Gongxi Gongxi!

We entered Chinese New Year as we do any occaision that involves my MIL:  with much trepidation.   We started out the festivities with a lot of cleaning.  Then there was the rug debacle.  Then MIL showed up three and a half hours late.  We were not off to a great start.

In keeping with my long-standing resolution to never ever cook for my MIL, we went out to dinner even though it is NOT what you are supposed to do.  You are supposed to cook the NYE dinner at home, or at least that is what my MIL told me at least six times during dinner.  We dressed M in a new dress (for a fresh start to the new year) AND in her red Chinese coat for good luck. (Actually, the new clothes are supposed to be worn new years day, not new years eve but since MIL was there so late I wanted to go eat, not mess around with changing M’s clothes).

There is a little chinese restaurant that we have been frequenting recently which was having a new year’s special, so that is where we went.  We ate hot pot noodles (without cutting them for long life), deep fried crab and a whole fish. 

I may have mentioned before that I am generally quite adventurous when it comes to food.  There are only two real situations in which I am reluctant to wolf down whatever is sitting before me: 1) insects of any kind no matter how they are prepared or 2) food with the eyes still attached and looking at me.  You are supposed to eat whole fish because it is some kind of idiom (from the head (tou) to the tail (weiba)), but our particular fish not only had the eyeballs still attached, it had the skin and the TEETH.  I ate enough to be polite, but that is all.  The rest of the food was great.

Then we came home and had some green tea/ red bean popcicles to sweeten the new year.  A and I presented M with a hong bao (red envelope stuffed with money) and she bowed to us and said "Xin nian kuai le!".  Then MIL presented M with hongbao and M bowed then too.  Then we realized what great fodder a video of her bowing would be when she is older and refusing to be so compliant, so we made her do it again so we could tape it for posterity.

After the hongbao, we set out an offering of fruit for A’s Amah (his mother’s mother) who was always very concerned about the children and their educations.  Then we sent good thoughts to Amah and the other ancestors for a few minutes and asked them to send us good luck this year.  We figured with the new baby on the way, we would hedge our good luck bets.  Since I believe in spirits anyway, I was happy to go along with A’s plan.  After we put M to bed, A watched "hellboy" on DVD with his mother while I messed with the rug some more. 

This morning we got up and went back to the same restaurant for dim sum (yay for finally finding a good dim sum restaurant!).  We ate our nian gao, some jiaozi and M’s favorite congee with 10,000 year old egg.

They had a lion dancer come with a troop of drummers and cymbol players.  All the kids fed the lion hongbao as he danced through the restaurant.  The Lion ate a head of lettuce (?) that was hanging from the ceiling, chewed it up and threw it to the crowd.  Don’t ask me what that was about, I have no idea, but it was a crowd pleaser. Throughout the lion dance, M looked like she was on the verge of tears, but she managed to keep it together in the end.

It was a pretty successful weekend with MIL, especially compared to the last two times we saw her.  Our new strategy of cutting her off before she can say anything too offensive seems to be working.  At one point, she started telling me how I can "be sure to get a boy the next time" (which I have heard many many times before and includes the words "vigorous ejaculation"..aiya!), but A cut her off at the pass.  She also started in on M’s nutrition and A cut off that pretty quickly too. 

She did make a point of telling us that once the son reaches maturity and has a family, he is supposed to give his parents hongbao.  If I can find some confirmation about this, we will do it next year.  If I can’t get it confirmed, I will just assume that was her method of hitting us up for cash this go round.

As M said about 5,000 times today: "Xin Nian Kuai Le!"  or Happy New Year!