long withering out a young man's revenue

I want to renounce my Chinese ethnicity. It unnecessarily burdens me, and I'm getting tired of feigning interest in a culture so dominated by superstition and tradition, that hearing crises of disappearing practices and values day in and day out is becoming so gratingly commonplace I can no longer feel any sliver of pathos. It has milked me of all the interest I could ever possibly give, and all it does is take, take and take.

Besides, I've often detested being labelled Chinese. What about the rich Hokkien heritage of the generations before me (assuming that I do care for whatever they did), or the Peranakan way of life which popular media has so conveniently appropriated for entertainment value? It seems to erase a part of our past by imposing a blanket term to cover everything that is evident in the present. It seems to suggest that nothing else matters now that one is Chinese and Chinese alone.

Interestingly, I stepped into JC thinking somewhat naively that Chinese lessons were going to be more enriching and meaningful this year. Perhaps I might come to appreciate the beauty of the adages that the wise men of yore penned down, I would imagine, drinking tea in a fit of suppressed euphoria after an enlightening moment. However, all I'm getting is a message marred with a sense of imperialism from this Middle Kingdom, that one is Chinese and therefore has to follow all its rules and customs.

I think it's not right to be forced to learn Chinese because I am "Chinese." Because of that label alone, society subjects us to the supposed shame of not knowing one's own language. I for one think that this "responsibility" to "know" your "own" culture is fiction to begin with. And do I, by any chance, look like plant to you? I do not own these "roots" that everyone speaks of. I can survive well enough on my own, thank you very much.

Hence, I am not Chinese because I've been labelled that way by the government. While it can expedite the management of society to a certain degree, it still carries the connotation of a homogenous mix and this erodes the meaning of our identity. It makes an immediate link to a mother land that I cannot identify with, a place so distant it feels more like a fabrication shamelessly etched into textbooks than an origin so often romanticized.