平凡中的美味

平凡中的美味

If I haven't already mentioned this to you in passing, or if you haven't already figured it out by now: I am working on improving my Mandarin.

I grew up around people who thought it was cool to speak lousy Mandarin, and where getting a D or flunking the subject was thought to be a hoot and something we even bragged about. We listened only to Western pop and conversed only in English, and it didn't help either that my dad and aunt spoke Malay as a second language. I think we foolishly believed that we were English elitists.

I can't explain what brought about this change, but I suppose a combination of factors jolted me awake. There was that week in Shanghai when I struggled with conversing fluently in Mandarin, and then there's the ongoing challenge to translate simple terms in English to my nine-year-old piano kids each week. But perhaps at the root of it all, it took being with someone from an entirely different culture to make me embrace my own.

There were several instances in France where I felt shunned because I was Asian, and I don't think I've ever been so aware of my own ethnicity before that. I admit that it wasn't the greatest feeling, but it did make me realize how proud I was to be who I am.

I like our food, our superstitions, and the inexplicable mish-mash of customs that come with a Peranakan-Cantonese marriage. I have even grown to like the things I'd disregarded or which used to grate on my nerves: my sister's loud Cantonese, my mom's insistent superstitions and the hustle and bustle in the family kitchen weeks before the Chinese New Year. Even the crowds at Chinatown jamming up the roads don't bother me. Instead, I find the array of bright lights, chattering hawkers and jostling families extremely festive.

I mentioned that I didn't know what it was that brought about this monumental ease of being, but I am guessing that I do now. I've embraced who I am, and the odd characters who make up my family. I think we have all tried to be somebody else at some point in our lives, but I've learnt to see myself through my family's eyes, and I love being the person they love. I'm seeing the familiar through a renewed perspective, and that shift in perspective has allowed me to find joy in the tiniest details, like my mom laughing at my weirdly accented Cantonese in the mornings.

And that my friends, to quote Smiling Pasta, is 平凡中的美味 (the beauty in the ordinary).