> CD #19: A love letter to Chinese grannies

I don’t follow very many Instagram influencers, but @ahistoryofarchitecture is a favourite of mine both for her fashion and her politics. It also doesn’t hurt that Erica is a curly-haired middle-aged Asian woman who lives in Canada, so I find her relatable on numerous fronts.

I’m not in love with all her looks (I find puffed sleeves overwhelming, which seems downright un-Canadian to say—forgive me, Anne of Green Gables), but her colour sense and proportions are always inspiring. In some recent posts, though, she’s taken things to a whole new level with this amazing padded corduroy vest in a floral print.

The vest is what I’d lovingly call “Chinese grandma,” a style recognizable to anyone who frequents Asian supermarkets and Chinatowns across North America. It’s a look celebrated by another Instagram account I’ve followed and loved for many years, @chinatownpretty, and the Chinatown Pretty website has a great description of this style:

It’s about layers of hand-knit sweaters and puffy coats in the summer, as well as bold floral patterns and baseball caps—sometimes all in one outfit. It combines urban utilitarianism with unexpected sartorial selections that make the heart go a-flutter.

I myself have been a close observer of Chinese grandma style since I was a young girl. On most Saturday afternoons, my mom would drag me along with her to visit elderly poh-pohs in their cramped Chinatown apartments. I’d pass time by trying to make sense of the grannies’ unconventional outfits and home decor choices while my mom cut some fruit for a snack and made soothing comments in response to their various complaints.

I never imagined that my own mother would one day be the vest-wearing grandma, and that I would be expected to know what to say or do when faced with her old-age concerns. But now that both my parents have reached their mid-70s, this is where we are.

It occurred to me this week while driving my mom to the hospital (double-masked, windows cracked open for airflow) that my life from now on will become increasingly devoted to caring for my parents and dealing with their declining health: helping them navigate the system, providing inadequate translation, and feeling helpless about their diminishment. To be totally honest, I think it might break me.

But I’m not special, and illness and aging and death come for us all sooner or later, so there’s got to be a way to handle it without being completely destroyed. My mother willingly visited those grannies even though she had no filial obligation to them—they weren’t relatives. She gave them her time, herself, and what she got in return is not apparent, at least not to me.

Still, there was something almost sacred in each visit, in the way we arrived bearing fruit and the way time slowed to a crawl in those tiny Chinatown apartments. There, a little girl watched the tips of the red incense sticks turn to ash as they burned on the ancestor altars. There, a little girl discovered how time passes even when it feels like it has stopped. Life asks you to bear the unbearable at least once a week, and you don’t believe you can, until somehow you do. There, a little girl watched her mother care for people in a way she never quite understood but now desperately wants to learn before it’s too late.

:) Teresa

ps. Over the course of the pandemic, racist and violent attacks on Asians have increased dramatically. If you love Chinatowns and grannies as much as I do, here are 45 ways you can support Asian communities.

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