RALEIGH, N.C. — After six long years, my parents and I finally saw each other again. With my family mostly in Australia and Malaysia, the minimum 25-hour journey to visit my family is usually a decision not easily made due to cost and work calendar. The last three years further prolonged our reunion with pandemic borders closing in Australia and limited flights to and from the U.S. This meeting marked a bittersweet moment: seeing their first two-year-old grandchild for the first time. They wasted no time and went into grandparenting mode immediately, especially around the dinner table.
Mealtime is sacred in a Chinese family where most meals are taken together. Every word spoken and action taken at the dinner table interacting with their grandson took me down memory lanes on how I was parented – all the memorable scolding, or disciplining sayings, I was told to make me behave or to finish my meals. These sayings handed down from generations of Chinese parenting are not malicious by any means; they are mostly amusing to my modern sensibility. Now as a mom, I started to analyze four memorable ones by my son’s grandmother, whom he affectionately called Popo.
Popo’s Saying 1: Rice speckles on your plate? Aiya! Your wife/husband will be sooo ugly!
Familiar with the Clean Plate Club? Well, my Chinese parents have the “pimple plate club.” In our rice-centric dinner table, I was always told to “clean” my plate and not to leave any specks of rice. Otherwise, my future spouse would be pimply and ugly. My sassy 8-year-old self once retorted that it would be impossible because of my beauty. My parents’ follow-up threat was if it wasn’t going to be your spouse, it would be my grown-up face! It was the meanest thing to say to a child! Why couldn’t they just threaten me with no dessert instead like American moms on TV?
Fast-forward to teenage acne in middle school. That was probably the one time I thought my rice-speckled fortune came true! Self-blame ensued. I also went on to attempt to clean my plate, but I somehow just possessed the inability to do so! My rational self knew that it is all genetics and hormones, but I guess the lack of control over the situation just rendered my teenage self hopelessly anxious. Until now, I still struggle with hormonal breakouts. My plates are still speckled with rice at the end of the meal. Mom still looks at those plates with disapproval. I may be a mother now, but I will always be a child in her eyes.
Popo’s Saying 2: Don’t shake your legs! You will shake away your luck!
Remember your parents trying their darndest to get you to sit still at the dinner table? My Chinese ancestors got creative and began this “fortune-saving” tall-tale to get their children to stop fidgeting with their legs, unless they want to be unlucky and poor, that is. My parents repeated that every time I shook my legs or moved around my seat. What was fascinating was that my Chinese elementary school teacher told us the same thing, too, to get us to calm down and sit still. My classmates and I would commiserate on our poor future, being scared senseless by this very saying our parents and teachers loved to spout. Nevertheless, my anxious child self went on to shake my legs even more out of endless worries for my future. I was sure I was destined to be unlucky with all that leg shaking.
Popo’s Saying 3: Banging your plates with your chopstick? Well, only a beggar does that.
To me, chopsticks are the most fun cutlery out there. Sure, putting them together to pick your food up is cool, but what is cooler is that by pulling them apart, they work amazingly as drumsticks with your plate as the drum! Using the modern parenting terminology, I was a sensory seeker as a child. I loved exploring different textures and sounds, and the dinner table was the best exploration space ever! My son, inherited my curiosity, thinks so, too. Well, my parents are never that amused by the banging. Naturally, in their attempt to make the banging stop, they used our future as a threat: Stop banging unless you want to be a beggar.
A threat inherited from my late grandmother, my parents favorite disciplining method often involved our hypothetical futures. By us hypothetically emulating beggars of olden days banging their bowls to panhandle, an attempt to attract kind passers-by, their fear of a jobless adult child would somehow come true. Was I ever that annoying at the dinner table to warrant such threat? Now that I am a mother of a curious toddler who loves exploring his spoons and chopsticks, his banging the cutlery at mealtime is adorably entertaining. He might even make it as a drummer in a band someday!
Popo’s Saying 4: Eat your bitter melon! You need to understand the way of life: bitterness…
As a descendant of the Hakka clan, translated to “guest families,” I should be honored that I am being taught the truth of life through bitterness in Hakka traditional cuisines, or so my mother said. Bitten melon and tea-like herbs often accented the saltiness and umami in their high-protein dishes, a flavor profile developed through thousands of years of prosecution and migration, comparable to any traveler groups like the Romani and Irish Travelers. It is an acquired taste for sure, and it is definitely not an appealing one for most young children.
As a child, I often picked out, yucked at, and threw any bitter bits off my plates. A very understandable behavior I thought and still think so until my toddler son munched away his bitter melon like any other vegetable. Nodding in approval, my parents praised their grandson’s ability to “eat bitter,” a Chinese expression on someone who has grit, the perseverance to overcome obstacles. They have proclaimed that he will do well in life. Yes, his Chinese grandparents have the power to tell my son’s fortune through his skill at eating bitter vegetables.
Just a quick note, I am now very adept at eating my bitters, physically and metaphorically. Bitter melon is actually one of my favorite vegetables out there now, and I think I’ve turned out to be quite the Hakka daughter my parents are proud of. I will be sure to secure their Hakka grandson’s “future,” just in more loving boundary setting ways rather than the fortune-telling and scaremongering one.
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