Chinese birthday customs

[lyscra]

Hello,

 

My wife's birthday is coming up and I am wondering what the chinese custom's for a birthday is. I know she would be fine with just having a cake and whatever I did, but I am trying to be a good new husband and so I would like to go the extra mile.

 

Any info would be much appreciated

 

Thanks!

 

-Sy

[bosco]

Just before Ling and I departed for America, my family took me out for a birthday dinner celebration. They fed me a big meal and had a nice cake. THEN they brought in a big bowl of "traditional" birthday noodles I was supposed to eat. I managed to get her younger brother to help me eat the noodles.

 

So as far as I know, only the noodles and absence of presents were different than here.

[mchina34]

Hello,

 

My wife's birthday is coming up and I am wondering what the chinese custom's for a birthday is. I know she would be fine with just having a cake and whatever I did, but I am trying to be a good new husband and so I would like to go the extra mile.

 

Any info would be much appreciated

 

Thanks!

 

-Sy

 

 

I celebrated my wife's BD at her parent's house in China last year, and we had a cake with the cool little chinese firecrackers on them, and a dinner which i cooked. she had some small gifts from friends and from me as well. for her friends we did the same thing, but brought the cake and gifts to a restaurant, ate, and got wasted on KK beer.

Edited July 13, 2007 by mchina34 (see edit history)

[tonado]

I don't think there is a special custom for Chinese birthday. Cake is fine. Maybe going out for dinner too.

[jim_julian]

My experience with Lao Po's family is that birthdays are not as big a deal as they are in the US. A few ... 21, 50, etc are always celebrated but many in between are basically ignored.

 

I bought a cake for Mama for her 73rd a couple of years ago and she was blown away ... first that someone remembered it was her birthday and second that I bought a cake ... I think it might have been the first birthday cake she ever had.

 

Then there's the "when is the birthday" question. Many Chinese consider their birthday to be the day of their birth on the lunar calendar ... and of course this moves. Many increment their age by one year on Jan 1st.

 

Lao Po and I have an agreement ... her "official" birthday is the day on the Julian (or Gregorian if you insist) calendar when she was born ... doesn't move. Her "secret" birthday is her lunar birthday which the two of us celebrate privately.

 

It works out well ...