Most of you probably know this about me already, but for those of you who don't, my mom is Chinese, making me half Chinese. She was born in Hong Kong and moved to the U.S. when she was five. That's why she's considered a 1.5 generation immigrant - she wasn't born here, and when she arrived, she was young enough that acclimating to the American culture wasn't difficult at all, but she also still had significant ties to her parents' culture. She married my dad, who is definitely not Chinese lol, and when they had my sister and me, my mom made an effort to share some of her culture with us.
I remember very distinctly knowing both the English and Cantonese words for things when I was little. When talking to my younger sister, my mom would refer to me not as "your sister" but as "jie jie," the Cantonese term for older sister. That plus the term for milk ("nai nai") and the term for bad girl ("bat mui" - my mom STILL uses this term with my sister lol) I recall the most hehe. We also grew up referring to my grandparents by their respective terms: "pau pau" for maternal grandmother and "gung gung" for maternal grandfather. I still use those terms today. This was never a problem for my dad - he himself tried to pick up some terms as well, especially in order to communicate with my grandparents, who speak very little English. My parents even tried to put me through Chinese school so I could communicate with my grandparents. I made it through two years of classes, but then I surpassed my mother's writing ability, since her formal Chinese schooling stopped when she moved here, and I started experiencing major FOMO because classes were on Saturdays and I always thought my family was doing something fun while I was gone, so they eventually pulled me out.
And of course, every year, we'd celebrate Chinese New Year. My mom would make certain treats that she ONLY ever made for the new year (my favorite being "gok thuy", a ground up mixture of peanuts and sugar fried inside of a wonton skin, basically making it the dessert version of a fried dumpling), and she'd put up a few decorations (either of little kids in red or Chinese characters in red...red is where it's at!) as well as oranges around the house, and we would go to my grandparents' house for a special dinner, and we always received money in red envelopes (referred to as "lai si"), but not until we'd say "Gung hay fat choy!" (which means "wishing you great happiness and prosperity"). We always received two sets of envelopes because one was supposed to be from our dad and one was supposed to be from our mom. This applied to our aunts and uncles and our grandparents as well. As a kid, you can imagine how exciting Chinese New Year was (if I'm honest, at the time, it was probably more for the money; nowadays, it's more for the food!).
When Peter and I started dating, I was struck with a scary thought - what if he didn't "fit in" with this part of my heritage? What if he didn't enjoy Chinese food (the authentic stuff, of course) or what if he didn't bother trying to get to know my grandparents or what if he wasn't okay with sharing aspects of my heritage with our future kids? My dad has an amazingly mixed background, but unfortunately, he's too far removed from it all, so we never really celebrate anything from his heritage (although my mom makes a point of making corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day every year lol). This sort of makes my Chinese heritage even more important to me. The moment of truth came when my mom, my sister, and I took Peter to have dim sum for the first time. For those of you who aren't familiar with that term, dim sum is a type of Chinese meal where servers approach each table with a cart full of small dishes, like appetizers, and you pick and choose what you want to eat based on what dishes the carts contain. In Cantonese, this is referred to as "yum cha" which means "drink tea", because tea is traditionally served with your meal. Dim sum is kinda like the Chinese version of brunch (if you'd ever like to try it out, let me know!). It's great, but I won't lie, they serve some weird things too (like chicken feet and tripe...those kinds of things). Thankfully, Peter passed with flying colors! He tried everything (including the tripe!) that my mom ordered and he was a really good sport about it all. I had a feeling he'd fit in with my Chinese side of the family just fine. =]
Fast forward to last week - February 5th was the start of Chinese New Year this year (which changes because the Chinese follow the lunar calendar). Going to my Pau Pau's house in Long Island City for dinner on a weeknight is usually quite difficult for my family to accomplish, especially since Peter and I aren't so close, so we usually go on the weekend. My grandmother cooked up a wide array of dishes, including lobster (yay me!) and fish (her fish is the bomb), and she bought other things to go along with it, like chicken (a must-have) and roast duck (yum!). Peter proved to be even more Chinese than me - he ate the pig feet!! I can't bring myself to try it lol, although my sister claims our mom made us try it a while ago, which might explain why neither of us touch it now. This year was also a first for me because now that Peter and I are married, we're expected to give red envelopes to all of the single people in our family. I guess it's a good thing I don't care about the money anymore haha. I briefly panicked last week because I've never bought red envelopes before and if I can't even find a Chinese supermarket nearby (let's face it, Connecticut is NOT New York in that respect), where the heck was I supposed to find red envelopes?? Thankfully my mom had extras. I also learned that I'm expected to bring a small gift to the hosts - thankfully my mom had enough oranges to share with me haha (seriously, my mom did a lot to assist me in my naivete this year). And in return, my grandparents gave me a parting gift of oranges; the idea is that if you give someone something, they should return the favor.
Overall, this Chinese New Year was a huge success, and I'm grateful that I got to share that part of me with you! I'm especially thankful for my wonderful husband for being willing to travel to and from New York on Saturday so that I could spend the holiday with my family despite being fairly sick. You're a trooper, Peter!
*Disclaimer: I do not claim to know the correct spellings of the Cantonese words/phrases referenced in this blog post. I was able to find some of them and I did my best to sound out the rest!
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