We, the Chans belong to the Kwang Ning dialect group of people from China. We have this unusual tradition. When a child is a year old, on his DOI SOI, meaning double birthday. ( The Chinese consider the nine months the child is in his mum's tummy as one year) we go through a special ceremony.
Put in front of the child are all sorts of goodies, a chicken drum stick and tools of the trade, eg, books, hammer, abacus (replaced by the calculator), a pen, a wad of cash, and so on.
The poor kid is to choose the right item which will depict what his career will be. Naughty Uncles and aunts will tease that the kid is a greedy kid if he/she chose the chicken drum stick, when in fact, it means he/she will have plentious to eat.
A poor mum would not be happy if the kid chooses a hammer which means he will be a labourer.
A wad of cash is self explanatory.
My husband doesn't belong to our same dialect group, and he thinks this is mumbo jumbo. So we didn't have this kind of fun with my kids.
***Here is Nicole choosing her "fate". Her parents were happy. She chose books given by me when she was a baby. They emailed to tell me. May be when I become a published writer, I will say that Nicole chose a good career choice."
1 comment:
Mumbo-jumbo or not I think it is a fascinating tradition.
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