Family grilling turns to festive welcome
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From the moment I arrived in my Chinese girlfriend's hometown for the Spring Festival, I started seeing signs that my visit wouldn't quite be what I expected.
Her cousins called me big brother, and then I started forcibly receiving red envelopes from the elders that contained a total of over 3,000 yuan ($455). Finally came the coup de gras: At dinner one night, an uncle toasted me and loudly declared, "Welcome to the family!"
The Spring Festival is a very auspicious time. Numerous ancient traditions are still practiced and certain gestures have very symbolic meanings. One of these gestures is bringing your boyfriend home for the festivities.
Even though I'm a foreigner who doesn't typically celebrate the holiday, I still wasn't immune. Despite her protestations, by bringing me home for the Spring Festival, my girlfriend was signaling our intent to get married.
It was OK though. We'd been dating for over three years and I was hoping the visit would be a chance for me to get in the family's good graces anyway. Now the stakes were just a bit higher. So after a few futile attempts at dissuading the family from their premature notions, we both decided to play along.
The difficulty of winning over each family member increased with their age. I took care of the 7-year-old and 15-year-old cousins early with a rabbit-shaped balloon and English lesson respectively. But getting the rest would require careful navigation through Spring Festival customs with my subpar Putonghua ability.
Helping to hang traditional red banners with Chinese characters on all the doors and windows to keep ghosts at bay in the lunar new year got me points with some of the guys. Then wrapping dumplings while the other men rested got me big points with the women.
After the barrage of fireworks finally calmed on the first day of the lunar new year, the marathon of feasting and socializing with extended family began. It was basically a weeklong Christmas, with two major differences: compulsory binge-drinking and giving performances, always in that order.
After being coaxed to the front of the living room at one gathering, I sang a poor rendition of "Hey Jude." But they demanded a Chinese song. Thankfully I have a Chinese pop hit memorized for just such occasions. They went wild and in one fell swoop I had won over the entire dad's side.
On the last night, the mom's side made reservations at a fancy restaurant. They were carrying out a long-standing town tradition of treating the man to dinner who intends to sweep up their daughter, while subtly grilling him to judge his worthiness.
