Any chinese mothers out there???

[blossom2]

I was just wondering

DH is english and DD is a wonderful mix of both of us. people say she looks english/white when out with Dh and chinese when she's out with me!!!

hello all! just found this thread and will contribute very little as i really should be working!!!!

am chinese and married a nice english boy!!! , have dd (3) and ds (11 months) dd takes after dad, with fair skin and almost red/brown hair (looks gold in the sun!!!) i'll call it auburn!!!!!, though she had nice very brown m & m eyes!!!

dd is very chinese, darker hair than mine!, definite shade of olive skin andbig brown eyes (dads)

as for the great hunt for the char siu bun... i have a lovely dim dum cookery book at home (written by a real chinese person!) yet for westerners in mind and the recipes look very authentic (after witnessing my grandma of ages old cooking!)

since i'm talking about food, anyone find their english husbands loving chinese food (non restaurant type), i'm talking normal day to day food here... and yet there are some things which he always finds too Chinesey as he puts it!!!! hee hee! and dd is absolutely chinese, loves congee (too chinesey - dh!) and will happily gnaw away at thye chicken feet in the soup.... very proud grandparent moment!

Blossom2,
I know exactly what you mean about having a boy....I felt that way both times about being pregnant....I think my issue was more about the emotional aspects of mothering a boy....I am 'girly" and not 'rough and tumble" type, and I think if I had a boy I would turn him into a girly boy...!!!
As for the reality of boys...I had to take frineds 3 yr old son to loo....and he wanted to wee standing up...well, it was so comical, I mean,this was new to him, I have not got a clue, and even on the stool, he was too short...managed to convince him to sit in the end...but it was highly amusing...if you had stood outside the cubicle and listened in, the comments were..."you hold it...no, but I don't know how to, could you sit down instead? Does mummy let you stand up? Sometimes, but mummy holds it!"
Anyway....toileting girls defintiely seems to be easier! How old is your dd?
How is Paris? Are you enjoying it? Do you speak french?

Forgot to add...Bea...dd1 delights in eating the fishes eye....not actually encouraged by me, (I did not have nice memories about that...) but I have been waiting to show off about it to any Chinese person!!! It is the first thing she says as fish comes to the table ...and dh and I have to try not to squirm as we give it to her!
So, the question is, is it just an old Chinese tale that it is so good for you to eat it or is it actually true?!

Hiya there ...

feeling little sad old lady at the moment ... DD will be 3 in March and she has fallen asleep on the sofa whilst listening to some music and i'm no mumsnet again. should be doing some cleaning but ....

Paris is nice but its hard. unfortunately i don't speak the language but will be starting lessons soon. can't say i'm enjoying it but its still very early days and i'm pregnant so hormanes and mood swings are getting in the way really.

Dh does like chinese food but not a big fan of congee or chicken's feet!!! he also thinks i'm a great cook of chinese food which my family thinks is really funny as i'm crap at it.

is everyone else a SAHM or work???

Marz.. if i eat everything which my mother told me to eat i would have no spots, beautiful shiney hair, a complexion to die for and no mouth ulcers whatsoever!!!!... me thinks good old chinese myth to get you to eat evrything!

Blossom2, am part time teacher (3 days) and 2 days controlling the chaos which is called looking after both kiddies! also know what you mean i.e. chinese cooking, why is it just because you're chinese iot is assumed that you van make a terrific chiken chow mein!!!

you have been busy!

Regarding cooking, am not a great cook but can follow any recipe so dh thinks I am great! Not a patch on my mum who can cook with both hands tied behind her back and eyes closed! My mum makes dd congee all the time and dd normally happy to eat it, she also loves plain boiled rice and yuk soong - don't know how if that is how you write it, basically a type of steamed dish made with pork, eggs and spring onions! I guess you could call it a chinese quiche!!!!

Regarding do I miss Hk? I have to say that I have only been there once for about a month so although there are many things I like about it, there are many things i don't such as the hussle and bustle, i found it much more busy than london!

Hello bea and welcome! I told my mum I was pregnant yesterday and she told me the not to stretch to get things, it was very funny, she was demonstrating and saying with her hand in the air 'this is ok, but this is not'! And then she produced some soup saying that she had made it especially for me, my dh refuses to drink it as he cannot handle the taste, much to the amusement of my parents!

My dd looks very english, apart from dark eyes, she got nothing from me!

i grew up in tottenham and my parents still live there, not to far from southgate, marz. Live in acton, west london now!

oh and another contribution to the char siu hunt, the other big chinese cash and carry is hoo hing. You might have more luch with that one.

And bea, what is the title of the book and who is it by? Goodness knows I need to learn and impress my mum although often I think this is an impossible task, what it is about chinese mums? She is often underwhelmed by my efforts!!!!!!

Hello bea! I wanted to know the title of your dim sum cookbook, too.

Thank you all so much for helping me find steamed char siu bao!

yingers, I'm laughing at the thought of your mother demonstrating how you should and should not reach! Out of curiousity, what was in the soup she made? Did you like it?

My dh is very good about eating things like chicken feet. In fact, I can't think of anything he won't at least try. However, I wish I could say I'm good at cooking Chinese food. I'm... ...competent (well, that's being generous).

blossom2, sorry to hear that you were down a little earlier. Hope you're feeling better. It can be very alienating to be in a new country (I felt that way when I came here, and I can understand some of the language, LOL!). {{{Hugs}}}

i gave up years ago trying to impress my mother!! it took too much effort for not much reward, but i've learnt not to take her comments personally and can laugh things off now. Although i do think this trait is unique to chinese mothers!!!
we just end up taking my parents to expensive restuarants now!!

marz, i've been wanting to ask you where you got the chinese nursery rhyme CDs from?? are they in mandarin or cantonese?? i need to get some.

oh yingers74, have you seen the thread about the chinese gender chart!!!

quite funny! and i've certainly never heard of it, but it seems i might be having a girl [simle]

This is going to sound weird, but I think my mom is really cool. And

blossom2 - no have not heard of it, will take a look.

I admire my mum a lot more now especially since I have had my dd. I think that I am becoming more like my mum as each day goes by although not in cooking ability

And of course my parents were fine about me marrying an english man, many are still not. i was lucky I had no problems.

Maomao - no idea what was in the soup, but it was nice, am used to it now. Most are made from a mixture of roots, beans, vegetables and meats. My mum claims to help to combat all sorts of illnesses and other complaints!

Blossom2,
The CD's were bought by step father a couple of years ago, back when I had contact with them....he got them in HK, they were/are in Mandarin.
Am actually going to go on a web-hunt to see what I can find.....was in library this morning and in the childrens section they have books in Chinese and english, some no help at all....chinese characters and no Pinyin, but there were a few in Pinyin as well as English and Chinese characters!
will let you all know what I find though!

thanks Marz.

i've definitely bonded more with my mum since having a baby and especially a girl, so know exactly what you mean yingers. I think i'm becoming like my mother in terms of discipline which i'm not sure is a good thing, but i've still got years to go!!!

i did the "mistake" of getting pregnant before getting married and without having any intention of getting married - just wasn't on my mind at that time (more worried about baby...). They were more upset about that than me marrying a white guy. So didn't speak to my family for 4 months of the pregnancy but everything was fine once DD was born and they adore Dh now. Mother always asks me if i've cooked him dinner and gives me food to take back for Dh's dinner.
Family were much more relieved when i got married this April and had a chinese banquet as well.

what were your weddings like???

ahh! wedddings... such a long time ago now!!!!

when parents heard i had a boyfriend they freaked out as they thought i was way too young (20 God Forbid!!!!) AND he was english!!!... anyway didn't talk about him for a year (i think they tried to ignore it!!! hoping it would go away!) and then they slowly came round to the idea na dnow they think he is the bees knees!!!

wedding? had a medium size one down in Devon (where his family live), his family are actually a lot bigger then mine and then we had a chinese banquet up in manchester.

My Dim Sum book is called
DIY Chinese Dim Sum 'Teach you to become an expert in Dim-Sum annd Bread making in less than 3 weeks!!' by Kevin Lam, just googled him and can't find any evidnce of him... however it does look like a very good authentic book, a friend of my mums got it for me when she was in Hong Kong... i've made the Golden Egg Tarts (yum) 'Ann Dat' (phonetic spelling of what we call it!) DD loves them and she loves the baked char sui buns...

if anyone wants a photocopy etc of recipes CAT me and i'll send you a copy.... we'll look like 'real' chinese women yet!!!

Bea that is very kind of you! will take you up on the offer no doubt in the future. I love those egg custard tarts too!

weddings - hmmmm my mum and dad insisted we got married before living together and dh being an honourable sort of chap did so, also they insisted we got married on a lucky date and because my older brother was married they insisted that he could not go to the wedding so we got married in hawaii. We thought we had got away with a quiet wedding but NO, in-laws organised a wedding party, we had the whole big wedding banquet in china town with a billion relatives I did not recognise and then we had to throw our own party! the funny thing was that because we had to have a 'lucky date' for the china town banquet, we had it in jan and we got married the august before!!!! My mum's friend nabbed the earlier lucky date, much to her annoyance!!!!!!!!!! All good fun though!! I guess that is why i am so looking forward to my own children getting married, lol, I am naughty! {grin]

oops that should read older married NOT married!

doh that should read older brother not married

yingers, eh - did your older brother NOT go to your wedding???

my wedding was a 2 day event in April 04 and was lovely. Saturday did the 'english' wedding (registry office, buffet & drinks at our place, family dinner in our garden with fairy lights and caters). Sunday was chinese banquet in a restuarant in Docklands (the floating one) with all our friends and family.
We put our foot down and insisted that we only invited people we knew. It was fantastic!!!

can't wait to be at DD's wedding either

Blosson2 - he didn't go to my actual wedding in hawaii, no one did but yes to all others including banquet! My parents have been to a couple of weddings on the floating boat in docklands! i wonder if they went to yours?

that would be funny if they did, but probably not There were no other chinese people, other than my immediate family - which was about 30 of us!!!

wow - wedding in Hawaii!! I initally wanted a honeymoon wedding but DH insisted on having his parents there and they have a policy where they don't do aboard ..... quite ironic now that we live in Paris!!!

My DH and I got married in City Hall in NYC, and threw a party in a loft in the East Village afterwards. None of our family was present, as my DH's parents didn't know that we'd gotten married until AFTER we came back from our honeymoon. Does that technically mean we eloped?

My parents knew about our impending nuptials (I'm very close to my family), but my mother felt that she shouldn't be at the ceremony if my DH's parents didn't even know about the wedding. She said that it would cause unwanted friction with them. She gave me a beautiful Chinese robe to wear as my wedding dress, which made me feel like she was there in spirit!

ooooo send us a pic please

I am friends with a chinese mother

LOL, Fio! Does she have a fine figure, too???

Not sure that I have a digital photo, SW! And I may have left our wedding album at home. I'll check. What was your wedding like???