When I was a child, I hated learning Chinese. The words were always so hard to read and memorise, expressing myself was so difficult, and the stories were always about instilling morals in kids and was downright boring. It didn’t help that the teachers I had made everything boring. I hated Chinese. I thought it was the most uncool subject on Earth, and I was done with it by the time I was sixteen and had just gotten a pass for my Chinese exam. Since I didn’t need to study for this subject anymore, I didn’t have to care so much about it. And I didn’t, until I went to university.
But I had always loved Chinese myths, folklore, and the epics. I have read, watched, and consumed the epic Journey to the West in so many different forms, and I have read the creation myths many times over. When I went to university, all of this became a part of my research because I frequented the folklore section, and while I was examining Western folklore and linking the oldest tropes to contemporary fiction, I was also looking at yet another series of re-tellings about the myths and legends I’d read as a child.
There were fox spirits and ghosts, dragons and phoenixes, and the gods and goddesses made mistakes. It was such a joy to become re-acquainted with them. Now that I was all grown-up (supposedly), I learned so much more about the historical figures that my teachers and relatives worshipped. The First Emperor did not just unify China and standardised language–he was a tyrant who did as much as he could to live forever. How apt that the “elixir” he sought caused his downfall, and now we know that mercury is harmful. There were conniving concubines and craft empresses, and one even became the Emperor herself, Wu Zetian. Some of these women became esteemed poets who wrote unabashedly about sex, and one became the most successful pirate to terrorise the South Seas.
I love Chinese history, culture, and myths, but I often wished that someone would have taught the language to me while uncovering all of these unknowns. Who cared about this umpteenth story about this loyal general who had a tattoo on his back? I certainly didn’t. The prominent figures in Chinese history had many sides to them, and to teach them in a moralising way does not do justice to the history of China, and quite possibly, the world. Yet, any Chinese stories taught in schools serves to support the country’s agenda blindly without giving young children the tools to think critically.
Very rarely is the world black-and-white, or that any empire or civilisation is without failing. There were admirable attributes of historical figures, but they had their foibles, which were found out from historians who did their research.
Re-discovering my own culture as an adult taught me that there is so much to learn, and that the static and antiquated way in which Chinese history and culture has been represented is problematic as it does not give us a full picture of what they were like, and how their actions shaped the future. It is only by researching and cross-referencing sources that show there was so much more to Chinese history and culture than fatuous Emperors who were supposedly morally upright — there were so many multi-faceted people who contributed to the fabric of its story.
If my younger self were here, I would give her a list of names to find out more, and perhaps, my fluency of the Chinese language would have improved. But now, I suppose, it’s not too late to go on a journey and find out what these people who have come before have accomplished.
Featured image via Ernie