Happy lunar new year, y'all.
Personally, I don't give a shit — the songs fucking grate the soul of my being and the food isn't really to die for. Ideologically, the entire event is really just about wealth, prosperity and the self absorption that they entail. I was actually naive to think: Hmm, maybe I've been too cynical and this is actually a time for Family and Love and Reconciliation etc. etc. but then I realized that — fuck Chineseness— the discourse happens not on an interpersonal level, but with physical objects and symbols as signifiers of wealth rather than as cultural objects carrying deeper (mystical, fluffy and abstruse but nevertheless deeper) meaning. And then I thought Hmm, perhaps what people are going for is really the hope that everyone around them will be blessed with the same good fortune. But, egad, the happiness of others veils unsaid desires. It's all about reciprocity, maybe even reciprocity infused with the pseudo-logic of karma, that the fortunes of others necessarily entail personal fortune — that your goodwill towards others entails you to receive the same goodwill.
Clarification: I'm not saying that it's wrong to hope the best for yourself; I'm saying that it's repugnant that a severely resource-heavy event is constructed around this desire, that appearances constantly oppose real agendas to the point of hypocrisy, that the Actually Okay principle of self-preservation takes on an uglier hue in light of affluence, that essentially it is an event that marginalizes people who have little to give, and even when it appears otherwise, conflates altruistic charity with good karma.
I'm confused. Why wait till now to celebrate "familial togetherness?" Why celebrate the appearance of these "bonds" if there really are none? Why expend resources on huge-ass set-ups, garish decorations and tasteless programming — furthermore, with everyone clamoring to partake in the festivity, prices increase even if it could be avoided — when fundamentally there is no deeper meaning to CNY that warrants the large economic and environmental costs of all this festivity?
A deeper problem is a hand: it institutionalizes visitation for the sake of visitation. It entrenches distance, because in providing the ultimate reason for families to gather, it simultaneously nullifies all other reasons for that same scale of a gathering — it becomes "awkward" to have the same level of fun during other times of the year. I'm like, being (or rather, identifying as) Chinese stinks. I'm sick of people abusing the colour red, the unnecessary tension in the air, the nauseatingly gendered performances, the So-Bad-It's-Not-Good-Just-More-Fucking-Bad songs. It makes me want to pack my bags and join the Peace Corps, and fly to a remote part of Sudan or the West Bank, where the people don't care about Spring Cleaning or Mandarin Oranges In Plastic Wrapping (WTF is up with that?) But there is no solution. I'll get over it; it happens just once a year anyway.
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