Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

March 24, 2007

Wonders of the Orient

A Kun (Jastine) Leng Column

Le Marque de Culturel Masques

 Jastine Leng

The bus was speeding down a busy road. After ten minutes, it braked so abruptly that my upper torso seemed to be pushed into the seat in front of me. A hand reached my arm in time to avoid the dooming contact. Calming down, I stared at my savior—a dark-skinned, thick-lipped girl. I was amazed, as she dashed a gentle smile at me, baring her pearly white teeth.

This vividly evoked in my mind a report scene regarding the Cultural Diversity Day Celebration at the San Ramon Regional Medical Center. Beenu Chadha, dressed in traditional Indian garb to present her heritage, sipped tea from Michael Nixon’s tea service made in his hometown in the United Kingdom while they chatted gleefully. The same dominates Marin preschools, where the one-of-a-kind classrooms are decorated with images of different cultures—masks from Mexico, paper lanterns from Vietnam, photographs of Japanese grandmothers and granddaughters folding origami.

Unfortunately, we’re just in the eye of a hurricane. Hardly does a month go by without an example of the gap between palpable alarm at continent level and people’s stubborn passivity. Aren’t the French riots catastrophic enough to be a wake-up call for the civilized world—what’s long been considered harmonious is no longer socially sustainable? In today’s Britain, what pops into some people’s heads apropos of the mere mention of Muslim will be that of terrorism, fanaticism, and extreme fundamentalists, which is a far cry from what mainstream Muslims actually represent—a religion which, if you read the Koran, is in fact a more peaceful and tolerant religion than Christianity.

So, are we putting on a new mask of historic divide, comparable to the evolutionary split that occurred when a group of pioneer hominids thousands of years ago turned their backs forever on their African homeland?

The makeup of the colorful masks of cultures is demographic diversity, and the harsh crease is ignorance and resentment. The less we learn about other cultures and ways of thinking, the more likely we are to become victims of intolerance. Contrarily, understanding, or, as the Native Americans say, learning to walk a mile in the other person’s moccasins, can erase animosity and, at least, broaden individual mind.

I’m an atheist and I always respect what other people believe in; I have celebrated religious days based on my knowledge about Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, and Hindus; I venerate Confucianism and I cherish the colonial heritage romanticized by Europeans. Absorbing a vast range of cultures and “subcultures” has enlarged the possibility of being an Easterner and Westerner.

“Yi, er, san pengyou...uno, dos, tres amigos...” the nice singing suddenly intruded upon my rumination and grasped my attention. Two boys, one with big blue eyes and curly burgundy hair, the other native Chinese, were strolling along the sidewalk, hand in hand. Above their heads, Dutch tulips cascaded over a balcony, kissing each other in the zephyr.

Je n’ai jamais rien vu d’aussi beau.

Jastine Leng

ghoul_pink_fantasy@yahoo.com