Gone were the traditions.

One of my favourite place in dajie's new house.

Rushed down to dajie's place for our reunion dinner after work. Jeremy's parents were there as well as aunt Peg, uncle Garick and Gab.

The end product of their house was very nicely designed. Quite different from the typical house and perhaps because they hacked some walls off to make some places looked bigger.


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Anyway a conversation with B last night made me did some thinking.

A woman who married the man is considered as married into his family where she has to take on the man's last name and stay with his family instead of her own.

At first I was arguing the fact that it is the tradition whereby the woman will take on the man's last name as it is not the woman who is marrying the man but the other way round - if you do a direct translation into Chinese, you should understand what I mean.

However that got me thinking, why should the woman take on her husband's last name because she's getting married with him and not into his family. Why must she change her father's name to her husband's father's name since he wasn't the one who contribute to her genes and her upbringing.

Why must the wife attend reunion dinner with her husband?

Got this from wiki:
A reunion dinner (年夜饭) is held on New Year's Eve of the Chinese New Year, during which family members get together to celebrate.

Which means the wife should return to her own home to have dinner with her own family members isn't it? Each one returns to their respective family for dinner, that should be what reunion dinner is right? Especially if wife get married and moved into her husband's place or she has her own house with her husband, that means she sees less of her own family, her parents who brought her up, who was with her since birth, provided her with love, care, shelter and food for until she gets married and not to her husband's family who has no blood relation to her.

So, I had came to this conclusion that reunion dinner should be the day where the wife returns home to her own family, to be with her family and have dinner with her family while the husband does the same.

Returning home to see your parents and siblings (unless you're the only child), with all the catchups, isn't that what you want to do?

I had realised that different family had different types of reunion dinners. Some can have dinner within their family, some with their extended family and some not at all.

Mine belongs to the middle one. That is before my parents split up. We would always gather at an uncle's place where my grandpa is staying at and have steamboat together - cousins, uncles and aunties. It was a lively event and we would play the sparkles after dinner. It was fun then, when we were younger. Those were my fonder memories.

How about yours?