Friday, January 16, 2004
My third to last shift in Australia (yay!), and the last day I will be thirty (boo - another year older).
I've been reading through my last two entries, and they seem rather dark and self-pitying. Since I returned to Australia, I've been busy trying to tie up all the loose ends that need to be tied up on leaving a country and moving to another. I'm also rather gleefully, but busily, collecting information on my next travel destination - South America , leaving in 5 days!!
I have fog on the brain due to the fact it's 5 am and I've been up all night "saving lives" (reality is, it's rather formulaic in today's litiginous climate). I'm really looking forward to perking up and this depression lifting once I'm on the road again.
Over the last week, I've been busy writing and thinking about being a Chinese in a Western world. I'm excited that I've been accepted to present something on this topic at an autobiographical writing conference in Hong Kong in March ; I really have no idea what will really be the standard, but it's another step towards a career in writing.
Here's the abstract:(does it sound too posh?)
Masks and Mirrors: A collaborative reflection on intergenerational relationships
in the Chinese diaspora
I travel between worlds, my restless legs associated with the Hakka, the gypsy tribe of China. My ties travel through time and geography in China, Hong Kong, USA, and New Zealand, influenced by the unique complexities of Chinese culture.. Each generation inhabits an increasingly complex world, yet deals with it through the inherited human qualities of love, family loyalty, and friendship. We are veiled from the other by layers of truth, similar personalities of each generation (daughter-mother/daughter-father) clashing the most, yet ultimately sacrificing the most for one another. Those of us ‘in between’ are trying to understand, with no text book.
Hmm?
I've found there is a major problem with such personal writing - a sense of guilt that you may be inadvertently betraying your family. It seems to be easy to give people the impression that you are criticising your own parents (the worst sin in Chinese culture) , when in fact you are trying to understand your parents by looking at their actions and trying to work out their motivations.
I also can't be sure that my residual anger/frustration at recent events might be affecting my writing about my parents. Nevertheless, it seems important to explore these issues -and I'm also looking forward to hearing others' worldviews when I attend the conference.
To avoid the "family shame" as much as I can, I am using a nom de plume I decided on two years ago - "Christina Wei". Christina, my mother's first name, honours the fact that I think my writing genes come from her. "Wei" is part of my Chinese name, chosen by my grandfather. The character for "wei" means blossom, but my grandfather, deciding there were too many doctors in the family, decided to influence my destiny by adding an extra stroke, thus making it "literary blossom".(unfortunately, this was never explained to me until well after I'd entered med school!).
email me: piokiwi@yahoo.com.au
Piokiwi 7:32 am
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