The post below on Instagram by Sketchy Karr inspired my thoughts on this subject and related.
I have always loved that in Chinese, we have all these different names for relatives from whether they are on the father’s side or the mother’s side and if they are older than our parent or not when it comes to their siblings. I like how we have different names for our cousins if they are male or female and older or younger than you. GG is the oldest cousin on both sides and so I slip a reminder to him of his status and that includes responsibility to be a good role model, telling him he’s the 大表哥 “big elder male cousin”.
In our immediate family, it’s funny how the elder sibling becomes known and called by their title. My mother and sister called me 家姐 “family sister”, since you might refer to a stranger, a female salesperson as a 姐姐 (“sister” or “miss”) and it was through me not wanting to “lose” our Chinese names – forgetting we have them through lack of use – that part way through high school, I started referring to my sister by her Chinese name 文怡 (hence she is “MY”) and we continue using it to call her 文怡姨 because just 怡姨 sounds like 姨姨 where the latter is something you have your kids call a female family friend. And now we’ve taught MM and ourselves the nice habit of calling GG 哥哥 “elder brother” while we don’t find ourselves or taught GG to refer to MM as 妹妹 “younger sister”. Maybe it’s a matter that the younger sibling is more trainable?
We don’t have large families and since MY and I are both female, there’s that whole side of paternal titles that MY’s kids (not Chinese on the father’s side) will not use. Through NPY having a brother and sister and me having a sister, my kids will hear most of the major titles. Even though there were more elders in my mother’s generation, we live in Canada and only saw the closest family and didn’t meet distant relatives whose title is a tongue twister to say!
In university, one of my friend groups was Vietnamese and through that, I heard them addressing each other “anh”, “chi” and “em”. Not me, so I guess that tells you that I was not that much family since I saw these are honorifics that appear on family trees when greeting cousins. I think the same exists for Koreans and I’ve wished it was like that in Chinese amongst non-family members.
And while we’re at it, in university, one of my friend groups was Indian and I attended some international student events and I whole-heartedly admired how they would wear saris where the Chinese students were wearing prom dresses from Laura. All I knew back then for traditional Chinese wear was 長衫 (cheungsam) or 旗袍 (qipao) and they don’t exactly skim the body. In terms of personal issues, my mum had no use for them and had scathing comments to the aunties who would don theirs during celebratory dinners and not hold back an opportunity to call them 八卦 (“gossipy”) or 八卦婆 (“gossip”). Now that I come to think of it, at the downtown Dartmouth restaurant my father worked at, the waitresses all wore those short-sleeved embroidered red polyester tops with Mandarin collar and frog clasps, didn’t they.
I had a couple of 棉衲 (Chinese-style cotton-padded jacket) and besides what there was to wear it to, they weren’t readily available to purchase in Halifax. And so when I fell in with the Vietnamese group and joined their dance troupe, I was sure glad to get to wear some traditional garb (their ao dai) for a couple of annual performances and also when I was a bridesmaid.
Oh yeah. I wore cheungsam at my wedding at the tea ceremony. It was red as per custom and I thought it fit badly because it was a rental and I sure didn’t want to own a wedding red cheungsam (which I wouldn’t fit now, ahaha).
But more recently – it’s funny how I didn’t know all these years – I realized that cheungsam isn’t the end-all and be-all of Chinese dress. In fact, there are over 50 ethnic minorities in China with gorgeous cultural dress, some of which I’ve seen during dance performances like during the Chinatown Lunar New Year parade. I won’t try to summarize what the China Highlights articles for cheongsam and hanfu impart except that it seems that ethnic Han (which my mum confirms we are), have basically equal claim to both styles although the most common cheungsam seems to be the Shanghai-style. I am in love with the dramatic, flowing, forgiving hanfu.
But why do I feel as a second-generation Chinese-Canadian that I can’t pull off wearing traditional dress? Is it community and family pressure? “Who do you think you are, sticking out like that?” Is it fear that I’m an imposter concerned more with the fashion than the meaning? There is also the accessibility issue – online shops I’m not sure about shopping at, boutique prices I don’t want to pay, etc.
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