Gung hay fat choy: May you become prosperous

Last week my family and I celebrated Chinese New Year. The entire family gathers, eats copious amounts of clementines, hands out red envelops to us singletons, and bows to our elders wishing them a year of prosperity. Tradition requires you to wear red on
Chinese New Year for good luck, however, each year my family gets a little bit more lax with traditions. Since I am the only one who wore red, I guess Im going to be the only with luck this year!

Here is my goigngoign(grandfather), my porpor(grandmother), and yeye(aunt)

Now Chinese food has a lot of vegetables, but it also has a lot of meat, especially during special events. This is recipe for a vegetarian's nightmare. I have been a vegetarian for two years, but at every family gathering its as if I mentioned it for the first time.

The same conversation with my porpor(grandmother):
porpor: "no pork?"
me: "no pork"
porpor: "no chicken?"
me: "no chicken"
porpor: "have shrimp"..she walks away
me: with bowl of shrimp in my hand "umm..mom? anyone? shirmp!"

Because of my lack of edible options, I ate four clementines and two servings of string beans. delicious.... yeah.

Here are some pictures. One of my mother eating some Chinese meat dish, and one of my aunt and my porpor.


In fact this same conversation has happened between me and my great italian aunt

Reenactment from this Christmas
Great aunt: "you must eat sausage?"
me: i look at my mom for help " no..sausage is meat"
Great aunt: "since when do you not eat meat"
me: "since two years ago"
Great aunt: "so no meat ever?"
me: "not for now"
Great aunt: "that doesnt make sense"
me: i shrug

So I guess its my own fault that I decided to become a vegetarian in two culinary meat dynasties.