多元化社会中的中国文化

Chinese culture in a multi-cultural society ● 林丽珠 By Juliana Lim

Red doors and green hats! My periodic awakenings to things Chinese have always been colourful experiences!

I was born over four decades ago of Westernised Chinese parents. The proof of my "mixed" parentage is my

triple-barrelled European name, I might add, without the Mandarin appendage. I grew up in a series of convent schools, wore bonnets to early morning Mass and sang Gregorian chant, the popular European classics, English & French folk songs.

Mandarin lessons were the bane of an otherwise happy school life. I have only bad memories of it! Although I never suffered laoshi's wrath, I recollect many knocks on the knuckles for less fortunate classmates. Laoshi not only failed to inspire, she repelled us all from class and, the language. Fortunately, it was not compulsory then to pursue Mandarin as a General Certificate Examination subject and I dropped it like a proverbial ton of bricks in Secondary Two.

The neighbourhood of my childhood was an interesting one. It was richly multi-cultural, our families aligned in our terrace houses in this colourful sequence-Dutch Eurasians with pink Honolulu's and grest semolina cake, Malays with great Hari Raya food platters, Tamils with equally great Deepavali platters, and then, a Portuguese Eurasian family with the most beautifully decorated iced birthday cakes.

The Chinese families nearest mine were a Cantonese and a Hainanese family. As I spoke only a smattering of Teochew, I did not mix much with them. I preferred instead to hang out with my pop-song loving Eurasian and Malay buddies. I found my Chinese neighbours' ways crude -- they cleared their throats loudly and spat out phlegm into unwashed spittoons every morning. They raised their shrill voices across the playing field, albeit in not unmusical tones, to summon children home, to summon pet dogs home or simply in petty quarrels. I didn't think I was missing much. The only fond

memories of my Chinese neighbours are of silver-haired Ah Por next door who gave me generous hongbaos at Lunar New Year and occasionally, the four-cornered doll pin cushions which she made herself.

I grew up and out of the neighbourhood not giving much thought to my Chinese-ness or lack of it. I always have, and still feel firstly, Singaporean and secondly, Asian. I am as comfortable entering a Hindu temple, a mosque, a church and a Chinese temple. I veer towards the earthy art of India, Indonesia and Malaysia. I am less excited by the classical shan-shui paintings, preferring the modern works of Wu Guanzhong and Nie Ou.

I received a jolt in the late 1970s when I landed a position in a community service organisation. It was a cultural shock to work with colleagues who spoke mainly in Mandarin or ungrammatical English; and who exhibited

mind-sets quite different from my own.

Green Hats " was my crowning achievement" in that phase. In my enthusiasm to synchronise posters, brochures and sunshades for a community event, I authorised the production of green sunshades for guests and officials. Thousands of green hats were delivered on the eve of the event and upon their distribution, unleashed loud wails of objection from my male colleagues that must have resonated throughout the island. I spent a penitential weekend augmenting the green with just a touch of red, to make the hats slightly more acceptable. How on earth could I have known that green hats on men signalled that their wives had cheated on them? Hiterto, I associated green hats with Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest!

It took another 10 years for me to awaken to the realisation that I was missing a fair bit by ignoring my Chinese heritage. Isolated incidents prompted this sentiment-not being able to reciprocate the chatter of a Tasmanian who had been tasked to host me on the strength of his Masters degree in Chinese Studies. How disappointing for the poor man! Business meetings with Chinese visitors whose facial expressions betrayed pity as they watched me struggle in conversation.