If That’s Tradition, I Don’t Want It
My mother swears by the tradition- 传统, as it’s called in Chinese. When society abided by the rules set by tradition, she says, there was no instability, no conflict, no strife. A subordinate should never defy a superior, a student should never question a teacher. A child must never disobey an elder, and a wife must submit to a husband.
Endurance. 忍. That, she tells me, is the ultimate virtue a wife can possess. Husbands are the breadwinners, and traditionally the head of a family, and so as women we must defer to them, because if a husband and a wife were to be equal then a family could never be harmonious and ordered, as they were meant to be. So if your husband strays from his vows of faithfulness, as men are wired to give in to their baser desires, endure. If your husband raises a hand to you, they are exercising their right as a superior, and are doing no wrong, so endure. If your husband wants you to give up your career for housewifery, then do so immediately, because if you haven’t already, then it is a transition long overdue anyway; as a woman and a wife, your primary duty is to the home, not your frivolous hobbies. If your in-laws mistreat you, endure it - they are now your parents, and you must treat them as you would your own, with utter deference, respect, and love. There was a woman in my mother’s village, she recalled once, who bore her husband seven daughters when he wanted a son. Her husband scolded and berated her constantly, conducted affairs, and hit her, as well as their children. My mother admires the woman for her resilience and her dedication to her family, as the woman never left him; she continued to serve her husband and his whims until they grew old, and he stopped hitting her. See, this is what her endurance gave her, a happy marriage in the end.
These are the lessons she’s given me, and for all I’m proud of my background, I could not disagree more.
If this was all to our traditions, then I wouldn’t want it. If what it takes to have a happy marriage is a lifetime of blows and ridicule, I don’t want it, either. If what it takes to hold onto tradition is to give myself up for a man who has no obligation towards me, my life, or my happiness, to be silent and endure if I am mistreated by a superior, then I would rather not have tradition.
But the reality isn’t that we can’t have all or nothing, we can keep the fragments of beauty and elegance, of strength and pride, and still hold them in our hearts while breaking off the ugly shards as well. Would we be cracking tradition apart and only picking out some parts of it to keep? Yes. Do I think that this is right, that this is moral? In this case, absolutely, yes.
I am ethnic Chinese, and I am proud of my culture. I love the traditional Chinese instruments in museums and my old school’s orchestra room, the guqin, xiao, and yangqin; the guqin with its deep elegance and delicate beauty, the xiao in all its resonant majesty, and the yangqin’s fairy-like melody. I love traditional Chinese dishes and snacks, especially around the Lunar New Year, from sesame brittle to candied hawthorn, to the deliciously stretchy and atrociously sticky niuzhatang, to red-braised anything and wonton soup, to pickled radishes and steamed buns. I love the historical front of the Bund in Shanghai, and the rolling mountains that set the backdrop for my father’s hometown, and the thundering oceans against my mother’s. It isn’t that I reject tradition altogether, it is only that I cannot seem to cherish both the beautiful and the ugly.
When I was younger I couldn’t wait to grow up: I longed for later bedtimes, for a phone of my own, for unlimited access to a library, and for the freedom to choose what I wanted to do, and growing up has given me these things. But growing up has also meant dealing with ambiguity, more difficult choices, and the two sides of my culture, and that has been decidedly less pleasant, but necessary. I don’t want to give up my culture, but I don’t want to perpetuate the cycle of toxicity and misogyny, either. I don’t want to let go of my roots, but I don’t want to settle into a willing level of inferiority. Maybe it’s my youth talking, or maybe it’s my Western upbringing; I admit that, but it doesn’t change my belief that some parts of tradition are just, well, wrong.
So I hope to help welcome a new kind of tradition, the kind that can simultaneously preserve and honor the past, and also improve, catching up with the present, moving forward to match the pace of the world as it continues to tread along. I want to be able to fully embrace tradition without scrunching my nose at sexist proverbs regularly recited, and maybe this isn’t fully possible, but I’d still like to try.
My ancestors have thousands of years of history, but history doesn’t just cut off in the history books; it keeps going. Why can tradition not be the same?
