At the conclusion of a long hiatus in this blog, a change of direction is about to occur.
My imminent return to Europe will no doubt entail a different outlook. I shall naturally be focusing more on non-Asian topics, and inevitably the tone of my opinions will increasingly reflect a more overtly Western viewpoint on issues which straddle the East-West divide.
Make no mistake: there are no common cultural approaches. When civilizations meet, they establish a dialogue, they do battle, and no single one is ever right or wrong, superior or inferior, better or worse (except in the arena of human rights, the sole universal repository of that which makes us all equally members of the species homo sapiens sapiens).
My years in Asia have taught me that there is an unbridgeable gulf between the Oriental mind and the Western one. And whenever both cultures congregate in a certain community -- i.e., Eurasians --, either one of them prevails, through assimilation, consensual or otherwise, or a new hybrid culture arises.
Such a hybrid culture is very rarely a balanced mixture of the original mating cultures. It is not a melting pot, nor does it encapsulate a harmonious co-existence with 'The Other'.
Let me provide an example.
Let me provide an example.
I have found, to my dismay, that Macau has been producing a growing number of Eurasians who identify with a parochial and asymmetric blend of East and West, in which the local Cantonese microscopic and myopic mentality, including tastes, customs and habits, predominates to a very large extent.
Apart from a few culinary and linguistic remnants from Portugal, I see very little of Europe in local Eurasians. In fact, not a few of my own generation of Macanese -- Eurasians of Portuguese and Asian, mostly Chinese, extraction -- actually disdain their Portuguese heritage. To behold the Chinese (especially Northerners) working in Macau who are more fluent in Portuguese, and who have a greater interest in, and regard for, Western culture, only compounds the barrenness of the picture and rubs salt into the wound...
One should not blame people for being who, what or how they are. Existing as a lonely community, an islet in the vast ocean that is China, is not easy. The need to avoid cultural encirclement and isolation is overwhelming, as is the consequent pressure to adapt to the surrounding environment. It might be argued that it is a matter of survival.
However, that does not prevent one from holding a negative appreciation of a few hard truths. The fact is that more and more younger Macanese have become the fellow-travelers of the inward-looking, 'frog-in-a-well'-type hoi polloi that the culturally spartan Macau milieu has to offer.
Yes, the community has 'survived', but at the cost of its own identity: immersion into the local Cantonese culture and mores is eroding its distinctiveness as Eurasian.
My view is not beyond reproach, as generalizations never are. To paint a segment of society with a single brush is unfair, as it leaves out the many laudable individual exceptions that do exist. And to shed an unfavourable light on ethnic groups might be seen as impolite or discriminatory, if not outright bigoted and even racist.
Nonetheless, political correctness should not obfuscate reality as I see it: centuries of Western cultural influence in Macau has really come to an end. It is not, historically or anthropologically speaking, a good or a bad outcome. It is what it is.
I fear that in a few decades the fate of the Macanese will not be dissimilar to that of the Eurasian communities of India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia: apart from their surnames and perhaps a few gastronomical delicacies, nothing else shall remain of their Portuguese ancestors.
Apart from a few culinary and linguistic remnants from Portugal, I see very little of Europe in local Eurasians. In fact, not a few of my own generation of Macanese -- Eurasians of Portuguese and Asian, mostly Chinese, extraction -- actually disdain their Portuguese heritage. To behold the Chinese (especially Northerners) working in Macau who are more fluent in Portuguese, and who have a greater interest in, and regard for, Western culture, only compounds the barrenness of the picture and rubs salt into the wound...
One should not blame people for being who, what or how they are. Existing as a lonely community, an islet in the vast ocean that is China, is not easy. The need to avoid cultural encirclement and isolation is overwhelming, as is the consequent pressure to adapt to the surrounding environment. It might be argued that it is a matter of survival.
However, that does not prevent one from holding a negative appreciation of a few hard truths. The fact is that more and more younger Macanese have become the fellow-travelers of the inward-looking, 'frog-in-a-well'-type hoi polloi that the culturally spartan Macau milieu has to offer.
Yes, the community has 'survived', but at the cost of its own identity: immersion into the local Cantonese culture and mores is eroding its distinctiveness as Eurasian.
My view is not beyond reproach, as generalizations never are. To paint a segment of society with a single brush is unfair, as it leaves out the many laudable individual exceptions that do exist. And to shed an unfavourable light on ethnic groups might be seen as impolite or discriminatory, if not outright bigoted and even racist.
Nonetheless, political correctness should not obfuscate reality as I see it: centuries of Western cultural influence in Macau has really come to an end. It is not, historically or anthropologically speaking, a good or a bad outcome. It is what it is.
I fear that in a few decades the fate of the Macanese will not be dissimilar to that of the Eurasian communities of India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia: apart from their surnames and perhaps a few gastronomical delicacies, nothing else shall remain of their Portuguese ancestors.
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