So anyways, with the current Chinese New Year festivities going on, I thought it'd be nice to shed a little insight on the way parties were held when I was a kid. For me it's been a long time since I had such a party, because I rarely have time to go back to my hometown during the weekdays, where and when such parties are held.
But this time I had some days off, and chan asked me to come along because his mom turned 50. And that's of course reason for a BIG party.
In the old days these kind of parties were pretty fun. You've got your 3-4 dozen parents, all spread out over their favorite pastime: Mahjong and Big 2 (Chinese Poker), a.k.a. gambling.
When you invite that many people (I'm not even counting the kids) and they all need tables and seats and such to play, how is that going to fit?
Well, it's quite simple actually. First, you fill up the entire living room with Mahjong tables and such, until there's no room left to even move anymore. Use up whatever saloon/coffee tables and couches you have for the men to play poker.
Once the living room is succesfully stuffed, proceed to any other room in the house that you have available. Here's a nice bedroom we can use, and here's another one. Well, that seems to be sufficient for most people, the rest will just have to wait their turn.
Now, what about us kids? That's pretty simple as well, find a spare bedroom and stuff em all in there. At this specific party there aren't many of us anymore, since we all moved out and many don't have time to come here anymore, so we have plenty of room for ourselves. Unlike the old days, where I was always astonished about how much the bed could tolerate.
While the parents gamble like they always have (and they always have..), we entertained ourselves with video games (ranging from ye olde NES to the Playstation, Xbox and currently the Wii), card games, and the occasional Japanese horror movie.
But as we grow older, the gambling gene starts to kick in, and next thing you know we're playing a Texas Hold 'Em tournament. Which I won, of course.
Since these parties start pretty early (probably as soon as they get up), they'll need a lot of food. And cooking for 50-60+ people no walk in the park. Unless of course you've been doing it all your life, and wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what all our parents do for a living. And then it's not surprising that dinner looks like an open buffet at a Chinese restaurant.
With the slight difference that this food is soooo much better ^^I never put much more thought into it, because I figured that this is how Chinese people did parties, but since then I've met different kinds of people, including Chinese people, that are just as amazed as other people about these kinds of party (both go like "whooaaaah so many Chinese people here!"). I guess it's just the tight community we have here.
Which I'm beginning to miss, actually. Now that I think about it, the second generation (us) have all been scattered across the land, and unlike our parents we don't have the super asian cooking skills nor the mahjong gambling gene, so the chances of such parties in the future are pretty slim. So I guess it's true that in the old days things were better...
I'm getting old :/
