I remember as a kid, my teachers, friends and family would remind me that during Chinese New Year, we shouldn’t sweep the floor. Funny thing is, my parents are big on hygiene, so their words to me had an informative inflection to it.
Magazines would published articles about the details of such traditions also known as superstition. I would read them. And I found out that we can sweep the floor, only that we cannot sweep the dirt out the door as that would be sweeping luck away.
I held on to those concepts well. I thought that was part of being, erm, Chinese. I understood the concept well. At one point I asked my parents why they did not adhere to those traditions. I tried to enforce it in my own life. But honestly, did that make me any more Chinese? No.
The only reason I can think of that someone would want to enforce such a law is to prevent blur little children from sweeping dust out the door and into the face of visiting guests. Sort of a scare tactic to help them remember. Hence this tradition is arbitrary. If practiced at all, in it’s most sincere form, it is only an re-enactment. Because there are no values in such a tradition.
Then what about being Chinese? Why not be Humans. It’s much better practically, uniting the whole world, and working for the common good. But for some strange reason, the skin color, its language and practices become traditions. Instantaneously. Some of the traditions have good values in them. However many do not. Yet the Chinese boast of those that make sense, and call those that don’t make sense as heritage a.k.a. tradition.
So this whole race and culture thing is nothing more than accepted common practice. And if we keep following these traditions, are we not just mindless drones re-enacting the past?
So we have established that traditions that are meaningless should be done away with. The purist would frown at this. The argument is that tradition is a package, if not taken completely, it’s actually not tradition at all; sort of a modern compromise.
Then I would like to question if there is such a thing as tradition? I don’t think so. Because every time we take something from the past and manifest it in our lives, re-interpretation occurs. We could never do it in the same way as some one did it five hundred years ago. Because our understanding is different, so are our believes, situation and even our personality.
Therefore, we could never really do the same thing twice. Hence tradition doesn’t really exist. It’s just a term for, activities that we’ve been doing for a long time and kinda don’t want to explain the merits of it over and over again, so we give it a name: Tradition.
If being Chinese is about sticking together and excluding other races, having prejudices and being snobbish about our prolific ability to spread throughout the world… then you know what? I don’t want to be Chinese. I don’t want this tradition.
But if being Chinese is about family, knowing that family sticks together no matter what. Then alright. I’ll keep it. In fact the only reason I think most people hold on to their traditions is because they want to feel secure and belong to a community; a family.
And since we are all humans, and we belong to the human race, then I guess being Chinese, Malay, Indian, Iban, Kadazan, etc… Is redundant. And if we quote tradition as the reason, and hold fast to the sincere purpose of having traditions, then all the more we should put away our concepts of racial traditions that divide and hold on to a racial tradition that unites.
Question traditions, if they are good, make it modern by applying them. If they are not good, keep it in the museum where all the other things are dead; meaningful, of sentimental value, but dead.
In Malaysia we question so many traditions, but rarely do I hear any one questioning their own traditions. Even so, those who confess to having arbitrary traditions that cause unnecessary conflict, are often unwilling to change on the account of wanting to be faithful in keeping so-called traditions. Be faithful to people who put meaning in our lives, not to things or acts as they bring no meaning by themselves.
We know who we were, but we don’t know who we are now. And the worst thing is, we are even more clueless about who have the potential to be. So why let traditions bind and chain us down when traditions are to serve the purpose of being a strong foundation so that we will stand tall and strong.
Therefore, whether I am Chinese or not, totally depends on your intention of being Chinese. Not mine. So don’t blame me for being a traitor, blame yourself for being a bad advocate of your own so-called tradition.
I am willing to forgo my traditions to forge a future for the coming generations who will live to experience it, rather than to keep my traditions for the sake of past generations who will not benefit from it because they are dead. Will you?
