Year of the Rabbit -- Yum!

Happy Chinese New Year to my Juicy friends.  I have promised to write more entries in 2011 Year of the Rabbit.  They will probably will be short as we recently moved (again) and as Bartleby is not really in school, just this time period in the afternoon called "half day kindergarten" during which he mostly learns how to act like a normal kid while disguising his superior intelligence. 

On a related topic (to both Chinese New Year and the inadequacies of kindergarten in America), I have just finished reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by the now very famous Amy Chua.  It is a funny and sad book about a mother who takes the idea of her children having a "hobby" way too far.  She describes herself and any other parent who pushes her kids to be No. 1 in everything as a "Chinese mother."  But I beg to differ.  Ms. Chua did seem to fit the definition of Chinese mother until she did one thing.  No, it was not calling her daughter "garbage" when she talked back to Tiger Mama.  Nor was it threatening to burn her dollhouse if she didn't practice.  Not even refusing to allow the kid to get up to pee until she got her little piano piece just perfect.  It was the denial of food.  Not once, but twice as recounted in the story. 

If you know Chinese mothers at all then the one thing you know is that food and feeding of family and children is all important.  Ms. Chua obviously likes food.  She makes much of the menu she has catered for her daughter's Carnegie Hall debut.  Her biggest battle with her younger daughter is over caviar.  Yet, her actions with her daughters are contrary to all Chinese foodways.  This is a culture in which a standard greeting is, "Have you eaten?" and in whose medical practices nutrition is the first resort in treating disease.  As a person who half grew up in a Chinese household, I can say Ms. Chua is not at all a typical Chinese mother (if there is one), but a first-gen Chinese person who really lost her mind. She's lucky she didn't lose her family and I think she knows it.

On another note, the Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about the rising number of rabbits being given as pets in China as it is the rabbit year and their not-so-lucky fates.  The article quoted a spokesperson for a vegetarian group called "Don't Eat Friends."  I had to chuckle at that.  And then guilty remembered the times I've eaten and enjoyed our furry friends and a few others,  especially while I was in China.  It really does make a difference when you call them "friends".