Family Matters

Nothing brings together family like weddings and funerals. The female rebels in my family refused fancy weddings (yes, myself included), so sadly, my grandmother's funeral was the first gathering of my extended family in a long time. In fact, I met family members I didn't even know existed.

Apparently, I'm some sort of aunt. The Chinese have different words to denote how one is related to another. So "uncle", is different whether its from one's mother's side, father's side, elder or junior to one's parent etc. By the time the family tree branches out a few generations, the wording gets complicated (and quite onerous). There's this guy (who's older than me) who is technically some derivative of nephew to me. My Great-Grandfather is his great-great-grandfather. I'm a generation older than he is (despite his age being greater) and so I have some form of "aunt" title. Luckily for me, the much simpler (and saner) British ruled HK for a while an my family was happy to dispense with the formalities and stick to referring to each other by name. It would have been really weird to be called "great aunt" since this guy has a kid.

Clearly his side of the family tree is doing a better job of propagating the species than mine is.