Keep calm and try these handy tips to ease the tension with inquisitive relatives at your Chinese New Year reunion dinner
For the young ladies and gentlemen out there, family reunions and big festive gatherings can be lots of fun. And by fun, we mean a tad awkward at times. What’s not to love about uncles and aunts probing about your marital status, you ask? Or, in the case of newlyweds, casually inquiring when the first, second, third or next child is on the way? Whether it’s a faux pas or just friendly family chatter, it’s not always easy to escape these intrusive interrogations, especially during Chinese New Year.
As Singaporean journalist Annie Tan poignantly wrote: “Sometimes, Chinese New Year can feel oddly like an Annual General Meeting. You gather together to give a full accounting of your performance during the year to a small group of people... then, everyone publicly discusses and implicitly takes a vote on some very personal issues–your career, body type, love life, fertility and family planning. Somehow, a roundtable of well-meaning relatives and open-faced pineapple tarts has never struck me as quite the place to discuss these difficult and sometimes painful topics.”
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While young men are certainly not exempt from comments like ‘Still not married yet?’ or ‘Why don’t you have a girlfriend?’, our sisters, nieces, daughters or granddaughters in the family are more often than not subject to more nuanced scrutiny from relatives.
From remarks about appearance (“Why have you put on so much weight?”) to outright criticism for prioritising one’s career over finding a life partner, having conversations like these that put you on the spot can make for some rather uncomfortable situations. Thankfully, time is a great teacher. And there is strength in solidarity, it turns out. Inspired by conversations with the ladies of Tatler Malaysia, here is a simple guide to navigating these challenging conversations with grace and grit.
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