"Guo Da Li" + Shopping for Christmas gift

I had been very busy for the past week, shopping for Christmas gifts and also helping up in “guo da li” on behalf of my brother.

“Guo Da Li” took place on 23 of December, a few days before the actual day, mum, cousin and I were busying preparing the customary items (a procedure whereby the groom send the the bride's gift as requested by Bride's family) and doing decoration for the basket. I had took a picture of the basket which I had decoration.


The customary items include
-“Pin-Jin” (red packet, thanks my future sister-in-law’s parent dor bringing her up 养育之恩红包）
-12 cans of pig trotters
-12 oranges
-12 packets of rice vermicelli
-a pair of dragoon and phoenix candles
-2 bottles of hard liquor
-2 packets of candy
-a pair of gold bangles

(Each item must paste a “xi” sticker on it representing blessing)
All items were to be given to my future sister-in-law as bride’s dowry.

On the actual day, we set off early in the morning as we were afraid of traffic jam. We gathered at my brother’s home first before setting off to my future sister-in-law’s parent’s home.

After “guo da li”, we went for lunch with my future sister-in-law family. Uncle had ordered a lot of food and not to waste it, my cousin and I had to finish the leftover.

It time for my Christmas gift shopping after “guo da li”. Everywhere was having sales in orchard and was packed with lot of people, long queue for fitting room, long queue at cashier, long queue for buying food…..long queue.

In the evening, Bing joined me for shopping. We had a quick dinner and off to shopping. Instead of shopping for Christmas gifts, we had end up buying things from body shop to pamper ourselves, hee hee….