How to Congratulate Others in China
“Mom, happy new year!” It was the first sentence I said with my mom when I had a video call with her yesterday night. At that time, I was having a dinner with my friends, and we called it “reunion dinner,” which is held on New Year’s Eve of the Chinese New Year during which family members get together to celebrate it. In China, no matter how busy we are, or how far we are, we should come back home and have a transitional family dinner with people we love. However, it seems impossible for us, all international students studying abroad.
In China, we have different phrases to congratulate others. The most common phrase is “wishing you be happy and prosperous,” which means wishing others are able to earn lots of money in the coming year. People are usually happy to hear this phrase because every one want to become richer, right? The other phrase which is in succession with the phrase “wishing you be happy and prosperous” is “giving me a red packet”. The difference between those two phrases is that the later one can only be spoken by a child to an elder. This is a famous tradition in China that only young children can ask for red packet from parents, grandparents and relatives. And the reason is that the red packet represents a lucky object that it can diesel misfortune and it also enables children to grow healthily.
When we receive red packets from elders, we need to say thank you with a series of phrases, and those phrases are different from person to person.
The phrase we say to elders depends on elders’ gender, age and goals. If my aunt gives me a red packet, I will congratulate her with “Thank you, aunt. Happy new year! Wishing you become more and more beautiful and young forever.” That’s because age is a very sensitive question for Chinese women and they are always happy to hear others saying that they look very young. What’s more, If the person who give me a big red packet is my grandmother, it is very likely that I will wish her having a long life and being happy every day. Those phrases are very familiar with us since we were young because we hear them every year, and it is absolutely the most typical Chinese culture in my mind.
