Today is the Chinese National Day, the anniversary of the People's Republic of China. Weeks ahead of the celebration, the city gets cleaned up: a fresh layer of paint on the old buildings, the yearly window cleaning of many high rises, flowers everywhere, no beggars nor street vendors, for they could spoil the facade of a rejuvenated and flourishing China. Then of course tv speeches, red flags on every corner, the 'Chinese socialist core values' shining in red letters everywhere, the Chinese Dream etc. The only thing I haven't got used to yet, is the many texts I get from friends and acquaintances: "happy birthday to the Republic", "Cheer, it is the birthday of PRCs'" and so on. Once, I used to date a Chinese girl and this holidays was always spent with her family. At lunch her dad, a local party cadre whose home used to get flooded with gifts during the celebrations, used to improvise a speech to congratulate the great achievements of the Country on its anniversary. I was always silently puzzled, I'm not really a champion of patriotism even when it comes to Italy, my motherland. I mean, I like my heritage, I appreciate the beauty of Italy, but I've troubles celebrating things as State, national sovereignty, borders and such institutional constructs. I can't see myself placing an Italian flag in my yard, or publicly wishing happy birthday to my country. Crave for internationalism, resentment toward my home country, probably a mix of the two, yet nationality and birth place is undeniably all a lottery, you can't celebrate being blond, tall or smart, there's not much merit in that.
My Ayi - who's gonna deserve a dedicated tag in this blog - is a fervent Buddhist, she gets the unpredictability of karma, and yet she's proudly Chinese and a big supporter of Xi dada (daddy Xi aka the President of PRC). For months she has been putting daily efforts into training my kid to answer "I'm Italian" when asked about his nationality (second question after 'what's your name', sometimes third after 'is your hair color natural'). At the age of 3 and a half, he doesn't seem to fully grasp such a question, he figured out though that saying 'I'm Chinese' seems to please people. The Ayi laughs, maybe with a taste of complicity, but she's nevertheless concerned about his identity issue. I tried to ease her by saying 'you know, he's a kid and I'm not so patriotic myself, no need to worry'. Her reaction is firm 'no way you're not patriotic, everybody love their own country, the kid needs to learn this'. Whatever.
On the 70th anniversary of the 'glorious victory against the (Japanese) fascists' my kid was dancing on the sofa, captivated by the rhythm of the parade march. I couldn't resist and I posted it on WeChat to collect a bunch of 'so cute', 'so grown up', 'so lovely'. Now, the Ayi is putting some efforts in teaching him to recognize national flags, the problem is that she's short-sighted and she hardly matches a flag with the the right country name... nevertheless it looks like a fun loud game.