Culture Appreciation

I grew up in the Philippines, but all throughout my early years, I was surrounded by Chinese people. I had little idea what other cultures were all about.

When I went to a non-Chinese college, my perspectives changed. Back in High School when every person in my class was Chinese, here in college, I belonged to the minority. The rest were pure Filipinos. My Chinese features made some classmates think that I was a foreign student from Mainland China.

Many of my classmates became curious about my culture. They would approach me and ask me to translate different words in Chinese. They would even ask me to translate their names to Chinese. Seeing me write Chinese characters amazed them.

Looking at how my Filipino friends got so interested in my culture made me feel proud of my heritage. It was also then that I started seeing the difference between Filipino and Chinese culture. I learned some stuffs from my Filipino friends, my Tagalog vocabulary widened, and I came to love Filipino songs. 

Teaching each other about one's own culture was a very interesting and educational experience.

Chinese Wedding Banquets

I just watched a 1990s movie of Ang Lee, entitled Wedding Banquet, on my laptop. The movie was set in New York, but the main characters where Chinese. As the title suggested, it's related to a wedding banquet. I found the movie interesting as despite the characters being in a foreign land, they still carried out the main traditions of the Chinese. That reminded me of our own wedding traditions here in the Philippines.

Wedding banquets are indeed very important among the Chinese. It may be true to many other cultures. A banquet of sixty to eighty tables may already be considered grand. Chinese want a lively party, the more guests, the merrier.

Chinese Romance

Image Source: nirots | Freedigitalphotos.net

The Chinese are very strict when it comes to marriage. Parents, especially traditional ones, prefer their children to marry a person who comes from the same ethnicity. Sometimes, having half percentage of Chinese blood wouldn't be enough. It has to be a pure blooded Chinese.

The children didn't want to create any havoc. It has already been instilled into their minds that they should find a match who carries the same heritage.

Yet, it's inevitable for Chinese living overseas to mingle with different people from different cultures. Some found love that weren't permitted by their parents. But they insisted. Some eloped. Some parents simply gave in. Some lost their inheritance rights from their angry parents.

Many parents are specially strict with their Chinese daughters. Some of the parents even resorted to consistent monitoring of their daughters' whereabouts. Some required daughters to go out with chaperons. Whoever courts their daughter should go through them first.

It is unclear to me why intermarriage carries a strong stigma among the Chinese. They want their tradition, culture, language, and values preserved. Is it that simple?

As I grew older, I came to realize lots of differences of Chinese romance from Filipino romance. Chinese men love differently. Chinese women interpret love differently. Once they decide to love a non-Chinese, they should be ready to deal with these differences.

So what are these differences that I am talking about? 

Based on what I have observed from interracial couples around me, Chinese men tend to be overprotective, a quality that outside culture may find suffocating. Chinese women, on the other hand, tend to be sheltered too much by their parents, thus, expect their spouse-to-be to baby them as well. Yet, foreign cultures value independent women. And the high expectations set by those women may just be too much to foreign men.

However, due to Filipino and even Western influences, I find many Chinese adopting many merging values with the outside culture. Perhaps after a few more decades, the gaps between Chinese and other cultures will narrow down, and intermarriage wouldn't be a big issue anymore.

Chinese Tea 101

Photo Source: Renato Ganoza | Flickr

Here in Manila, we are accustomed to drinking tea served in Chinese restaurants that comes in medium-sized porcelain teapots. Usually the tea leaves are left to steep inside these service pots for an indefinite period of time.

I had to admit that I most often only drank complimentary Chinese tea and rarely ordered better quality varieties in restaurants. Thus, I had been disinterested to this drink for as long as I can remember. Until this one day, I did drink a good quality tea. A gift from a friend who went to China. The wonderful scent of tea had sparked my interest to this second most widely consumed beverage in the world.

All teas are made from the same plant, Camellia Sinensis. The different kinds arise from the different harvesting time and methods of processing of the leaves. Other drinks such as peppermint and chamomile teas aren't real teas and are more appropriately termed as herbal teas.

Here are the types of tea starting from the shortest harvesting and processing time:

1. White Tea

2. Green Tea

3. Oolong Tea

3. Black or Red Tea

4. Pu-erh Tea

Different varieties require different steeping time and water temperature. Many tea enthusiasts even have separate teapots for each kind as they greatly differ in aroma and flavor.

Most often, the complimentary teas being provided by Chinese restaurants in Manila come from oolong tea. They are cheap and the same leaves can be repeatedly brewed several times while still retaining flavor. In fact, most of the small restaurants only offer this variety. It is only in fancier restaurants that I get to see other tea varieties being offered in the menu.

I personally haven't drank the White tea yet, as it is quite rare. My favorite is Jasmine tea, which is jasmine flower infused with green tea. It has delicate flavor and the aroma is very soothing.

Many parts of the globe consume tea, but different cultures drink tea in different ways. To drink tea the Chinese way, the tea is never to be mixed with milk or lemon. They are appreciated as it is, in its purest form. 

Before drinking tea, the first steep of tea is used to rinse the small tea cups with the help of tongs before discarding it. This is usually done over a special tray called tea tray that comes with a drainage (liquid is then collected into a pan beneath the drainage). The second steep is then served to the drinkers. The same batch of leaves can be repeatedly steeped a few more times before they start to lose flavor.

If there are too many drinkers, the steeped tea is first being transferred to a larger cup with strainer until it fills up, which is then used to distribute the tea among the many drinkers. It is called 'fair cup' as it allows all drinkers to experience the same taste of tea. Latter steeps taste differently from earlier steeps, and if all steeps are first mixed in another container before serving, they will homogenize and provide the same taste to everyone.

To learn more about Chinese Tea, here are some of the pages you may find useful:

Chinese Tea Ceremony

Types of Tea

What is Chinese Culture

Toa55 | Freedigitalphotos.net

When you hear the words 'Chinese culture', some things might begin popping up in your head. It could be the porcelain vases with flower designs, tea sets, big round red lamps, calligraphy brushes, or the long red silk dresses for women. Chinese civilization dated early back several centuries ago and perhaps that is the reason why the culture has become this well-known and influential.

The country of China is huge, as well as its population. Many Chinese people ventured out far beyond their borders and migrated to different countries, and established their own Chinatown on foreign soil.

I have Chinese ancestry, but I live in the Philippines. I was born here and raised here. But just like many of the Chinese families that were established here, our culture still remains relatively intact, making us very distinguishable from the locals. The Chinese language also remains with us, though not many of the younger generations can speak fluently anymore.

We get a little bit of influences from outside cultures as well. But the elderlies, particularly the very traditional ones, insist on preserving our culture and language. As many of us had witnessed, some Chinese who were married to locals lost the culture and language. That is part of the reason why the traditional Chinese families prefer to marry their children to fellow Chinese.

I am a third generation Chinese in the Philippines. That doesn't make me old enough to witness the gradual transformation of our culture here. Perhaps our culture here has already changed throughout these years that the Mainland Chinese may be shocked to find out about. No doubt, we might have already lost some parts of the culture already, in order to welcome the culture of the land we live in. I am very much interested to find out how the Chinese culture of other overseas Chinese from other countries (such as Malaysia, US, and Singapore) has developed as well.

What I can say is that the common ground of our culture across the globe, despite the assimilation of the foreign influences, are the language, the yearly celebrations and festivities, marriage practices and beliefs, and of course, our strong appetite for Chinese cuisine!

About Chinese Ghost Month

Chinese Ghost Month, which is observed every July of the Lunar calendar, usually falls under August to September of the Gregorian Calendar (also known as the Western or Christian calendar). As for this year, today (September 4) is the last day of one of the busiest months among the Chinese.

And as the Ghost Month comes to it's end, let me enlighten you with the facts and taboos among the Chinese during this eeriest period. Perhaps because of the many no-no's that you are unaware of, you may find your Chinese friends' actions to be highly incomprehensible. Yes, the many taboos that we have may make us act weird, paranoid, suspicious, or restrained. Sometimes, we even scold you for doing the things that we think would harm you, as part of all this Ghost month superstitions. But to put it simply, this is the All Soul's Day of the Chinese. It's when we remember our ancestors and give them food/money. Since Chinese have far too different beliefs about life and death from other cultures, the practice of paying respects for the dead are different as well.

Now, going back to the Taboos, here are the top ten DON"Ts during Chinese Ghost Month:

Ghost Month Taboos
Have you ever heard about Ghost Month? What is it? I'll give you two explanations. The shorter explanation is it's the Chinese Halloween. It takes...(Continue reading)

Different Types of Chinese in the Philippines

I live in the Philippines, in a busy city of Metro Manila. I am a Filipino citizen, but anyone who sees me would easily identify me as a Chinese. My almond-shaped eyes and fair complexion would sometimes lead others to believe that I am a foreigner who does not know how to speak or understand Filipino (the country's national language). There were also times when some of my Filipino friends would innocently ask me, if I am a Chinese, then why am I here? What am I doing in the Philippines? Well, it all started a few generations back.

During the period from the Chinese Revolution of 1911 to the Chinese Civil War, many Chinese, both male and female, arrived in the Philippines and settled down. Among the group were my grandparents. They have retained many Chinese practices, values and beliefs, but also assimilated some Filipino customs within their own practices. Most of them became Catholic but also practice Buddhism side by side with Catholicism. Many of them also became Protestants. They speak the Chinese dialect Hokkien among themselves and speak Chinese Mandarin which is learnt in school. They practice Chinese customs such as Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival as well as certain customs for weddings, birthdays, and funerals. These customs may already have certain variations from what other Chinese practice from other parts of the globe.

But they are not the only Filipino Chinese in the Philippines. In fact, the first batch of Chinese to arrive here can be traced backed during the Spanish colonization (about six to eight generations ago). Unlike the Chinese that came during the 20th century, the Chinese during the Spanish times were predominantly male, had intermarried with Malays and Spaniards, thus somehow losing the Chinese culture along the process. This specific group were referred to as the Chinese Mestizos. The more recent generation of Chinese however (starting from my grandparents' time), prefers to keep the culture intact and discourages intermarriages, thus was often to referred to as the full-blooded Chinese. However, many Chinese Mestizos are already tracing back to their Chinese roots by learning Chinese language and culture.

Another batch of immigrants from Mainland China has arrived in the Philippines. They are the newest Chinese to arrive so far, and has yet to adapt in the Philippine soil. They can also be refered to as the Third Chinese. For some reasons, the Third Chinese and the Second Chinese hate each other. Their cultures are already distinct from each other as well as their accent. I myself have difficulty understanding their language and perhaps they also feel the same way. Since the Third Chinese retain the purest form of Chinese culture, they are often referred to as Genuine Instik (meaning Genuine Chinese) or simply G.I. (a rather rude adjective) by Filipinos and Second Chinese alike.

For Filipinos, perhaps they would find it challenging to distinguish the three groups of Chinese in the Philippines. For us, it is easy. For Filipinos, Chinese is Chinese. But to us, we are very much divided. In our Chinese community, the elders discourage intermarriages with Filipinos. To add more restrictions to our already very limited choices for prospective spouses, the Chinese elders also forbid marriage with the Third Chinese! Despite that, it is starting to become a trend for a Second Chinese descendant to marry a recent Chinese immigrant, with a negative consequence of bearing a stigma. Sad how a single culture can become so divided.

For more information about the history of Filipino Chinese, read this article from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipino_Chinese