The high cost of joining the holiday fray

According to the plan determined by our family council, we spent the Spring Festival with my wife's parents in Chongqing municipality. In light of the blizzard and enormous volume of travelers, we felt as if we'd won the lottery when a friend of a friend got us tickets.

After a two-hour flight from Beijing and a one-hour bus ride, we arrived at the doorstep of my in-law's home three days before the festival began.

I was ready for a rest, but my father-in-law announced we'd been invited to be the guest of a relative.

Realizing it would be very impolite to refuse an invitation during the year's most important festival, I had to give in and brought along a gift. But this was only the first of a head-spinning series of visits.

At lunch the next day, my wife's younger sister invited us to her new home. The village where she lives is a rural development pilot project in which brick buildings mushroom up throughout the vast fields.

But my sister-in-law bought a four-room apartment in town. As the eldest of three daughters, my wife had to contribute the fattest red envelope at her sister's banquet.

On the third day, we visited my father-in-law's brothers. Following local tradition, we dined with our aunts-in-law later. By the time we had to leave, we still had to visit a dozen relatives.

Eating homemade food, downing fragrant local liquor and learning the local dialect was interesting. But drinking soon became a difficult to endure routine, as locals believe the amount of liquor that a guest drinks is directly linked with his respect for the host.