Translating a US Thanksgiving to family in China
“Well, we have this big meal together with family, and we eat things like turkey and cranberries ...”
As I tried describing Thanksgiving Day, one of the most quintessential holidays in the United States, to my in-laws in China, I could already see their eyes glaze over with confusion and sense the questions forming in their minds. Turkey? Cranberries? Even though I expressed these perfectly in Chinese, the result was still gibberish because they had never seen a turkey or tasted cranberries.
So I attempted to translate the holiday through more familiar Chinese counterparts.
I described the roast turkey as something akin to Beijing duck. I equated the sweet-tart goodness of cranberries to Chinese hawthorn in the candied fruit skewers of tanghulu. I called stuffing a savory version of eight-treasures rice. I likened pumpkin pie to the pumpkin cakes, or nanguabing, popular across their province of Zhejiang.
I compared the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to the yearly Spring Festival Gala on Chinese New Year’s Eve.
And I characterized the entire celebration as an American version of winter solstice in China, as both holidays emphasize food and family and herald the start of the holiday season in our respective countries.
Yet as much as my in-laws nodded and smiled in acknowledgment, I recognized that even these explanations were a poor substitute.
It wasn’t just that some of the food didn’t have a clear analog in Chinese culture, such as mashed potatoes with gravy or the traditional green bean casserole sprinkled with crispy fried onions.
No words could ever fully encompass the Thanksgiving celebrations I had known in the US.
No matter how much I said, I could never transport them back to my uncle and aunt’s home, and sit them down at the same long, rectangular tables draped with festive burgundy or white tablecloths. They would never be able to stand along with me at the buffet table, where we would serve ourselves from the steaming hot dishes lined along the wall.
We wouldn’t have the chance to bow our heads together as someone recited a Thanksgiving Day prayer before the meal, or engage in delicious conversations over dinner about plans for the coming holidays.
All of these rituals and the people behind them would forever remain out of their reach, and they would never personally encounter the delights of Thanksgiving Day, to truly understand why it was my favorite American holiday.
This is the kind of disappointment you face when you straddle two different countries, where you have experiences — like spending Thanksgiving Day with family — that you cannot pack up in your suitcase like a souvenir or render into a perfect verbal description.
As much as I wished I had more than my woefully inadequate introduction to the holiday, it would have to do.
Still, I had to remember the positive side to this exchange with my in-laws.
It’s a precious thing when you can sit down with people from another country, and they’re actually open to learning about your culture, including the holidays you love most.
So in the spirit of my American holiday, I silently gave a moment of thanks for having such incredible in-laws, who cared enough to listen to their foreign daughter-in-law talk about Thanksgiving Day.
Thanksgiving dinner.