Can Chinese-Filipinos dance?

PINOY KASI
Can Chinese-Filipinos dance?

By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 01:24am (Mla time) 10/06/2006

Published on Page A13 of the October 6, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

ANYONE can dance, some of you will say, but what I mean here is really dance -- you know, as in gyrate and swing, glide, hop, whatever’s needed.

Now think, have you heard of any Chinese making it big in dance, whether classical ballet, ballroom dancing or plain old “American Idol”-type competitions?

Hey, some of you are thinking, is Mike Tan your relative? You know, the one who won two years ago in the “Star Struck” competitions? Now, biases aside, he was good, despite his monosyllabic surname and sometimes, when I’m asked, I joke that he’s my son.

I’m sure most of you are incredulous too, not just because you can’t imagine the columnist Mike Tan as a breeder (smile) but also because if I could transmit my genes, it just wouldn’t configure to produce someone musical. Nerdy genes yes, but dance, as in dance, dance, no.

(Pout, pout.) I understand. We all work on stereotypes, foremost of which are the ethnic ones, and the stereotypes use a lot of what social scientists call “naturalizing” or “essentializing.” We associate certain behaviors, or certain personality traits, with particular ethnic groups and eventually think those behaviors and traits are innate, coming with the genes.

“Intsik” or “Chinoy”? We think immediately of someone good in math, almost as if there are abacus-shaped blood cells flowing through our veins. As a corollary to that, we think of “Chinoys” [Chinese-Filipinos] mainly as shrewd business people. But ask an American what they think of when they hear “Chinese-American,” and they’ll say “scientists” or “doctors.”

We form our stereotypes based on people we know, and on our daily encounters. Americans see all the high-achieving Chinese-American scientists on newscasts. In the Philippines, our idea of the Chinoy math whiz comes from having classmates in college who breezed through calculus. And because we’re constantly encountering Chinoy owners of businesses, we think all Chinoys are good in business.

We’re less aware of how the Chinoy have excelled in other professions. In the last medical board exam, among the 15 topnotchers, 7 had those monosyllabic Chinese surnames. But a typical Filipino is less likely to associate medicine with the Chinoys because the Chinoy doctors tend to work in the cities, sometimes in hospitals catering mainly to other Chinoys, or migrate overseas.

Nurture

I’m going to argue now that there’s nothing “innate” about all this. If the Chinoy seems good at math, it’s because many go through Chinese schools where math is emphasized. Some Chinese schools still offer six years of high school, where students finish the whole range of math sciences -- algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus -- before they graduate.

There’s also the teaching style in many of the Chinese schools. Because Chinese doesn’t use an alphabet, you have to learn to recognize thousands of characters, each with its own specific meaning. Learning to read and write Chinese requires rote memory work, done through drills and exercises where you repeat the word over and over again.

This rote style is used as well to teach math. Long before Kumon was introduced to the Philippines, the Chinese schools were using similar drills for math. At Xavier, a Chinoy Jesuit school, we were even taught to use the abacus. I know the contraption’s obsolete now, but the exercise alone of connecting the hands (to push the beads up and down) and the brain (as we muttered the numbers represented in the beads) went a long way to get us familiar with the numbers.

Beyond pedagogical styles, there was a whole culture of schooling with very strong pressure to achieve, to excel. School never really ends in East Asian cultures. I remember being rather envious about cousins who didn’t have to go off to a Chinese school as they had classes from about 8 to 3, while I had to be in school from 7:30 to 5. And wait, there’s more: I did have piano lessons after class for several years, and then shifted to violin lessons, with my teacher coming in at 6:30 in the morning!

In a word then, the differences come from nurture, from the kind of cultural knowledge, skills and attitudes we develop, starting with very young children.

Ph.D.

I’m not saying the Chinese system is superior. It is a good system, but there’s more to learning than rote memory and drills and non-stop work. I’ve learned to appreciate the Pinoy side to my Chinoy environment, one which allows more intuitive “fun-based” learning as well.

Notice in Filipino families, when there’s a visitor, parents will often call their young kids to come out: “Oh, you sing (or dance) naman for Tita.” That’s still unthinkable in many Chinoy families, because singing and dancing are seen as coarse. No one would dream of letting a child become a dancer. No wonder then that the Chinese can’t seem to excel in these areas. Even in China, where ballroom dancing has become popular, the dancers don’t quite have it because they’re, well, too disciplined.

Now, don’t think Filipinos are the best dancers in the world. We encourage kids to sing and dance, but our dancing also sometimes becomes too self-conscious because we tend to overemphasize performance, rather than spontaneity. I’ve visited Latin-American families, and there, the children are allowed more freedom with their bodies as they dance. In a Brazilian samba place many years ago, I picked up a T-shirt with a slogan that said it all: “Not better, but different.” That reflects another type of thinking, another culture which produces the amazing dancers and musicians you see from Latin America.

I suspect “Star Struck’s” Mike Tan grew up in an environment that allowed him to sing, to dance, from a very early age.

Mike Tan the columnist, on the other hand, was always discouraged from dancing. “You’ve got three left feet,” a Chinoy relative announced one day with finality, shattering all hopes for dancing, even for fun.

But I’m going to get back yet, through my Yna. From the day she was born, she’s been encouraged to move, to gyrate, to sway, sometimes with music, sometimes to her own rhythm, sometimes to the rhythm of people carrying her, and that includes me. We dance a lot, to different kinds of music, lullabies even, and I know my Chinoy relatives would be shocked to see her dancing while I cheer her on. So I wasn’t surprised this morning when her preschool teacher gave me their semestral assessment, which included: “Her motor skills are good ... and hey, she’s good with dancing.”

Yna’ll get to dance more, but she’s going to get a healthy dose, too, of math and astronomy and botany, and when the time comes, she can choose to dance, to do a Ph.D. or, hey, why not dance and do a Ph.D.?

Yes, Chinoys can -- should -- dance.