Advice for surviving Chinese New Year, and stories about experiencing Chinese New Year, with your Chinese family. All from one Western woman with a Chinese husband.
John never looked more upset the moment I lifted our artificial Christmas tree — up and out of the living room.
“What are you doing? Don’t move that,” he said.
“But it’s embarrassing,” I said, not glancing back at him as I carried it into our bedroom. “Just think if our guest saw it.”
“Nobody cares, just leave it out.”
“Look, this isn’t just another Chinese New Year decoration you just hang up all year long.” I glared at him as I said it, the kind of glare that says, “Don’t even try winning this argument.”
Outside, the sun’s rays turned the field across from our place into a shimmering green, where the crack of baseball bats and the barking of dogs trailed by owners in shorts and T-shirts reminded me the holidays had long gone. But you wouldn’t know it by the Christmas tree, stockings and string of holiday lights in our home — decorations that, to my Chinese husband, deserved a place in our home the entire year, just like the red couplets or “Good Fortune” characters decorating the homes of most Chinese. Continue reading “From Chinese New Year To Christmas in July?”
My Chinese father-in-law was surprised to hear we had no time off — but he’s never known a world without Chinese New Year, like I have.
“Will you have time off for Chinese New Year?” Even though my father-in-law had retired more than 10 years before, he asked this question to us this past Saturday night with all of the wonder of a young child during the holidays.
“No, the semester already started,” John said.
“They gave us vacation for Christmas, not for Chinese New Year,” I added. “Christmas is the big holiday in America.”
“Oh,” my father-in-law said, with a voice that dropped off in surprise.
But he’s not alone. Every time we’ve called our Chinese friends back in Hangzhou, the “vacation during Chinese New Year” idea invariably sneaks into the conversation. And every time we tell them, no, there is no such thing in the US, they answer with astonishment.
Red envelope, hongbao, lai see -- whatever you call them, remember, at Chinese New Year, these are more for kids, not your boyfriend or girlfriend.
D asks:
I’m dating a cute Cantonese boy, although he was born in Canada himself (along with his brother), his parents are from China. His parents are pretty strict about him dating period, never mind dating a white girl like myself.
Chinese New Year is coming up, and I know it’s a time where the older give to the younger. As I’m older than my boyfriend by a few years, would it be odd if I had gotten him one of the special lai see envelopes with money in it? Or is that just strictly family related?Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Chinese New Year Red Envelopes For Boyfriend?”
Accomplished Chinese food writer and yangxifu Carolyn J. Phillips talks with me about food and what it takes to charm your Chinese family at the table. (photo from zesterdaily.com)
Food is such an integral part of Chinese culture that it’s really hard to fit into a Chinese family if one isn’t adept at the cuisine. I suppose this is true to some extent with any country, but the Chinese are probably on par with the French and Italians when it comes to the importance of dining well.
This is probably doubly important when a yangxifu doesn’t speak Chinese fluently but still hopes to be accepted. Have your readers talked much about this? I truly feel that the old saw about the way to a man’s stomach etc is gospel for us yangxifu.
Carolyn should know — she’s a yangxifu who devoted her adult life to mastering the art of Chinese cooking. She blogs about food at Out to Lunch and tweets about it as @MadameHuang. She’s also working on two forthcoming books on the subject — “Simple Pleasures from a Chinese Kitchen: Authentic Seasonal Recipes from Every Region of China” and “Culinary Goddesses: The Women Who Changed Our Dining Landscape… Recipes Included.” — and is a regular contributor writing about Chinese food for Zester Daily. In addition, she’s even fluent enough in Mandarin to do court interpreting.
In any event, Carolyn has discovered a thing or two about what it takes to woo a Chinese family that truly loves to eat through food. So I sat down with her — from one yangxifu to another — to talk about all things related to food and Chinese family. As Chinese New Year approaches, it’s a topic that will come in handy for lots of readers.
Feeling all alone in celebrating Chinese New Year, because you're living abroad, and you're busy? Try these ideas to get into the holiday spirit, for the person on the go.
Saturday night, the rum-ta-da-rum-tum-tum drumbeats echoed out of the ballroom on campus, as that red lion — looking lavish as a Liberace suit — bust through the doors, bobbing up and down, and wagging its tail all the way to the stage. This was the beginning of Chinese Night at our campus, the local version of Chinese New Year. And my Chinese husband John and I, exiled to the tables in the food court area outside the door, could only imagine what was really going on.
Of course, we didn’t get a chance to see that kickoff to that great show for a very simple reason. We arrived late, finding a “people mountain, people sea” of a ballroom, with no seats at the tables, nor the overflow rows of seating added to the back.
Yet, in a way, it’s almost a metaphor to the millions of Chinese — and their loved ones — who pass Chinese New Year in a foreign country. Once you squeezed your way into China’s ballroom, and watched the holiday explode before you in all of its red firecracker excitement. But now you’re seated so far away, you don’t even notice the stage. Continue reading “How to Spend Chinese New Year Overseas, For Busy People”
A toast...to the top five most popular posts (by views) in Ask the Yangxifu, for 2010! 😉
I launched Ask the Yangxifu in 2010 as a platform to answer the many questions and conundrums readers sent my way about love, dating, marriage and family. And, as it turns out, it’s been the most popular source of content for this website, hands-down.
So, as I celebrate the holidays and ring in 2011, I thought I’d take a moment to share with you your most favorite Ask the Yangxifu columns, ranked by views:
1. How Western Women Can Meet Chinese Men in China. Chinese men, take heart — if this ranking is any measure, there are a lot more Western women out there looking to meet you than you think. 😉
3. How Can Chinese Men and Western Women Get Along as a Couple? I couldn’t resist answering this question, from a Chinese guy who wondered how two people from such drastically different cultures could make it work. And given that’s one of the top five posts, you couldn’t resist it, either. 😉
4. Change Your Name After Marriage in China? I answered this question for my friend Gerald — erroneously, as it turns out, because the issue in his case was that he wanted to change his own name when he married his Chinese girlfriend (Sorry, Gerald). Still, it was fun to write, and started a whole conversation about how to handle this Western tradition for women in China.
5. What Western Women Think of Chinese Men. My translation of a Xinhua article on a study of Western women and their impressions of Chinese men really got your attention.
Happy New Year (新年快乐), and I’ll see you on January 7, 2011 with a fresh new Ask the Yangxifu column!
P.S.: Quick programming note — just wanted to let readers also know that my column, Travel China with the Yangxifu, will be on hold in 2011 until further notice. Why? Well, it gets pretty tough to write about traveling China when you spend most of the year in the US. 😉 Travel lovers, hope you understand. And don’t worry — I’ll be going to China in summer 2011, so the travel bug might just inspire me to put pen to paper once again. Stay tuned. 😉
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Do you have a question about life, dating, marriage and family in China/Chinese culture (or Western culture)? Every Friday, I answer questions on my blog. Send me your question today.
There are many ways you can make this a very Chinese Christmas, such as putting your name in Chinese (and English) on your Christmas stocking (like mine).
When you straddle two different cultures, sometimes, you wish your holidays did too. Holidays like Christmas.
I still love and embrace the traditions of my childhood, growing up in a Catholic home with a fresh-cut spruce trimmed with tinsel, and lights and an Angel. We hung our stockings, exchanged presents by the tree, hung wreaths, shared Christmas carols, baked Christmas cookies, and decorated our doors with pictures of Santa and the Reindeer and Elves.
But now, with my Chinese husband John, I’ve enjoyed creating a few new traditions and twists on the old, to make the holiday reflect the international, cross-cultural couple we are.
I wondered why Er Ge, John's second oldest brother, was so painfully quiet. Learning his story was like a window into the pressures of young unmarried Chinese in the countryside.
John’s second oldest brother, Er Ge, was like the wallflower of Chinese New Year at the family home in China’s countryside. He usually lingered in the corners with a slight hunchback and frightened, delicate eyes, like a fragile little sparrow hoping to escape the marauding glance of humans. There was a quiet, impenetrable sadness that clouded his personality, and somehow, I couldn’t get past a Ni Hao to really know the man within.
Only 26 years old, he was the only brother who still lived at the family home. He didn’t care much for study, only finishing Junior High and then going on to become an itinerant worker in the countryside, doing odd jobs for relatives and friends. But none of this seemed to explain why Er Ge withdrew from the world.
Even as I shot a photo of John's family, I still didn't see have the entire picture of his family -- until I showed them pictures of my own.
In China, they call a family picture 全家福 (quanjiafu), which literally means happiness for the entire family.
It is happiness if you can have the entire family together to take a photo. And, in John’s family, this happy day usually comes during Chinese New Year, when the whole family returns home to celebrate.
The whitewashed facade of John’s family home reflected the filtered sunshine that afternoon of Chinese New Year’s day, brightening the yard like backdrop lighting in a photography studio. It was a perfect spot for the family photo, where John’s father and mother sat in front, holding baby Kaiqi, with the three brothers and sister-in-law standing behind. I stood before them all, digital camera in hand, as I framed the family through the lens for the perfect photo. I snapped several shots, including one of just Da Ge, his wife and baby Kaiqi.
Even as I finished taking the photos, I still didn’t have a clear picture of John’s family. No photo is complete without the stories behind it. I didn’t know the real stories from John’s family, because we hadn’t truly connected since my arrival. Instead, my time there, up until that afternoon, was like an unnarrated slideshow, where the outside observer could only guess what was happening.
I never felt such a bitter cold until I went to my Chinese boyfriend's hometown in the countryside -- because I was too embarrassed to say I needed more warmth at night.
“The worst cold I ever knew was winter in Hong Kong.” I didn’t understand those words, spoken by a woman who taught English there before China opened up. She shared her experience in China with me as I prepared for a year of teaching English in Zhengzhou. But as I smiled and nodded, the idea nagged me — how could Hong Kong, on China’s Southern coast, be so cold?
The thing is, any place can feel bitterly cold in China — if there’s no warmth in the home.
John’s family home in the winter was fast becoming the worst cold I had known. The house, with most of its doors and windows cracked or wide open to the elements, had no central or room heaters. We spent our hours huddling around giant woks filled with hot coals to fight off the nip of near-freezing temperatures, which felt even more frigid because of the moisture-laden air of this humid climate, South of the Yangtze River. I wrapped myself my long down jacket all day — indoors and outdoors — just like everyone else, as I remembered how, back in the US, people would have thought me strange or even impolite not to take my jacket off, as a guest.
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John never looked more upset the moment I lifted our artificial Christmas tree — up and out of the living room.
