This is the fifth year I’m absent from my family’s Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner.
At the time when the entire country’s people are on the move for family reunions, I just want a sanctuary to be away from the chaos and anxiety.
To start, the abundantly festive and auspicious holiday spirit overwhelms me. More than that, nagging from relatives who nearly understand nothing about my work and life but still hold the entitlement to judge me is the last thing I want at the end of the Lunar Year.
I had spent four years abroad, and when I moved back to China last year to work in Beijing, hundreds of miles away from my hometown, I decided not to go home for the Chinese New Year holiday out of fear and anxiety.
I did the same this year again, telling my relatives I had to work, even though it was a stretch of the truth. I simply preferred to.
My relatives—like the average Chinese relatives—are well-intentioned but judgmental, prying, and have little respect for privacy.
At the few family dinners I attended last year, I was bombarded with loaded questions, and sometimes questions with answers almost every time.
“How much do you make every month?”
”Don’t you find Beijing food rather unpalatable?”
“When do you think you can bring home a boyfriend?”
“Why did other people get huge year-end bonuses but you didn’t?”
“So and so’s daughter’s married. You should hurry up.”
“Why do you want to continue studying? Women shouldn’t be too educated to marry suitable men.”
I am in my 20s, and single, by the way.
Once a woman is older than 27 but still single in China, she is deemed as a “leftover woman”—a term so derogatory yet so rampant that it saddens me every time I hear it—more so when young women pitifully use it to describe themselves.
It was pure exhaustion to sit through those dinners. I only wished I could have buried my face in my plate.
But where should I start with on the arguments? The single-shaming and sexist cultures are just so deeply ingrained that they would hardly believe I am absolutely fine being a single young woman living far away from my family, without any financial support.
It’s a time of the year when the joyous spirit of harmony and reunion should surpass anything else. No arguments are allowed, which to means that no meaningful conversations could be engaged upon.
Yet, it used to be my favorite time of the year as a child.
I grew up in the countryside of a coastal province with a big family. My family would start preparing for the most important holiday months ahead, buying Niahuo—foods and goods for the New Year, drying up marinated meats, brewing rice wine and cleaning up the house.
The New Year’s Eve dinner was always the grandest feast. The cooks in my family—my grandma and my parents–would spend days preparing for it.
To date, I can still vividly remember the rich aroma and abundant taste of the cold dishes, fried spring rolls, veggies, meats of all kinds and gluten rice pudding. It was the smell and taste of the Spring Festival.
Uncles and aunts working in the city whom I rarely saw all year round came home that night with gifts. Then came the fireworks, red envelopes, and the excitement of being allowed to stay up—the coolest thing to do as a kid.
I would place all the red envelope money—or Yasuiqian in Chinese—I had collected under my pillow—a ritual we call Yasui, meaning burying the evil spirit.
The next morning I’d wake up early with compulsive delight because I got to wear the shiny new clothes I had been desperately waited for days.
The lunar new year started with the ritual family breakfast–sweet congee made of mixed beans and rice. After breakfast, I’d go visit relatives with my parents in other towns carrying gifts—usually wine, cigarettes, and snack boxes for kids—a tradition practiced as Bainian in Chinese. They are Chinese home parties if you will call them.
Days like this would continue for a week. I couldn’t be more content with the week-long joyous parties and feasts.
As time went by, my extended family members started migrating to cities instead of living together in a self-built house in the countryside. We stopped delicately making our own New Years Eve dinners anymore; we began following the trend of going to high-end restaurants for bland and stodgy dinner sets.
In the periods of time between eating food, besides nagging and bragging, my relatives sitting around the table would stare at their smartphone screens, virtually chatting with friends rather than the neighbors next to them.
Abandoning the tradition of Bainian, small families would travel across the country and abroad during the week-long holiday.
When you turn on TV, national and local broadcasters are chanting traditional values such as filial piety and meaning of home. It is as loud, flat and harassing to the ear as the relatives’ nagging.
To me there is a profound contradiction at the source of my dislike for the evolution of Chinese New Year: few traditional customs are left today, yet we are all are compelled to cherish and practice them. The shopping, the travelling, and the restaurant feasts only reflect the spirit of capitalism rather than Chinese traditions.
To avoid the never-ending nagging and almost forced celebrative atmosphere in my opinion, I plan to enjoy a quiet holiday at a rare time in Beijing when most people are gone, and visit my family merrily afterward without a sense of obligation to be home.
