Ciel: Paella on the Beach
Photography: Aaron Wynia
Cindy reflects on her youth and the chaos that surrounded her.
Friday, June 24, 2022
Passing through a myriad of octagon-shaped crossroads, it seems unusually quiet on this long stretch down to Platja de la Nova Icària. All that can be heard are faint sounds of fireworks exploding and bangers erupting. All that can be seen is a stray whippet scavenging for dinner on this expectedly warm midsummer’s evening in Barcelona.
“I don't know,” I say, “if you realise the significance of today on the Catalonian calendar.”
“What's this?” Cindy asks.
“It's San Juan.”
“Oh, it's a holiday.”
“Yeah, an important Catalan holiday. I arrived last night and it was pandemonium.”
“Oh shit. I didn't know that.”
“Is there any territorial dispute in Xi'an? Or is it proud Chinese territory.”
“Xi'an is a part of China,” Cindy asserts. “For sure.”
“I was just wondering,” I clarify, “in regards to the Catalonian thing, if it's disputed.”
“Xi'an is not a disputed region of China. It's the ancient capital of China, for many dynasties. I grew up — well, I was born there — then moved when I was eight years old.”
“So you’re a first generation immigrant?”
“Yeah.”
“Was that kind of narrative prevalent within your experience? You know, We've come to North America. You have to knuckle down. Grind before you dream.”
“I mean,” Cindy says, “I think it depends on what the context of your immigration is.”
“Yeah.”
“It depends on the class of your parents. Like, my parents were really poor. We had nothing and my parents just wanted more for us and my dad is also extremely anti-communist, so he didn't want to live there.”
“Ok,” I say, as we begin walking across a footbridge over flowing motorway traffic.
“So in that context,” Cindy continues, “they did really push me. But, I think it's because when you're really poor, you buy into the American Dream. We emigrated to the US first. There is this idea that if you just work hard, you can achieve anything. The idea is that if you're gonna move half way around the world, you should do it wholeheartedly and make the best of it. Going to become a broke musician, is not making the best of it, I guess, according to them.”
“That must make for an interesting dinner table conversation,” I say.
“No,” Cindy says. “They actually support me a lot now, but I did it in secret, so they didn't know. That's how I deal with my parents. I lie to them and I kind of just do things on my own. I think a lot of people come from cultures where their parents expect a lot from them.”
“Yeah, definitely,” I say.
“Especially if they are immigrants and they gave up everything to start over. There's a lot of pressure. It's a pressure cooker situation. Most people don't just get up and move.”
We descend down the steps of the footbridge and arrive at the beach. We pick a spot and spread out a large blanket that I have brought with me, placing a shoe on each corner to weigh it down. We sit down. Seagulls sparingly fly close overhead.
“When I think of Irish-Americans,” I say, “and them exaggerating their Irishness, I feel they're trying to compensate for this detachment from their home.”
“Well,” Cindy says, “as a first generation Chinese immigrant, I think all immigrants probably experience this where you feel this intense pressure to assimilate and to abandon where you come from, especially as children trying to fit in at school. People are bullying you about being Chinese and I felt the only way to cope with that was to be as whitewashed as possible and I really wasn't interested in Chinese culture and music for most of my life. It wasn't until I was in university when I had some confidence and I wasn't so effected by how other people thought of me, that I started to explore it a bit more.”
“Were you speaking a Chinese dialect growing up?” I ask. “Or was that removed from your psyche as well?”
“No,” Cindy says. “I spoke Chinese at home. It took my mom a really long time to learn English. So, we had to speak Chinese to communicate with each other. My mom also made me do Chinese homework until I was like 16, so that I didn't lose it. I really hated it at the time, but now I'm really grateful, because it's so important to have another language.”
“You don't know how integral it is to your sense of identity until you get older.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Whereas when you're younger, it's just seen as a chore.”
“Yeah, it's just seen as an annoyance that took you away from playtime.”
“I wonder if that parenting style can exist today? Forcing something upon the child, to practice or to learn something.”
“I mean,” Cindy says. “It can.”
“But the common thing now,” I say, “is to let your child grow organically into what they want to be.”
“Maybe it's different for other cultures. I think in Western cultures, we generally perceive children as independent from parents. Even when they are children, they're their own person.”
“Yeah.”
“I don't think that concept really exists in China. Maybe it's changing with globalisation, but I think it's more commonly accepted that children belong to the parents and the parents should have a say in how they live their life because they gave them life. That's hard, I think, for Westerners to accept, but I think I understand it. There's just more of a closer bond, I think, between family members. Whether that's natural or forced, I can't really speak on. But, you know, I think it's more common in the West for kids to divorce their parents. I've seen that a lot.”
“Like emancipation?”
“Yeah, emancipation. Or your parents telling you, When you're 18 you're out. I'll never pay for anything when you're 18. You're an adult now. You can pay your own way. That's crazy to us to think of.”
“But, wouldn't you say, with your socialist leanings, it should be the role of the government to ensure that adults are stable financially and socially, and not to rely on the parents?”
“Yeah, that's definitely true,” Cindy admits, “but there isn't really a truly utopian socialist society, you know? With socialism, theoretically, the government takes care of everyone but there's still things that is in the family that is beyond the scope of the government.”
“Fair.”
“What about teaching them right from wrong?” Cindy asks rhetorically. “In Asian culture, there is a sense that there's something endearing and warm about a parent yelling at you. I know that's weird for other people, but that means that someone really cares about you. They would only get mad at you because they care.”
“Would your parents be quick to remind you of everything they've done for you?”
“I think that happened more in my twenties when I was less sure about what I was doing in my life and in my teenage years, for sure. I gave up everything for you. That was a common thing. As I got older, I think my mom went through her own journey of self-discovery and she just realised that her parenting style needed work. I also struggled with my mental health a lot and I think my mom felt a lot of responsibility for that.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I think it broke her heart when I told her that I never wanna get married and I never wanna have kids. Growing up, it was really hard. My parents fought so much. Emigrating is a pressure cooker situation and marriage is as well. I think she felt bad, or responsible. Now, she doesn't really say that. And also, they're genuinely happy for me that I'm doing what I love and that I'm not broke.”
“Yeah, that's always good.”
“My dad was never really that kind of parent where he would pressure me to do things. He was more of a hands off parenting style.”
“Like, good cop, bad cop?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Cindy says, “but if you have parents like that, the stricter person is really the one that's parenting you, right?” Cindy says, before looking above to the menacing sky. “Oh my God. It's gonna frickin' rain.”
We decide to take precautionary cover. I look behind us and see a restaurant operating within a shack-like terrace. Cindy is keen to eat, preferably paella. We walk onto the terrace, sit down, and look at the menu. There is paella. Cindy rejoices. We order a pan between us and wait patiently. The cracking and booming of pyrotechnics is very close now and more frequent. Cindy faces toward the fireworks. I have my back to them. The explosion jolts me upright every time. I feel like I’m going deaf in one ear and don’t even have the luxury of seeing the beautiful beast that is responsible.
The paella arrives a while later, much to our delight, but is unsatisfactory, much to Cindy’s disappointment.
“Did you listen to the new Kendrick material?” I ask, taking a second helping of the paella from the pan.
“No, I haven't,” Cindy admits. “Is it good?”
“It's great,” I say. “In one of the tracks, he says that hurt people hurt more people, and it reminded me of what you're saying about your mother and that she might have had that realisation that she was unloading her childhood experience onto you, in some way.”
“Yeah, for sure. She didn't really maintain that much of a boundary between herself and me. There was no boundaries between us. When things were fucked up between my parents, I wasn't really kept in the dark. She told me everything.”
“Oh, really? And how old were you at the time?”
“I was like 9, 10, 11.”
“Oh, wow.”
“This is quite normal in Chinese culture, but I also think it places a large burden on the child, to choose a side. But I love my mother. My mom raised me. My dad wasn't really around. She was the breadwinner. She worked her ass off to support us.”
“Do you have siblings?”
“No.”
There’s an explosion behind me.
“So,” Cindy continues, “our relationship was definitely really bad when I was a teenager, but now we're in such a good place, but there were moments where I really wanted to divorce my mom.”
“Was it a typical act of adolescent rebellion?” I suggest.
“No,” Cindy says. “We were just really not getting along at all and I really hated her, but that was also my youth hormones. People don't even really understand how much puberty fucks up the mind of children. You have no awareness of how much puberty fucks up with your emotional state. I really think back and imagine if I was like, Fuck, I'm gonna leave my parents. I hate my family, how to even walk back from that. Now I'm in a totally different head space in my thirties. It's really true that when you get older, you just get an understanding of what your parents dealt with. Even if you didn't have kids or have a marriage, over time I just understand them so much more.”
“I'm entering that phase of my life,” I say, “where I realise that no one has it figured out and they never will.”
“No,” Cindy agrees.
“My parents, both in their 60s now, are still trying to figure it out, so stop thinking there's an end result.”
“I know,” Cindy says. “That's the thing. When you're a kid, you think your parents are like God, you know?” — There’s another explosion behind me — “That they've got their shit figured out and they know everything. No, they don't. They might present themselves in that way, but that's really dishonest. Really, there's no manual for parenting. People are passing on what they know, and if they have a bad upbringing or if it was abusive in any way, how will they even know if that's right or wrong? Maybe that's what they know.”
“Their morals are skewed, yeah.”
“Well,” Cindy says, “'cause parents also have their own hopes and dreams, they're own emotions and desires. I just never thought about that, that even parents could sometimes feel jealousy or feel competitive with their children. That's something that I never even thought of, ever. But, when you see them as human beings, or imperfect, rather than perfect teachers and leaders, I feel like you get a better sense of what motivates them. Also, you don't always have to be so hard on them. They're human. Sometimes they feel insecure or feel overwhelmed or out of control. That humanized my parents more than anything, having that realisation when I got older.” —Another explosion goes off behind me — “Old habits die hard. I still definitely sometimes get really frustrated with my mom and it's really hard to shed that attitude, but if I'm just sitting here thinking about my mom, she really did give up everything for me, and I owe her so much. Everything — yeah.”
I notice Cindy’s eyes momentarily welling. “Fair. Do you want that last bit?” I ask, pointing at the pan.
“No, go for it.”
“You sure?”
Cindy nods as she chews food off her fork. “Uh-huh.”
We sit in silence for the next few moments. I finish off the paella, while Cindy observes the clatter and comeliness of each passing firework.