Gong xi fa cai, xin nian hao, which of course means good fortune and happy new year!
This year it’s the year of the tiger, which means what, I dunno. For me it’s significant only because MB and my dad are both tigers, and the last year of the tiger, I was in China, and so much has changed since then. My marriage and divorce, my cousin’s divorce and remarriage, the birth of her daughter Mia, and a million other things.
MB and I were planning on schlepping out to Richmond for dumplings, but we may feel too lazy and settle for mediocre dumplings around here. (Here again is my dumpling essay for The Nervous Breakdown, in case you missed it.) Later we’ll call my parents, another new year tradition.
When we were kids, our mom used to make us call our grandmother, which was torture. Our Chinese was so rusty, and like robots we’d recite the “good fortune/happy new year” mantra. Then our grandmother would speak to us in her Shandong accent, we wouldn’t understand, and would squirm till our mother took the phone away.
Being single, then married, then divorced was a strange experience around Chinese New Year. First I was happily given red envelopes with cash, then happily not, then pityingly given red envelopes again.
This year I figured out the lai see loophole. Being unmarried, MB and I are both eligible. Another incentive for never getting hitched.
Dumplings for everyone!
Happy New Year. Was just telling S. about how much fun New Years was in China!
happy new year! i was thinking of you as i wrote this post, and the “dumpling city” story too of course. :)