I Refused My Mom’s Call on Chinese New Year

Why do you want to leave HOME?

This is my first Chinese New Year in Berlin.

I quit my job in Shanghai and moved here in November 2025, giving myself half a year to see how life goes. I already knew I wouldn’t be home for Nian - Chinese New Year’s Eve, the most important moment for Chinese families.

I knew. I planned for it. I was even excited about it.

The first hint came last year. When I returned to my hometown, my dad picked me up at the train station.

He lifted my suitcase into the trunk, shut the door, and started the engine. I leaned back in the seat, finally relieved after the Spring Festival travel rush. My first question slipped out before I could stop it.

What if I don’t come back next Chinese New Year?

I added lightly that many of my friends were traveling abroad since we do not get many holidays, and that I could take him and Mom somewhere warm.

He definitely wasn’t ready. After a pause, he said, you can do what you want. But mom and I will stay, your grandparents need us.

A few days later, I tested my mom with the same question.

What? What do you think is bad about your home? This is the most comfortable place in the world. I’m not going anywhere, especially not during our New Year.

All clear. I continued my preparations to move to Germany in secret.

Our CNY Family Meal in Jan 2025

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In July 2025, my German visa arrived. Immediately, I mapped out the next few months and scheduled my annual leave for September to spend more time with families.

In late August, I wrote each of my parents a letter explaining why I still wanted to go to Germany.

I had done an exchange semester there back in 2018. It was similar then. I applied on my own and didn’t tell my parents until I received the invitation from Göttingen University .

They never wanted me to go abroad.

Mom was shocked again. Angry. She cried, then called.

You’ve finally settled down. All you need now is to find a partner. Your dad and I worked so hard hoping to buy a flat for you in Shanghai. All we want is for you to have a stable life near us.

Why do you still want to leave?

The question has older roots.

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Since I started working in 2020, the “husband hunting” pressure began. Every family conversation circled back to the same theme: find a boyfriend soon.

I was new and alone in Shanghai, so I joined an international NGO community with some like-minded friends and often posted about our work on WeChat ( Chinese instant message and social media app). As our activities were conducted in English, my posts naturally were too.

One day my mom texted, don’t write too much English on WeChat.

You’ll intimidate guys. Don’t make yourself too “excellent”. You already have a master’s degree, and you’re tall. Just post more pretty photos of you.

And you need to lose some weight to look better. Eat less and exercise more.

I didn’t discover my passion for exercise until I tried boxing and CrossFit.

When she found out I was doing boxing and weightlifting, she messaged again, don’t do that. You’ll look too strong. Girls look more attractive when they’re slim.

Mom and me, I was back home for CNY in Feb 2024

Mom’s love is a cage built out of good intentions.

She is, in many ways, a product of the same system that is now pressing on me. She grew up in a time and place where a woman’s safety was measured in marriage, where stability meant staying close, small, acceptable.

She worries constantly about me being single. She has even consulted fortune tellers about my marriage prospects, a form of therapy for many Chinese mothers.

Why do I want to leave?

Because I don’t want to keep shrinking myself into the outline of a wife.

Because I just want to live my own life.

Because, mom, I don’t want to copy and paste yours.

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By this January, three months into Berlin, my newcomer excitement had faded. The city felt so gray and uncertain.

Our regular video calls gradually stopped.

Mom always asked about my next plan. I have no idea what to keep answering her. My anxiety grew alongside the winter shadows.

When I didn’t reply, she would text me after midnight in China.

If you were doing well there, you would have answered me.

You’re avoiding your life. You’ve always avoided things, back in university and now from your work and your life.

I’m just telling you the truth no one else will say.

But others were saying things different.

You’re brave. You inspired me.

You’ll make it. It just takes time.

You deserve a break. Enjoy your life.

In my small, quiet flat, I felt messy and fragile. I began to doubt the beautiful lies of my peers.

I even got sick for a while in the Berlin winter.

My first Berlin winter was too cold and long for someone from south China

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This Chinese New Year, my mom texted, I’m at Grandma’s. Video call?

I looked at the green bubble of her message, and a deep wave of exhaustion wrapped around me.

I have no energy to face the performance of greeting a dozen relatives one by one. I have nothing fancy to show them, no visible proof of success to justify my exile. I don’t want them to worry.

But that night I felt guilty.

I should have called my family and wish them a happy new year. So I sent my parents Red Envelopes in our family group chat. In China, giving money in 红包 red envelopes is a traditional love language. Now we can easily send them through WeChat or Alipay.

I sent 2,888 RMB to each of them. A lucky number. Proof, in its way, that I am financially okay.

The next day they received it happily, but my mom sent me a bigger one: 5,280 RMB(~680 Euros).

Taking their money felt like reopening a door I had just closed. It carries an invisible weight. The more they give, the more they may feel entitled to have a say in my life.

I’ll take the love behind, just keep the money. I added a big smiling emoji to soften the refusal.

Mom insisted, this is for CNY. You should take it.

She says the same thing on my birthday, on Chinese Valentine’s Day, and on a handful of other festivals I don’t even care about.

I am not married. So she feels responsible for her “little” daughter.

Didn’t want to argue or accept either. Instead I replied, thank you for sending it, but it is up to the receiver whether to accept it or not.

Mom was irritated by my unusual reaction. Then enjoy your freedom.

Definitely she put that in anger. But I felt relieved.

A day later, I noticed a transfer on my Alipay. 5,280, from Mom. On Alipay, transfers are received automatically.

It is funny.

Didn’t you just tell me to enjoy my freedom?

And still, you need that sense of control.

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When I was very young, I felt strangely that one day I would write my family’s story.

As a girl, I was not the wanted child. As a child, I witnessed too much quiet harshness at home. For years, I believed I would only tell the stories when I became a gray-haired granny, when my elders were gone.

In Chinese, we say 家丑不能外扬. Family shame should not be aired in public.

My mom has spent her life pretending to be happy to honor this rule.

She carries her sadness inside, feeding it to me instead. But I didn’t realize how much of her hunger I had been feeding until I started therapy.

My favorite picture which I took for Mom, during a CNY trip near my hometown in Feb 2024

Last December, one month after I moved in Berlin, my grandfather left us.

I thought it would be many years later. But it came suddenly.

My heart was empty. The only way I could express it was to write an article, to remember our old times together. Mom and aunts told me they were deeply moved.

Now I am writing, again, and in English.

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This CNY, on Chinese social media, there has been a trend of competing to be 不孝女 the unfilial daughter who does not go home for the New Year.

More and more young people are choosing not to go home but to travel or simply rest in their rented flats in big cities. For us, hometown reunions are warm, but they come bundled with childhood wounds and family pressure.

But there is no equivalent trend for sons.

Boys who leave are seen as independent. They are granted the freedom to do what they want.

Girls, however, are expected to be sweet, obedient, and close to home. Our parents want to protect us, but in doing so, they smother the parts of us that long to fly.

Why do I want to leave?

Because I want to live a life that belongs to the girls of my generation.

Girls who have had the opportunity to be educated and independent, who make their own efforts to live where they choose.