangzhou. The amount of time spent in front of minor sights with various combinations of people and different cameras used (since, in today’s digital age, it made more sense to use every camera in possession to take photos, rather than stick to one camera and share the photos with everyone at the end of the trip) was headache-inducing. There is a reason for the Asian tourist stereotype of taking photos for every little damn thing encountered.

I’m seriously thinking of investing in a green screen and presenting it to my family. It’s not like they are concerned about the sights; the photos are all about the people and have little to no focus on the background. A green screen would take care of everything.

The Underachievers

Manda — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:02:47 +0000

There are two cousins on my mother’s side that are the closest to my brother and I in age. This is both fortunate and unfortunate: fortunate because we all get along really well and have lots of fun when we get together, and unfortunate because it is too easy to compare our accomplishments (as we are in such similar places in our lives. Comparisons are inevitable when part of an Asian family, but it’s kind of pathetic when you come off as the underachiever because you actually are one in comparison. Take note, for example:

Cousin 1: Multilingual (Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, English, Shanghainese). Certified to give piano lessons at age 15. Youth Group leader. IB student. Slated to receive a bilingual high school diploma. Athletic.
Cousin 2: Multilingual (see languages listed above). Qualified for the official Shanghai youth soccer team. Youth Group leader. Guitarist. Very athletic.
Brother: Bilingual (Cantonese and English). Maintained aquariums as a hobby. Knows how to drive manual. Certified lifeguard.
Me: Trilingual (Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, English). Slated to graduate from college in a year with a bachelor’s degree. Baker. Accomplished cross-stitcher.

There is one thing my brother and I have undoubtedly in our favor, however. We are taller. (Lame, but we take what we can get.)

A Change in Travel Plans

Manda — Thu, 05 May 2011 00:37:57 +0000

I’m not going to Malaysia anymore. Or Singapore. Or Taiwan.

Instead, I’m going to Hong Kong.

Why? To see family.

When I was in Hong Kong over winter break, I saw all of my extended family, but not my immediate family. That was because my mom and brother are going to visit Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing in June. The original plan was that I would go to those cities with them, enabling us to spend one last summer together as a family. My brother starts college in the fall; I graduate next May – the time has come where it’s going to get harder and harder for all of us to get together, considering that we will be in three very different places in the US (DC, Chicago, and Hawaii). However, that plan fell through because of my own plans for the summer, which involved working and not much time to do the whole touristy thing.

I did some thinking and I realized that I could always go back to southeast Asia in the future and travel. But spending time with family right now, this summer? That I can’t always go back to. I haven’t seen my mom or brother since last August; if I didn’t choose to spend some time with them in Hong Kong instead of travel, I wouldn’t be able to spend quality time with them this summer, period. I’ll be alternating between tutoring and teaching English in Beijing and Shanghai; I would only have time to show my family around the two cities during week nights and weekends. That’s a far cry from being able to spend a solid week or two of quality family time in Hong Kong.

The thing is, I want to spend time with my family in Hong Kong more than any other city. To take my brother out to Lan Kwai Fong (蘭桂坊), to go shopping at Ladies’ Market (女人街) with my mother, to have all three of us sit down at a cha chaan teng (茶餐廳) or dim sum (點心) and enjoy delicious Hong Kong food together… These are memories we can’t create anywhere else in the world. Besides, I haven’t seen my family in almost a year. What better place to reunite than the one city we all call home?

There will be plenty of opportunities in the future to travel to explore various nooks and crannies of the world. But this time, I’m choosing family over travel. And I can’t wait.

This Is When I Know I’m In Trouble

Manda — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 05:54:10 +0000

Scene: I’m on the phone with my mother, getting told off for one of the various things I do (or don’t do) that bothers her. In an attempt to salvage the situation, I play one of my trump cards (or, “the news of a personal success that I save for informing my mother of when I need rescuing from a lecture”).

Me: My grade¹ for the semester got posted. I got a 96.
My mother: That’s not bad.
Me: …that’s 4 points away from a perfect grade.
My mother: Yes, four points.

Sometimes, I wonder why I bother with saying anything.

Because I was enrolled in an intensive language study program, the grades for my language classes were combined into one collective grade.