My mother takes a certain sense of pride in the fact
that all her children are “Bananas.” We are “Yellow on the outside but white on
the inside.”
I never really liked this phrase as I grew up. As I
grew up in WASP country (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) country, I went to great
pains to show that I was not one of them. I only maintained a smattering of
Cantonese dialect because it was the one thing that made me different from all
my school friends. I actually dreamt that I would be able to be in a position
where I would only wear a “Mandarin Collar” in public.
Although growing up a “WOG” (Western Oriental
Gentleman) has given me a lot of advantages (speaking with the right accent
helps when you have to deal with British or American immigration), I’ve always
felt and still feel that there’s something lacking in me. I never wanted to be
part of the clubs of colonial masters. I wanted to be the rickshaw boy who was
secretly a member of the Boxer Rebellion. I wanted to be small Oriental guy in
black pajamas who sent the GI’s packing. Up till this day, I maintain the
position that the only good colonial is six feet under and the only thing
better than a colonial master six foot under, is the act of putting him there yourself.
Whilst I sign my name as “Li Tang,” rather than my birthname
of “Tang Li” (Deng Li if you use Pinyin), I only do so because I was living in
a society where I was “Li Tang,” a fact that it took me a while to accept. I
remember my mum telling me it was better to be flexible than to constantly
correct people over my name. I’ve been told that the “Colonial Legacy” has
gifted me what I do for a living, to which I’m still curious as to why that
should make me grateful for that legacy.
Having said that, I’ve now reached the age that
although I may have wanted to be the “stereotype” Chinaman, my mother is right.
While I am Chinese and my name is Tang Li, there’s actually very little else
that’s Chinese about me. I grew up speaking English. It was the language of the
home, school and now work place. To compound that, the only other language
where I am vaguely literate in, is German. My American and German families are White
and some of my best mates are WASP (OK, a lot of Welsh too).
The only thing that disqualifies me from being a “Banana”
is the fact that the people I’ve had most affinity with, have inevitably been
from South Asia or Arabia. I can pick up a few words of Hindi here and there from
watching Bollywood but the only Hokkien I’ve picked up in over twenty-years of
living in Singapore are the curse words. I am very comfortable in Hindi music
lounges and greeting “Namaste” or “Salaam.”
I recount all of these emotions growing up as an
Oriental kid in the West because there is a lot of talk about “Best of both
worlds, mixing East and West” and so on. Ironically, it was my “White” friends
in the UK, who encouraged me to maintain what little Chinese language skills I had
because it was my advantage – both “Eastern” and “Western.”
Well, I get the logic. I look Chinese and speak English
like a native. However, at this point of Middle Age, I think talk about being
both “East and West,” is more wishful thinking. One is either Eastern or Western.
I have to be honest here, I moved back to Singapore because I believed that the
action would be in Asia-Pacific rather than in the West. Statistically, I am
right. However, culturally, I would have to make a lot of psychological
adjustments to operate outside of the Westernised bases of Singapore and Hong
Kong (though Kiddo tells me I should learn Vietnamese and spend my final years
there).
Incidentally, everything I’ve said here doesn’t make me
particularly unique. I’m not the only “Banana” around nor is the Oriental
Community the only one with fruit. In the USA, the “Native Americans” have “Apples,”
(Red on the outside and white on the inside). The UK recently made history by
having its first “Coconut” (Brown on the outside but white on the inside) Prime
Minister.
So, like all sorts of fruit around the world, I have certain
hang ups about straddling the world of my complexion and the world of my
cultural make up. However, its not an impossible task. In fact, its an
essential task.
I spent my birthday at the “Cheong Tze Fatt – Blue Mansion,”
in Penang Malaysia. The original Mr. Cheong was a giant in this part of the
world He was born in China and made his fortune trading commodities, amongst
other things in this part of the world. When he died in Batavia and they transported
his body back to China via Singapore, Penang and Hong Kong, the Dutch and
British Authorities saw to it that flags were flown at half-mast.
Whilst Mr. Cheong was inevitably as Chinese as you can
get (admittedly the rest of us don’t think of the Hakka as such), he was able
to straddle and operate in both worlds. He never swayed from his cultural roots
(The man had more than one wife, which was perfectly acceptable back then), he
saw the good things about the Western world.
Mr. Cheong did a lot of social work and kept a lot of
Chinese people employed. Hence, he alleviated suffering, which could easily
have been turned on the colonial administrators. He employed the best of Western
technologies too. His house is an example of that. It’s built to the best of
Fung Shui Principles but at the same time, used metal work from the UK.
