Monday, 29 September 2014

The egg mystery is solved!

So the reason I got given two eggs this morning is actually rather lovely.

About a month ago one of the teachers had a baby boy (congratulations to them).

So it's customary in China, when the baby is about 1 month old, to give out eggs - which have been covered with red dye - to your colleagues (and probably friends and family) to celebrate. The red dye is used because the colour red is a symbol of happiness and celebration in China and the egg is presumably because babies start off as eggs....? or maybe the first person to do it was a chicken farmer...! I'll let you ponder that one.

On a very practical western note though, surely if you have a 1 month old baby the last thing you want to be doing is mass producing boiled eggs and the sheer investment in eggs - think how many nappies (or bottle of wine) that would buy.

Just saying.

G x

No comments:

Post a Comment