A Zhejiang Town's Lunar New Year

gender roles at dinner tables, conversations with mom, Returning to Reims

I thought it was too much for mom to give my friend a red packet.

It was the Lunar New Year but what is the difference between that and giving cash?

“It will just be a burden for her. We young people don’t do that,” I thought I absolutely had a point. For me, it sounded like my mom once again using her outdated way to interpret modern-day relationships, including friendship.

Friend M was then spending the New Year together with my family. We knew each other from my time in Shanghai and as she didn’t have plans for the holiday, I invited her to come to my hometown. It is her second year in China and would be the first time celebrating Spring Festival properly.

After a few rounds of exchange, mom insisted that a red packet was necessary as part of the traditions. Okay then. But maybe not a lot of money? A hundred yuan or less should be enough, like what I heard Hong Kongers would do (correct me if wrong..) – small and sweet. Long perplexed by the pretentious Zhejiang culture (Shengzhou is where I grew up, a part of Shaoxing in the eastern Zhejiang province) of giving out an insane amount of red packet money on all celebratory occasions (I was told to give 2,000 yuan to a friend’s wedding when I was still in college), I was worried that mom would be thinking about a number that was gonna be embarrassing.

In the end, M and I received 600 yuan each. I didn’t have a chance to ask M how she felt about it, but I had been thinking about that and was almost certain that mom should be more chill.

A few weeks later, I realized I might be the one who needed to be more chill. It was a Sunday and I was binge-watching the trending Netflix Asian American reality show Bling Empire. At one episode, I saw the main character Dorothy’s mom gave two friends of Dorothy a red packet each as they were visiting on the Lunar New Year’s Day. If Dorothy and the Bling Empire approve it, why would I have an issue with it (still thinking the Hong Kong way is better than Zhejiang way though)? Being captured on the show makes it look even cooler.

I think the problem is that I always have this urge to make my family and hometown look relevant, even though they already seem to be.

As I am typing this out, I am having a cup of Shengzhou-made sour ale at a hipster daytime-cafe-night-bar in Beijing’s Sanlitun, a busy shopping and bar district. It was a wonderful surprise as I found out that out of 15 craft beer options, two kinds were made by a Shengzhou brewery.

“I am from Shengzhou and I want one of those from my hometown,” I was proud.

“You are from Zhejiang?” asked the bartender.

“Yes, indeed! I didn’t realize my home city has such a cool brewery that could make it to Beijing bars.” 

How uncool I must think my hometown is that I never forget to mention it. 

Shengzhou has changed a lot in the past decade, but no matter how urban it has become, as there’s everything now ranging from boutique cafes, up-and-coming glamping sites, direct high-speed trains to Shanghai/Beijing, I still pretty much only consider it a rural place where, for example, going to watch a play at the theater is never a cultural habit, and very few would complain about others smoking at restaurants.

Take another one, gender roles at dinner tables, is something that I have recently become aware of. Almost all the hard and tedious work when it comes to meals during the New Year holiday, I realized, such as preparing, cooking and washing dishes, was done solely by women in the house. My aunts, female cousins, and mom would be so busy doing everything but on the contrary, my uncles (my great uncle being an exception as a great cook), my dad and male cousins would come for the food once it was ready and left once they finished. Otherwise they would be just drinking tea or chatting at courtyards. It’s so natural that for the past two decades, I didn’t even question it at all. 

“Zhejiang seems to be economically advanced but socially so behind,” I said to mom, “Cousin was so busy cooking food and only female relatives were giving her a hand.” My hometown has lots of female entrepreneurs and businesswomen, but this kind of suffocating gender inequality seems to work fine for most people. It is NOT okay. Mom agreed and decided to have dad to cook more meals for us.

One Gen-Z Chinese writer Ni Yining, who also went back to spend the New Year in Shaoxing, reflected on similar gender traditions in her latest article. “The only mission for mom on the Lunar New Year (in Shaoxing) is to do housework…I think women have endless work to finish, while men think everything is fine and even confused about why women look so busy.”

I wish my hometowns could be more progressive, but I know I still love it so much. When it’s time to board the train back, my eyes teared up. After three chaotic years, there’s nothing more valuable than spending time together with family members. And except for the red packet disagreement, I didn’t have any fights with mom during the entire stay, which is something that is pretty rare. For a long holiday like the Lunar New Year, it’s possible to have words with her over things ranging from how organized my room should be to how more helpful I am supposed to be with setting up the table.

I am not alone. Since coming back from the holiday, I have been hearing multiple accounts (including hosts from two popular culture podcasts, Stochastic Volatility and Auto Radio) of how this year’s holiday turned out to be surprisingly argument-free. Some said they also cried after saying goodbye to their family.

People’s experience varies, but I think after witnessing and going through important historic moments together in the past few years, we might have started a process of reconciliation with family and ourselves — a discovery of “region of ourselves” (Returning to Reims, Didier Eribon). It could be painful, or relieving.

Here’s to that journey.