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Q: Married and taken folk, what are you expected to do for Spring Festival??
Do you have to give money? Gifts? Do you sleep at their house?? How do your spring festivals usually work out?
My girl grew up in GZ but her family is from Zhongshan so all family goes back there. Every year i stay 3 days. The house is an old farmer house with wood beds only used for spring festival so we stay at the Sheraton. Which is likely the worst Sheraton in all of China. I can only last 3 days in Zhongshan so after that either me and the wife go travel or she stays and i go see my friends for a few.
Every year i would get Hongbao from everyone but this year since we are now married we need to pay. We prepared 30K to give. Every year as a tradition i will treat the entire extended family for seafood dinner. This gives my FIL lots of face that his son is so great then after dinner we will try to pay me back in secret. Im sure he wants to but also loves me more that I refuse.
After that, if we are in Guangdong we go out every day and enjoy the city as it is meant to be. No Hunan people. People say please and thank you. Its the one tine of the year ill go near a subway and im totally at peace with China.
Its a great time of year.
I get no family pressure at CNY. The MIL and Fil are from west Guangdong, and their traditional new year is a few weeks after the actual CNY for some reason. I think the start point for their moon phase is different.
No pressure for me to go to the hometown, because I will be back at work. The wife will be expected to go tho.
Hopefully I will get the house to myself for a few days 
.
mike695ca:
Really? Which city? I have some friends from Western Guangdong like zhanjiang and the like and ive never heard of that. Its so wierd that even towns within the same province would have vastly different holidays and traditions.
ScotsAlan:
I think this is a village specific thing. They do some sort of parade with a Buddah and have a street party. I have never been. Would be interesting to go.
BHGAL:
\i live in zhanjiang and the celebrations here vary block by block I think..... village by village.
Grampa's place is the focal point for our family and there will be a little parade and gymnastic type show (they are amazing, the gymnasts and the knife swallowing and sticking swords through their cheeks stuff... magic?)
wife got paid cash, the other day for her January work. I jokingly said, "give me some money, I am broke" she willingly counted out 1000RMB and gave me the rest. can't spend the 1000, cause she has to give it to MOM for CNY. I didn't take what she offered me.
94 year old Grampa is a "cool" guy... 4 years now out of the "fields" and still pissed off at the family for forcing him to retire. Him and I get along real well, without being able to communicate verbally. I love the guy. He was and is very influential in raising a very up to date family... worldly up to date, not just China's strange world.
I get no family pressure at CNY. The MIL and Fil are from west Guangdong, and their traditional new year is a few weeks after the actual CNY for some reason. I think the start point for their moon phase is different.
No pressure for me to go to the hometown, because I will be back at work. The wife will be expected to go tho.
Hopefully I will get the house to myself for a few days .
mike695ca:
Really? Which city? I have some friends from Western Guangdong like zhanjiang and the like and ive never heard of that. Its so wierd that even towns within the same province would have vastly different holidays and traditions.
ScotsAlan:
I think this is a village specific thing. They do some sort of parade with a Buddah and have a street party. I have never been. Would be interesting to go.
BHGAL:
\i live in zhanjiang and the celebrations here vary block by block I think..... village by village.
Grampa's place is the focal point for our family and there will be a little parade and gymnastic type show (they are amazing, the gymnasts and the knife swallowing and sticking swords through their cheeks stuff... magic?)
wife got paid cash, the other day for her January work. I jokingly said, "give me some money, I am broke" she willingly counted out 1000RMB and gave me the rest. can't spend the 1000, cause she has to give it to MOM for CNY. I didn't take what she offered me.
94 year old Grampa is a "cool" guy... 4 years now out of the "fields" and still pissed off at the family for forcing him to retire. Him and I get along real well, without being able to communicate verbally. I love the guy. He was and is very influential in raising a very up to date family... worldly up to date, not just China's strange world.
This year, we have to buy some nice baijiu for all the uncles (yeah, that generations with large families), because it's the first Spring Festival since we did our wedding ceremony. We are also expected to shower everybody with hongbao, to makeup for all those hongbao we got from the wedding. Why keeping it simple when you can make it complicated, eh ?
Ho, and I'm going to meet the uncles and aunties who are living in the ancestral village. From the way my wife mentioned the village, it sounds like it's going to be interesting. "Are you with no showering for several day ?" "There's that uncle, don't pay too much attention to what he says, he talks too much".
I will get my vengeance soon enough, I will bring her to my grand-parent's cursed village where half of the 50 habitants are inbred.
We're spending the time in Kashgar with a side of Urumqi on the way back. No hongbao's for anyone. The wife's family are arseholes.
I'm thinking now that there'll unlikely be any Spring Festival in Kashgar. 93.5% of the population there are Uyghir and we'll be firmly planted in the Old Town.
I'll tell my wife and daughter I love them and that I hope, for their sake, China can survive.
We're spending the time in Kashgar with a side of Urumqi on the way back. No hongbao's for anyone. The wife's family are arseholes.
I'm thinking now that there'll unlikely be any Spring Festival in Kashgar. 93.5% of the population there are Uyghir and we'll be firmly planted in the Old Town.
I'll tell my wife and daughter I love them and that I hope, for their sake, China can survive.
I don't have to do anything. They wife is the black sheep of the family as she's outspoken with her parents about how her younger brother gets everything while she & her sister were always treated as 2nd best. Not that she doesn't love them & them her but she doesn't like some of the traditional stuff. She has also only been home for spring festival twice in about 16 years. She normally goes after when it's easier to travel.
So we'll be heading to the UK & Italy for a holiday, then to Jiangxi to see her family in early April. Probably go there for Qingming to sweep her grandparents tombs.
I'll be heading back to Panjin to spend my third Spring Festival with the in-laws. We give a small hongbao but that's really just symbolic and is never a big sum, it's more important for us just to be there. It's fine because I get on well with the in-laws and the extended family.
We'll be there for about a week before we get completely and utterly bored and head back to Shenyang. The addition of a new nephew due at any moment will more than likely destroy all of our plans though!
"Bao jiaozi" - Hand make Chinese dumplings.
One of those quintessential Chinese traditions that they have turned into an art form.
Every Spring Festival, let the "waiguoren" have a go at bao'ing so we can all stand around and have a laugh. There is grandma who has certificates in bao'ing. She has been bao'ing jiaozi since Mao zedong was a lad. Grandma in the family is always the baomaster general.
Year after year, my jiaozi fall apart at the seams. Cue more laughter from the family as MIL has to re-bao all of my jiaozi.
Oh well!
Just another year of lost face. Crack open another bottle of Qingdao beer to wash away my shame while the rest of the family carry on with the annual baojiaozi-thon.
My girlfriend is native from Liwan district in Guangzhou (the old city) although her family now lives in newer Tianhe that is just a few kilometres East they still have a old family house in Liwan very close to Shamian island. I live in (very) nearby Foshan, will go there in the morning of Chinese New Year, come back in the evening, repeat on the next two days if needed.
Eorthisio:
Indeed, first year in China, lived in Qingdao, ex-girlfriend was from some fourth tier town in Sichuan, 27 hours of travel to go there at that time. I went with her for Spring Festival, stayed for a week, never felt so bored, also because in front of her family she played the "traditional" girl if you see what I mean (while she was very "modern" the rest of the time). When we came back to Qingdao I told myself "never again".
This will be my fourth spring festival since I've been in a relationship but the first as a married couple (we just registered recently but haven't had a wedding yet). We spent the first two with family and received hongbaos and gave gifts of approximately the same value as the hongbaos we received. Last year we went to Thailand for 2.5 weeks and completely missed spring festival but her parents still gave us some lucky travel money. This year, I plan to give some nice gifts and treat the extended family to a nice meal at a high end hotel since we're married. We might have to give nominal hongbaos as a sign of respect. I'll let the wife tell me what to do.
Congrats on getting married!
mike695ca:
@dongbei that is. No idea why i posted an answer and not a comment. Rookie move.
