Chinese Parenting (I) - Background

Now to give you an idea of where my mad ramblings stem from, I have to give you some background to my childhood.  My parents were born here in HK during the 1940s, and as was typical of the indigenous Chinese people living in the New Territories back then, many decided to head for pastures greener in the West.  My dad, ended up in Dublin aged 15 washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant and years later came back to HK to marry girlfriend no. 13 (or so I was told, i.e. my mum) and take her to settle with him in Nottingham.  Big sister and big brother were born in the 1960s in the UK (mum was only 19 when she had my sister) and I was born in the earlyish 1970s back here in HK.  We all returned back to London when I was still an infant.  

Straight after university I packed my bags to leave the country, was an expat in Japan for 2 years, spent 6 months studying putonghua at a Beijing university before landing in HK jobless and penniless 9 years ago.   I haven't really been back "home" properly since then and the nature of my husband's job means that the UK is very unlikely to be on the horizon.  

So despite living in London all my young life, my upbringing was still very traditional Chinese in many ways, maybe even more so than had it been in Hong Kong because of the nature of Chinese communities and how they function abroad.   

My parent's generation had no real incentive to learn English fluently because the London Chinese have their very own fully functional Cantonese microcosm - friends, relatives, supermarkets, grocery stores, doctors, accountants, restaurants, take-aways, language schools etc.  

Back when we were growing up, there was no satellite/ cable tv with Chinese channels, internet, long distance calls were expensive, imported Chinese magazines and newspapers were a luxury and only available if you made the trek out to Chinatown in Central London.  Thus change and progress through the times came at a much slower pace for this insular Chinese community.  

For many first generationers, it was only through their kids armed with their English education that forced change and challenged their traditional Chinese ways.  Thus not only did we have to endure the normal generation gap angst, a whole lot of cultural differences, resulting in confused kids and parents were thrown in for good measure.   

Personally, those inner conflicts have manifested themselves in many ways as the years whizzed by, the consequences of which are now playing out in how I choose to raise my children.  (Note: husband is HK born, bred and educated, so that's a whole different set of battles - my kids don't stand a chance!)