Conversation

The Funeral Cryer:

"My American husband finds it confusing that I don’t know the given names of my extended family members despite my closeness to them;
he can’t understand why a 36-year-old woman still refers to her friends’ parents as “Soft Tofu” or “M.I.T. Grandpa.”

Observed through a Western lens, this preference for pet names and terms of kinship can seem juvenile, even disrespectful.
But for Chinese people with roots in small villages, this is simply the way life is, and has been"
https://archive.is/2024.04.30-101818/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/books/review/the-funeral-cryer-wenyan-lu.html