Why Am I Not Going Home for Chinese New Year?

I’ve been dreaming about this for years, and it’s finally happening—I am not going home for Chinese New Year (CNY) this year!

A few weeks ago, I told my parents I wouldn’t be returning because of work obligations over the holiday. It is just a slight stretch of the truth (well, I do have some outstanding work to handle.) but indeed a perfect excuse.

Convincing my traditional Chinese parents—who see returning home for this essential festival as an expression of filial piety—was no easy task. But they eventually relented after I promised to visit home after CNY.

Just to clarify, I don’t hate my family or the holiday; it’s just that CNY has made family gatherings feel really overwhelming: There’s no other time when the women in my household feel more swamped with chores, and the clashes between my chauvinist dad and his feminist daughter become more intense.

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Kicking off my first day of the Year of the Horse at Ditan temple fair, one of the most popular Chinese New Year celebrations in Beijing, and checking out the colorful traditional windmills.

Exhausted Women

The stress for women kicks off about two weeks before CNY with the annual spring cleaning.

In Chinese tradition, families do a thorough cleaning before CNY to clear out the past year’s dust and bad luck while welcoming the new year with a fresh start. In my family – and many other traditional Chinese families – this daunting task falls squarely on the women.

My mom, who works in a local hospital in Central China, has to spend hours after work washing bedding, dusting every corner, and wiping down every surface in our downtown apartment.

Dressed in well-worn clothes and rubber gloves, with her sleeves rolled up, she bends down to tackle the neglected corner behind the washer, stands on tiptoes to scrub the stubborn grime off the glass, and kneels on the floor, only feeling satisfied when the wooden floor squeaks under her scrubbing.

As the eldest daughter, I’m roped into joining my mom for sure, even though I detest household chores. Otherwise, it all falls on the middle-aged woman with a slipped disc.

My younger brother sometimes pitches in for a small fee (or works for free only under my coercion.) But my dad? He never thinks spring cleaning is his concern.

I’ve long been calling it unfair and grumbling to him basically every year. His responses are either outright dismissal or claiming his hard work all year excuses him from this duty.

Since I’m not going home this year, I sent my mom a “red packet” on Chinese super-app WeChat earlier to hire domestic workers for the cleaning – practically buying the labour from other women.

This is what an e-red-packet looks like on WeChat, an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Chinese tech giant Tencent.

But my dear mom, in her late 40s and always watching her pennies, found out that cleaning prices shot up just before the holiday, so she ended up handling most of it herself. And she paid my little brother 200 yuan ($29) for his help.

As I checked in with her on Sunday, she was at the hospital treating her strained thigh muscles after days of cleaning. My dad said it was due to her slipped disc.

I should’ve just sent the cleaning helpers in the first place!

The pre-CNY household cleaning is just the warm-up. The real challenge for the women in my extended family kicks in during the week-long holiday: preparing meals, cleaning up after feasts, hosting relatives, and managing drunken men at the table.

On Chinese New Year’s Eve, my family and my uncle’s family (my dad’s younger brother) would gather at my grandma’s place in the countryside for a reunion dinner. (We, the younger generation, were all born during China’s one-child policy era, but I have a younger brother, while my uncle has two daughters and a little son.)

My grandma would normally rise at 6 am to prepare all day for the big meal for ten on the CNY’s Eve. My mom and my auntie are expected to get back home early to help out. After dinner, the dishes usually fall to the two eldest daughters—me and my younger female cousin.

(I sometimes ‘bully’ our two little brothers into doing the dishes for us, but only when our grandma isn’t around. If she is, she’d roll up her sleeves and jump in, making us feel obligated to take on our “responsibilities” again. Since I’m not going home this year, dish duty will likely land on my second younger female cousin but I’ll get at least my own younger brother to do it.)

While my dad and uncle might whip up a dish or two for dinner, they mostly handle the cooking, leaving the boring prep work to their wives and daughters.

Clashes on the 2nd Day of CNY

The 2nd Day of Chinese New Year stands out as a day I especially dread.

Beijing is all decked out for the Chinese New Year, though most of people are leaving the capital for their hometowns during this time.

Every year, this is the day I inevitably clash with my dad, primarily over how he treats my mom, who is, in my opinion, way too tolerant and submissive.

Traditionally, married daughters go back to their own family to visit their parents and relatives on this day. It’s meant for my mom to enjoy quality time with her own biological family, but she always ends up having only about 4 hours around noon with her families.

That’s because my dad has set that day to host a dinner for all of his cousins. After a lunch with my mom’s side of the family, my dad rushes home, and then keeps urging my mom to come back to prepare his grand dinner — where he takes the lead in the cooking, boasts his culinary skills a bit at the table while getting high, and ends the night passed out, leaving my mom, me and my little brother to clean up the battlefield that is the dining table and kitchen.

“Why haven’t you come back? Don’t you know how much prep is left for dinner?” he barked at my mom over the phone last year, clearly impatient.

That’s when my anger boiled over, and I couldn’t help but shout back loudly enough for him to hear me without my mom putting me on speaker: “Why are you rushing? Is your family’s reunion the only one that matters?”

Once my mom got back, around 3 PM, she inevitably had to hear my dad grumble a bit more, blaming her for coming home too late.

And while my mom helped with the prep, he always nitpicked something like, “Did you steam the rice?… Hey! Didn’t I say to mince the garlic, not slice it… Ugh! Why haven’t you taken the frozen meat out to thaw yet?”

I couldn’t resist snapping back at him, calling out his bossy tone in my own unchecked temper. What usually followed was either his furious outburst like,“How dare you be so disrespectful to your dad?” or just his sulking silence. Meanwhile, my mom would try to mediate, and I’d end up feeling frustrated with both my domineering dad and my peacemaker mom.

Yet, once his cousins arrived, everything seemed to revert to normal, just like a big, happy family gathering. My dad, the head of my patrilineal extended family, sat in the center position at a big round table, proudly introducing all the dishes he cooked, soaking in drinks and half-hearted compliments about his cooking. My mom, on the other hand, barely ate, too busy serving the guests.

By the end of the night, my dad was usually drunk and woke up the next day as if nothing happened. My mom looked like she had moved on as well. It was just me who ended up annoyed for the rest of the holiday, giving my dad the cold shoulder.

I never intended for our once-a-year family gathering to take such a sour turn, and I know my dad felt hurt too. But I just couldn’t stand his overbearing attitude, and he never saw it as a problem.

Such a quarrel repeats itself almost every year on the same day. I’ve had enough, and I think my dad has too.

Deep down, I know it’s tough to change our entrenched patriarchal family traditions, but I’d like to try. This year, I escaped the CNY partially for my own peace of mind, but I’m considering introducing a female-friendly CNY next year.