Paternalistic values
Another potential problem for married women is the long-established custom of married women returning to their own parents' home on the second day of the New Year.
Liu Huan-yueh, a scholar of folk customs, says that New Year's customs can be traced as far back as the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE). Among traditionally minded Han Chinese society, women who marry are thereafter considered to be part of the husband's family. This means that they must spend New Year's Eve and the first day of the New Year taking care of cooking and cleaning chores, and also participating in ceremonies to pay respects to clan ancestors, at their in-laws' house. Only on day two of the New Year, when things settle down a bit at the in-laws', do they have a chance to go back to their own parents' home. However, even then they do so "as a guest," and usually must bring some kind of gift expressing that everything is going well in their own marriages and households.
"This is a custom which exists to confirm the change in status," explains Liu Huan-yueh. In order to ensure that customs like these are largely self-enforced, traditional cultures create taboos so that the restrictions don't need to be imposed from outside. The widespread belief that "going home on New Year's Eve or the first day of the New Year will bring bad luck" means that few married women are going to depart from tradition unless they have a very serious reason to do so.
But is there no room in these modern times to change these cultural rules? Tsai Li-ling, an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of Gender Education at National Kaohsiung Normal University, isn't the least impressed by the old taboos. "They are just a kind of deterrence discourse, no more sensible than the idea of putting a curse on someone."
Tsai points to the case of a friend of hers, whose husband has a large extended family but whose own parents have no one but her. Saddened at seeing her parents forced to spend every New Year's Eve by themselves, she resolved that she would one day ask permission from her husband's family to have New Year's Eve dinner with her own parents.Little did she expect that a few days before the holiday arrived, her own mother would call her up and tell her not to come home for New Year's Eve. It turns out that her mother's neighbors had pulled out that old taboo about the married daughter bringing bad luck to her own family if she returned home before day two of the New Year.
Tsai concludes: "Times have changed, and we should steadily break through the paternalistic discourse of traditional customs. In particular, given that single-child families are already common and will remain common in the future, there is no reason to persist with the custom of married women only returning home on the second day of the New Year."
Let's go back now to a subject we talked about earlier, New Year holiday relations between married women and their mothers-in-law, but this time look less at people who just don't get along and more at the cultural roles these two women are called upon to play.
One reason relations between daughter- and mother-in-law can be so strained over the holidays is that the relationship approximates one of "foreman" and "workman" in the overall family scheme. From a certain point of view however, the two women are, ironically, actually on the same side: they are both "outsiders" who have married into their husbands' families, and both are relatively disadvantaged compared to the insiders.
Unfortunately, "the weak often compete for resources," says Tsai, "and even strongly implement the rules and values of collective culture as a way of confirming their own relative status within the system." When a new daughter-in-law enters the family, the mother-in-law will often be the most vociferous in "tutoring" the newcomer in the rules and values that she will have to follow, because the mother-in-law herself had to run the same gauntlet.
Ironically, both women are sidelined when it comes to the main holiday rituals, such as paying respects to ancestors or the formal opening of the family feast, in all of which men play the leading roles, while the "servers" are strictly in the background.
"Unfortunately, older mothers-in-law and mothers who have been repressed to the point where they can barely breathe consider this kind of unreasonable treatment to be completely natural," Tsai relates. "This is how many customs that are unfriendly to married women get passed down from generation to generation, and form a cycle of repression that can't be escaped."
Creative solutions
Although it is difficult for married women to make a sharp break with long-established customs, as times and society have changed, there has been increased flexibility.
Lily Lin, president of the National Alliance of Taiwan Women's Associations, says that the latest generation of in-laws have generally been exposed to higher education, and are open to new ideas. "Modern women don't have to accept any pre-established position and get locked into some framework of traditional daughter-in-law and mother-in-law relations. As long as both parties are open-minded and thoughtful, it shouldn't be hard to find an approach that both can accept."
"Xiao Jing" (a pseudonym) has been through this type of experience. Her father-in-law died quite long ago, and her mother-in-law has lived with her and her husband. During her first few years of marriage, she worked alongside her mother-in-law cleaning house and preparing "enough food to feed an army" for the New Year's feast. It even happened that by the first day of the New Year they had exhausted themselves to the point where they got sick and had to go to the emergency room!
Beginning roughly seven years ago, Xiao Jing decided she was going to change things, so she said to her mother-in-law, "Mom, you work hard enough the rest of the year, so when New Year's Eve comes we'll go out to eat. We'll have Japanese food, your favorite, and it will be my treat." This soft approach proved successful, and since then the family's New Year's Eve dinner has always been at a restaurant.
She also knows that her mother-in-law loves being out and about where there is a lot going on, though she doesn't really like to spend money, so every Lunar New Year holiday, Xiao Jing carefully chooses domestic group tours that fit the bill and will be safe, which means that from the first day of the New Year onward, her mother-in-law will be all dressed up every day and going out with friends as they visit different places in Taiwan. This allows Xiao Jing to spend the rest of the holiday at home with her own family, where she and her husband and children can relax, or be free to plan a trip of their own.
Ms. Lin, who has been married for three years, offers yet another option. Because her husband is an only son, they have no reason that can justify not spending New Year's Eve with her in-laws. But her family only has two daughters, and since her marriage her parents and remaining sister have been left even more on their own. Therefore, in her second year of marriage, just before the arrival of Chinese New Year, she boldly proposed inviting her parents and sister to come and join the New Year's Eve feast at her in-laws, an idea which, much to her surprise, was strongly endorsed by her father- and mother-in-law.
Not only do her parents and sister now share their New Year's Eve dinner with her in-laws, when the second day of the New Year arrives and it is time for Ms. Lin to return to her parental home, her father- and mother-in-law happily go along. This arrangement makes things a lot easier and more relaxed for her and her husband, who are not caught up in having to "choose sides" when it comes to who spends what day with whom.
As Tolstoy told us, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Yet perhaps most women can find a solution to the problems posed by the Lunar New Year holiday by being creative, kind, and considerate, and communicating in a sincere and thoughtful way. This is perhaps the best way that modern women can break the bonds of tradition and have a genuinely happy New Year.