Finally Proud

For photography class, we're supposed to do an individual photo essay on any topic that we choose. I chose to do a photo essay on Chinese New Year (CNY), which is hardly surprising since it's next week.

I thought it might be easy. I mean, all I possibly had to do was stake out Chinatown and hope to get some decent shots of the celebrations and decorations. But then when Mathias (our photography lecturer/tutor, he's really cool) came around to give his advice and opinion on our chosen topics, he asked me what CNY meant to me. He wanted to know what I wanted to say in my pictures.

And I couldn't give him an answer.

I gave it some thought later, and I guess what I can say is this.

Did you know that I used to hate CNY? I mean, I used to really hate it. I hated the red, I hated the music (I would actually clap my hands over my ears whenever I heard the music), I hated the tacky decorations, I hated everything.

Over the years, I guess my supposed hatred diminished, and now I'm tolerant of it all. In fact, I like it somewhat. Yes, even the music. I'm actually kind of proud of my Chinese heritage now. I'm still learning a lot about everything (my friends even joke sometimes that I can't possibly be Singaporean because I don't know much about dialect and tradition, and don't like some local food like Satay and Cheng Tng, though I can promise you that I love almost everything else), and many times I feel like a foreigner travelling in my own country. But I'm learning.

Well Mathias, I guess that's my answer. That's what I'm trying to show in my pictures. That I've learnt to accept and maybe embrace my culture.