Chinese New Year

It's Chinese New Year again, and like everybody else, gay Singaporeans approach the festive season with a lot of planning. The stratagems tend to fall into three types, very roughly linked to age and financial resources. But for all three groups, the planning springs from the need to avoid the central nightmare of meeting Auntie, who beams widely as she comes up real close to you,

"Hello, Peng, how have you been? Haven't seen you at all since last New Year! ... So, anything new? Any marriage plans ahead?"

Mumble, mumble.

Auntie: "No, ah? Aiyah, mustn't work so hard; must find time for other things. At least, got girlfriend or not?"

Mumble, mumble.

Auntie: "No girlfriend! How come?"

How come indeed?, but before you can mumble, she continues, "Don't worry, I can introduce."

OK, the above is a kind of sitcom exaggeration of what really happens, but you get my drift. It isn't always Auntie, it could be grandmother, older cousins or even uncles.

Group One are generally those 18-25, still living with their parents. They face the greatest stress. They are not far enough into adulthood to be relieved of the obligation of going visiting with their parents. Even if they manage to get out of that obligation, they still face the risk of seeing Auntie when she comes to visit.

To avoid that, the typical gay son would make plans with his friends, straight, gay, anyone, to go to the cinema or the disco, or just hang about. It doesn't matter where. The important thing is to be out of the home. But the problem is that the parents expect him to be with the family through the holidays and, in the more conservative families, to go visiting with them. So it can get rough when the he reveals that he has long made other plans with his friends.

Accusations of selfishness, lack of respect and antisocial behaviour, are thrown into the argument. Many of you can hear your mother saying this:

"Your relatives will be very disappointed not to see you."

"You don't deserve your hongbaos!"

"I don't have any face if my own children will not accompany me to your uncles and aunts!"

Year in year out, this melodrama is played out in many homes. In the weeks leading up to Chinese New Year, gay sons dread this scene even as they busily page their friends, or dread the Auntie scene if they freeze and don't make plans. It's a no-win situation, and no-win situations are always stressful.

Group Two are those old enough to be financially independent, but still living with their parents. For them, the stakes are higher, but a greater escape is within reach. The stakes are higher because they are old enough to be clearly within marrying age -- their cousins are all getting married like tenpins being bowled over -- and yet they don't even have girlfriends.

Auntie may well say, "Still no girlfriend! How come? You gay or what?"

If she ever says that, whatever you mumble may be unimportant. Whether your mother goes into shock is the question.

However, for Group Two, two or three years into their careers, they have the means to get out of Singapore altogether. They just need to make one stressful announcement to their parents and then fly away for days. They don't have to face Mother repeatedly for every cinema outing with friends.

There is an exodus every year around this time (and around every long weekend, Christmas and New Year's) to Bangkok primarily, but also to Sydney and other escape-worthy places. I wonder how many travel agents know their client dynamics.

Group Three are those who have moved out. For them, the battle is largely over. They lead separate lives from their parents, and generally, all they have to do is visit them on the first day. Visiting other relatives is not a matter for the parents to have a stake in. This however is more complicated for those who live in Singapore, but whose families are in Malaysia. The obligation to visit the parents on the New Year, also means staying with them in the hometown through a few days, which regresses them into Group One all over again!

This older group is more experienced at handling the Auntie question. They have stock answers, and they have acquired considerable skill at parrying inquisitive enquiries. They also know that in actual fact, the Auntie question does not come up that often, not any more, at least. Yet, visiting the relatives is even less likely from this group, and this is simply because by this point in their lives, they no longer fit in.

The family gatherings talk about children, school streaming and Chinese tuition when gay men and women have no kids, but this topic only scratches at one of the things they miss most in their lives. The talk moves on to HDB flats, the waiting list and fitting out a new flat, when gay people who are single, are denied any chance of buying new subsidised housing. So why bother to visit, only to be left out?

So Group Three too go travelling, or invite friends over, or just stay home with their lovers and do housework. If their parents should ask why they don't stay longer when they visit, in order to be around when other relatives come over to their parents' home, they say, "I'm too busy, I've got a party to organise this evening", or "I've got to pack, I'm flying off in three hours' time."

The traditionalists love to put great store by the festivals that mark a culture, and the practices handed down for generations. The festivals cement the family and bond people into community, they say. Unfortunately, almost always, the boundaries of family, community and culture are drawn more narrowly than the true diversity that exists within them, and these celebrations that serve to bond those within the boundaries, equally serve to alienate those outside them. Every time one reinforces the "us", one casts out further the "them".

Gay men are very varied. Not all are anti-tradition and iconoclastic. And despite what their parents may think, they are not more selfish, anti-social, disrespectful of elders, or dismissive of filial obligation, than their other children. The gay ones do not naturally put friends, cinema and pubs ahead of family. They do not instinctively put Bangkok ahead of home. In fact, for some of them, their dearest wish at any Chinese New Year is for their parents to provide a place for their lover at the reunion dinner table, to push food to him -- the quintessential Chinese way of showing concern -- and the next morning to give him a hongbao equal to what the son himself is given.

Sure, dream on ....

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

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Addenda

I enjoyed reading your article "Chinese New Year" immensely. It certainly struck a resonant chord within my own experience with that festival.

I have managed to evade the Auntie question for 5 years, having been away from Singapore. Coming back to Singapore in 1996 has meant that I've gone through 2 rounds of, as you so aptly put it, "planning" what to say and do as the dreaded day approached. I've been accused by my mother of "having a superiority complex towards the relatives," or alternately "suffering from an inferiority complex of some kind with respect to the relatives" (a contradiction with the first accusation?).

This year was worse than last year, with my mother demanding to know if I wanted both my parents to kneel down before me and beg me to go along with them on the visits to relatives' homes. I've managed both last year & this year to stand up to the heavy doses of emotional blackmail. But I don't know how much longer I can continue to put up a silent front and listen to all that haranguing each January/February. That's why I'm glad to be making the transition from Group Two to Group Three next month. As you said, it'll be much easier to get out of the visits to relatives' homes once I've my own home.

Your comments about answering the ubiquitous relatives' questions also had me laughing. You're right, I've learnt how to just laugh off the questions and have become a little less upset about the heterosexist nature of such questions.

The biggest challenge I've faced since returning to Singapore in 1996 has been trying to fend off the kay-poh attempts of a 50+ spinster colleague to pair me up with a 29+ female student of hers. I never realised that some women could be quite that devious and manipulative in trying to corner a man and hook him for good. I think that finally my transition from polite smiles and laughter to increasingly blunt and curt behaviour towards the two ladies finally registered within both of their minds.

I find that the visits have lost most of their deeper significance for me. Besides having to fend off the nosey questions about my personal life, I find that there's simply a loss of the kinship and bonding towards most of the people there. I suppose that this is partly due to the busy lives that most Singaporeans lead. And of course there's the factor that you mentioned in your article, namely, the loss of common conversational topics as more & more relatives end up in heterosexual marriages.

Once again, I enjoyed reading your article very much and just wanted to share some of my thoughts on Chinese New Year with you.