The Chinese New Year Tradition, The Quirks, The Tolerance of Husbands & Wives

Finally am able to start writing on my new posting. Boy….am so glad Chinese New Year's finally here. Although it’s just the fourth day of New Year but am so, so glad that the preparation is done. It’s amazing how the Chinese goes all the way out to prepare for the New Year celebration.

There’s this Chinese proverb that states that all creations are reborn on New Year’s Day. Hence, the Chinese New Year is a celebration of change ... out with the old and in with the new!

Hardcore Chinese believe that events that occurred during the New Year celebration may impact their life for the rest of the year. So during the New Year, be more careful with your speech, actions, even your thoughts. Not only that, the type of food you eat is important too. That’s why there’s abundance of good food during New Year. Red is auspicious, represents prosperity, which is why some believe that all red, even the underwear will starts the New Year prosperous. And surround your house with colours of red, gold or yellow to stimulate positive energy all around you and your family.



Everything associated with the New Year must represent good fortune. To single people, good fortune may mean love and romance. Good fortune may mean good grades to students, children for families, jobs for the unemployed and health for the sick.
Well, all that’s done now and as I start reflecting on this yearly’s tradition, I recall all the patience I had to put up with the spouse. It’s just amazing how the different attracts when one is dating. Why, I believe it’s because the opposite is all that you are not. So it is kind of fascinating to hear about all the things this other person is doing which are just not you! And during courtship, one is blinded to all those little ‘hints’ of incompatibility. So couples dated, engaged, married and settled into their little love nest. Well, maybe for the first few years, it’s still honeymoon period. But slowly, but surely all the ‘incompatibilities’ start surfacing.

For me, it’s as simple as how I decorate the flowers in a vase. I arranged a nice vase of flowers on the dining table. An hour later after I had showered, checked some emails; I found that my flowers had been changed in to two vases. His method of arranging flowers and my method is totally different. It’s just amazing how one sees things differently by just arranging a vase of flowers. He likes it arranged sparsely so he split the one vase of flowers in to two vases as he felt the flowers look too ‘packed’ in one vase!

Similarly on how we hanged those cute, auspicious decorative items on the cherry blossom plant. I would hang lots of it all around the plant. Two hours later, he will take half of it out. He said looks too cluttered!

It really drives me up the wall that such a minor stuffs which are not at all a man’s role should irritates me so much. I would assume that these kind of nitty gritty stuffs be left to women to handle. But looks like he wants to meddle in to all these small stuffs too. And it makes me feels like I can’t do things my way at all.

I have a friend, Jane who had almost the same kind of incompatibility with the husband, Jim. Jim would usually asked, “What do you think if we rearrange the furniture by moving this sofas around so that the TV now is on the opposite?” Jane would look at it and commented, “It looks good as it is now. The TV would look odd at the opposite side, as the space is too big. Let’s just leave it.” And with that Jane thought that’s it. Don’t move. By evening when Jane comes home from office, guess what? The furnitures’ moved. Jane fumed. It’s just an instant reaction I supposed. Jane matched up to Jim, “I thought we don’t move cos it really looks odd with the sofas now all crammed over this side.” Jim defended, “I just want to see how it actually looks, I just can’t visualized it when you said that. Ok, no problem, I move it back.” And so after a hard day’s work, after cooking and dinner, Jane has to rearrange all her living room stuffs.

And it seems to have got worse, now he’s even stepping into her territory. He starts rearranging all the stuffs in her kitchen cabinets! Jane is still very patient although she’s damn upset that her opinion does not matter as far as Jim’s concerned. And in her mind, she’s just waiting for her kids to grow, so that she can start living her own life. Arranging her house the way she likes.

Do you have any stories to share of your other half “quirks”? Share your story to all our friends here. And it need not necessary be the women as men too would want to have their say, am sure.

Asian Women's Super Clean Freak Husbands

During one of our girls' lunch outing, two of my girlfriends revealed that their husbands are "super clean neat freak". Everything has to be in their proper places, and they just lose their mind if things are not arranged orderly. And with little kids at home, how can things be in order. And each of my girlfriends is up to their neck, to be patient and to maintain calm in the family when the husbands go on a 'clean neat rampant' ranting. Whilst Asian women are known to be accommodating, tolerant but it’s up to a certain stage and there’s always a danger of a breaking point.

One of them has this point of view that like it or not, it’s always still good to have a man in the house, even if he’s not the ideal husband. Whilst the other, had plan to leave and live her own life once the kids are grown.

One of the strong key points of ‘most’ Asian women is that children still come first. As long the marriage is still bearable, Asian women will tolerate…. at least up to a point.