Chinese New Year

Today is Chinese New Year, the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit. My sister in Hong Kong sent me a greeting card, showing the plum branches they bought for the new year. The Chinese characters say, "May your wishes come true and may you have luck and harmony."

As a Christian, I celebrate three different new year days. The Christian calendar begins with the season of Advent. I spent the first week of Advent last year in Victoria, British Columbia, and preached at Christ Church Cathedral. We began the new year preparing for the birth of Christ.

The New Year of the Gregorian calendar begins on January 1. This is the day of circumcision of Jesus (the eighth day of his birth) and the baby was given the name Jesus.

The Chinese New Year was a big day for my family when we lived in Hong Kong. My sisters and brothers all returned home on New Year's Eve for the big banquet. It was a time for family reunion. The Chinese New Year is about family, relationships, and food.

New year is a time of renewal and fresh start. In many ancient religious traditions, there is the myth of eternal return.

There is a group of psalms called enthronement psalms, such as Ps 47, 93, and 96. These psalms emphasize Yahweh as the king.

Clap your hands, all you peoples;

shout to God with loud songs of joy.

For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome,

a great king over all the earth. (Ps 47: 1-2)

Some have suggested that these psalms were likely used during Israel's New Year's Festival, which celebrated Yahweh's kingship and rule and God's covenant with Israel. The all-powerful God is king of the universe.

The belief that God rules over the universe is under much attack today. Stephen Hawking has said, "Let there be no God!," and there was light! He also proudly proclaimed, "Science makes God unnecessary."

Yet his Cambridge colleague Stephen Toulmin reminds us that traditional world picture combined "an astronomical, a teleological, and a theological picture" and stressed "cosmic interrelatedness."

Toulmin's teacher Ludwig Wittgenstein, said in Culture and Value, "An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it."

Indeed, "the opposite of faith is not doubt, it's certainty," writes Anne Lamott.

The Tiger Mom Syndrome

Everyone around me seems to be talking about the Tiger Mom. My colleague Larry Wills forwarded to me an email from his daugher about the essay "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" from The Wall Street Journal. His daugher has classmates from Hong Kong and Singapore when she was in college.

In fact, I had already read the essay before Larry sent to me.

Then Patrick S. Cheng sent me a link from the Angry Asian Man blog about the book. And Gale A. Yee complained that she grew up in a working class family, and unlike the Tiger Mom, her parents did not have money to send her to learn piano or violin.

Who is this Tiger Mom? Why everywhere people are obsessed about her? Imagine David Brooks writing about your book on The New York Times, Tina Brown and Arianna Huffington criticized your parenting on Morning Joe, and the Time magazine has a cover story about it! Not to mention all those Chinese- and Asian-American commentators on Slate and the blogsphere.

The largest Chinese newsaper in the U.S., The World Journal, ran a full-page story on the Tiger Mom on two consecutive days. Such attention will be a dream for all authors. The PR agent, if there is one, deserves an award.

I first came to know Amy Chua, the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, through her first book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. Before she is known as Tiger Mom, Chua, a Yale Law professor, was known for her work in ethnicity and development of Third World countries.

Because of the buzz, I decided to buy and read the book. And boy, I found it witty and very interesing. Like Amy Chua, I have a daughter who plays the piano, and learned it for 11 years.

Chua compares the lax Western parenting with the demanding and strict Chinese parenting. Many Western moms would think that she is unloving and hurts her daughters' self-esteem. But for Chua, these Western parents do not have high expectations for their kids, and give up easily.

As I read the book, I wonder how Chua finds so much time to coach her daughters to play the piano and violin, shuttling them to lessons from New Haven to New York, and taking careful notes to teach them at home. Secretly deep down, a lot of moms must have lamented that they do not do enough for their kids. Does Chua have 50 hours a day? When does she find the time to write 3 books, many articles in Law Review journals, and teach at Yale?

It is not just about the Tiger Mom, it is also about the Super Mom. And the perennial debate of a working mom.

Are all Chinese moms like Amy Chua? I guess not. But imagine a country with 1.3 billion people. If you want your children to succeed, you better make sure that they can compete. Lang Lang, China's piano protege, thanks his parents for their sacrifice.

I asked my daughter if she has heard about the Tiger Mom. She said she has heard it from a friend. I guess if you happen to be Chinese, people will ask for your opinion.

"Is your mom a Tiger Mom?" I jokingly asked.

"No, just the opposite. I told my friend." She said.

I am more "Western" in my parenting, if we want to use the stereotypes. As a feminist, I believe that I should raise my daughter to respect herself and have her own opinion. But on hindsight, I wish I have accompanied her more when she practiced her piano. Her piano teacher, a Jewish mom, said she had a lot of potential.

I seldom buy a popular book that I would only read once. But I decided to buy this one, because I wanted to pass onto my daughter to see what she has to say about it. So stay tuned.