#15: On Chinese New Year and Finding Home - a podcast by Patricia Liu

On air January 27th, 2020. Recorded January 26th, 2020.

I’m not gonna lie: if there was ever a Lunar New Year equivalent of the Grinch, I’d probably be it. It’s not something I like to admit, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that despite being ethnically Chinese, I don’t have much emotional attachment with a holiday that I didn’t really grow up celebrating — and truth be told, a big part of me just finds Chinese new year traditions to be incredibly hokey.

Becoming a Chinese teacher didn’t do much to help my Grinchiness towards the one holiday that all Chinese language classrooms seem to revolve around. Making dumplings and tangyuan? Cutting up red paper into indiscernible angular shapes? Singing this really annoying song? Not. Into. It.

Thankfully, in the past few years, I’ve figured out a way to teach Chinese New Year in a way that doesn’t grind my gears and also feels more culturally authentic and engaging than a random arts-and-crafts activity. But honestly, it doesn’t make teaching Chinese New Year feel any less awkward to me. How do you teach a culture that feels to be very much yours, and also very much not?

This episode is about Chinese New Year, but it’s really about being a part of the Chinese diaspora and how for us, home is not a country or a culture — it’s amidst people who are just as homeless as we are.

“Whenever I find someone who grew up in a different country than me but they’re speaking Mandarin with a Taiwanese accent, I’m just like — we are friends; we are family.”

Show notes at badchineseteacher.com.

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