Spring weddings shakedowns leave empty pockets

• Source: Global Times
• [21:22 January 11 2010]
• Comments

By Liu Xiaocong

When you're on vacation, the scariest thing is to get a phone call from your boss or your friends, and especially from couples. This New Year I had no luck.

My boss called me, but at least he followed the law and paid me three times my usual salary for my overtime. Unfortunately three friends of mine took it all away from me with their wedding invitations, including my New Year bonus.

According to Chinese tradition, the whole year's work depends on a good start in spring.

Thanks to the late arrival of the Year of the Tiger in 2010, which doesn't start till February 14, the arrival of spring will probably come before the official Spring Festival.

It's believed by some that when this is the case, the new lunar year is a "widow year," and unlucky for marriage, so a bunch of friends of mine chose to get married at the end of the previous lunar year instead.

I have already attended three different wedding ceremonies this January. Every time I am invited by a friend, the first thing that comes to my mind is not to congratulate them, although my mouth does so, but how thick the red packet of money I give at the wedding should be.

I have just started to work, and so I am only getting a basic salary at the moment, which means I can only afford to live a simple lifestyle.

Nobody cares about this, because from the moment I left the campus I have been regarded as an economically independent individual.

Consequently I have to use my money to support the luxurious wedding ceremonies of my friends and colleagues.

In my hometown, if you cannot spare time to go to a wedding, you don't have to give as much money. There's no way to do this in big cities, and big cities have their own rules.

The amount of money you give cannot be odd, while four and eight are not welcome numbers because their pronunciations are similar to death and farewell in Chinese.

Therefore, if I don't want to be embarrassed at the wedding, I have to give at least 600 yuan ($ 87.90) for an ordinary friend and 1,000 yuan ($146.50) for close friends.

And when I arrive at the banquet, the first thing that comes to my mind is not to congratulate the new couple, although my mouth does so, but to stare at the bride's belly.