Mystery & fascination about Chinese things(2)
Why does Chinese culture grip our minds and hold such a sway on our imagination? Perhaps because of its legacy of many thousand years. Like Indian tradition, they have been passed down from generation to generation. And we always have a deep respect for such heritage. The ancient wisdom in Chinese elements resonates deeply with our own culture.
Yet, the cultural icons from the land of the dragon do not just hark back to antiquity. They remain as vibrant today and throb with deep meaning even in the modern day-to-day life. Chinese culture lends itself easily to adaptation, evolution, blending and growth.
Take Chinese cuisine. We not only love all its variety and tastes. We have appropriated the tenets of Chinese cooking and make any number of changes till it suits our Gujarati, Punjabi or any Indian palate. Chinese Dosa! Noodles with a dash of garam masala!
It’s as if Chinese belongs to us. This touching familiarity with something that is so far away for most us, is the paradox of Indo-Chinese cultural exchange.
That is why, when I first got the opportunity to go to the Mainland itself, a different feeling of joy and pride crept over me. As I stood on the Great Wall, my thoughts wandered back to Kolkata. Where I had bought the first treat ever with my own pocket money. And how I had ordered a Chinese feast for my college mates. I was quietly meditating on the inexplicable bond between Indian passion and Chinese heritage.
Even after globalisation, westernisation, and god knows how many cultural shifts later, the two cultures still seem to draw each other like magnets. But soon I came out of my reverie as I realised something else was an attraction here. A gaggle of Chinese schoolchildren and their mistress had swooped in on us. They had taken to our little daughter and particularly her large eyes in her tiny face. They started clicking our pictures.
And could not have enough of my wife’s salwar kurta and its wispy pink chunri. It was nice to be the centre of attraction of the same people to whom we owed so much. I wanted to tell them how much we now knew and loved even the rare recipes from their land and how deeply we were studying their Confucian philosophy of balance and Tai Chi.
Or how I had become fascinated by their culture of hard work. I do not know how much of this I could communicate to them, but on that March morning, on top of the Great Wall, I felt that my fascination for the Chinese was not about to dissipate even if I lived here for years. The mystery and the fascination about things Chinese would never wear off.
