ethnic existentialism

Yesterday I received a blood red invite to Chandran and Amy's wedding, and realised, to my renewed horror that the dress code was 'oriental'. 'Renewed horror' because I was told it before, and expressed my gasps then, and re expressed them yeseterday. This is more than a 'I don't have anything to wear' crisis. I think this implies that I possibly can't really conceive of myself as Chinese.

Come to think of it, I've never worn anything explicitly Oriental in my life. I know young kids normally dress up in those tiny qipaos or the ma gua thingy during Chinese New Year, but I never did (and was never inclined to). Even my most 'Oriental' experience, namely the esteemed River Valley High School, spawning ground of colourless conformists, involved me wearing a Red Cross reminiscent uniform, that isn't Chinese in any way either.

So what does being Chinese mean, if I don't wear Chinese clothes, ever, don't speak the language (very often), don't possess much (or any) of the so-called 'Asian values', and don't practice any of the traditional Chinese rituals (except for Chinese New Year, for obvious mercenary reasons)? Is it purely an ascribed heritage as a result of patrilineal ascriptive ethnicity? Why does anyone need to have an ethnic group anyway, if just to establish difference?

Yeah alright there's all the "You need to know your roots" thing. But then again, everyone is rooted in the Earth - thus the supposedly derogatory but (i think) vaguely endearing terms of 'kantang' and 'banan' to describe the 'white inside yellow outside' people like me and possibly many other people ignoring this dislocation of identity.