Pictures of young couples in Mao suits, holding the little red
book with quotations from the paramount leader and carefully
keeping each other at arm's length, were the stereotypical images
of China as a land without romance.
Thirty years later, the stereotype is no more. Young Chinese
spend lavishly on roses, chocolates and candlelight dinners with
their sweethearts.
A week into the Year of the Rat, the imported holiday of
Valentine's Day has again spurred discounts at department stores
and helped hotels, restaurants and flower markets to prosper.
"Buy a paper, get a rose," a popular Beijing metropolitan
newspaper offered at every newsstand on Thursday morning.
In the booming eastern city of Wenzhou, young couples rushing to
get married on this special day led a downtown registry office to
open 30 minutes early on Thursday morning -- and to stop accepting
divorce applications for the day.
Even old couples want to try the Western holiday: 60 years into
their marriage, a couple in Xi'an in northwestern Shaanxi Province
decided they, too, wanted to celebrate Valentine's Day.
The news was published on a local newspaper on Tuesday and by 6
p.m. on Wednesday, about 1,500 people had put up Internet postings,
90 percent of which voiced support.
Though most young Internet users suggested a candlelight dinner
for two with chocolate, roses, perfume and whispered "sweet
nothings", Li Baoshan, 82, said he would just browse through their
photo album with his wife Li Guiyun, 80, and have a grand family
dinner.
"Theirs was a marriage arranged by their elders and they never
even met each other before they were wed," said Li Jingwen, one of
the old couple's many granddaughters. "But they are very much in
love and never blow up at each other. I really envy them."
Changing values
No one remembers exactly when Chinese began to celebrate
Valentine's Day, but until the 1980s, love was not a topic for open
discussion among the Chinese, who translated "Valentine's Day" into
"Lover's Day" or even "Mistress' Day", with a mixed feeling of
curiosity about this Western novelty and a disdain for public
exposure of private life.
Thirty years ago, no Chinese couple would show the least
intimacy in public and even holding hands was taboo. Not to mention
factors other than love: to be rich or to have a relative aboard,
for example, were taken as "defects".
In early 1981, China's first classified ad appeared in a
Beijing-based newspaper, with a 40-year-old school teacher looking
for a wife. Ding Naijun, from the southwestern Sichuan Province,
posted a photo wearing dark glasses and declared his monthly salary
was 43.5 yuan. Today, that's a pittance -- about 6 U.S. dollars at
current exchange rates -- but it was about the average income level
of the time.
More than 270 women responded. Within a year, Ding had married a
28-year-old teacher from the northeastern Jilin Province. Their
only 'dates' were monthly letters.
In the 1980s most lonely bachelors proudly declared their status
as members of the Chinese Communist Party and occupations as
drivers and seamen and listed "love for literature" and
"non-smoking" as a plus.
Today, those putting up classified ads are almost always
bragging about their big apartments, expensive cars and overseas
education -- things that appear too good to be true for many who
are seriously looking for a spouse.
Behind their fears are some phenomena that have sprouted with
China's booming market economy and three decades of opening up, in
particular, corruption, which can lead to an obsession with money
and keeping a mistress.
Maybe it's not a coincidence after all that the Chinese
translated "Valentine's Day" as "Mistress' Day".
In several cities, private detectives (whose work remains
illegal in China), are asked by desperate housewives to tail
husbands who shopped and dined with mistresses over the
holiday.
This year's Valentine's Day, in particular, was overshadowed by
the exposure of photos that purportedly showed Hong Kong actor and
singer Edison Chen in bed or other sexually suggestive poses with
several female stars.
The photographs, copied from Chen's computer when it was
serviced last year and later distributed over the Internet, sparked
a media frenzy in Hong Kong and the mainland alike.
Despite public anger at the pop idols involved, many on the
mainland just shrugged off the scandal as "disgusting" and "that's
life".
Valentine's China Element
"The cold snap in the south has frozen the roses and we suggest
lovers exchange celeries and Chinese onions instead," reads a
joking text message that spread widely among Chinese mobile
subscribers.
More than three weeks of snow and sleet hitting central,
southern and eastern China starting in mid-January cut off
transport, power and water supplies and stranded millions of people
on their way home for the Chinese New Year, which started last
Thursday.
Though most regions are warming up these days, the havoc drove
up rose prices to three times the normal level.
University students, the most avid group of Valentine
celebrators, have called on peers to "buy fewer roses and donate
the money to the snow-plagued people instead".
The Chinese have also found alternative gifts to mark
Valentine's Day: cell phones, rings, garments and traditional
Chinese artwork.
Zheng Xianglin, a folk artist in the eastern Fujian Province,
didn't expect his handmade peony-shaped lanterns could sell so well
among the young.
"I make 20 pieces a day at the most -- every day they're sold
out within an hour," he said. "Most buyers are young couples."
The debate over whether Western holidays should be allowed to
become so prominent in China is continuing. So is folk culture
activists' call for establishment of China's own "lover's day", to
be celebrated in summer.
Yet many agree China is no more the isolated Middle Kingdom it
once was.
"Even the Chinese New Year is becoming a universal festival,
with the Empire State Building in New York lighting its tower red
and yellow Thursday evening to ring in Lunar New Year and half a
million Britons gathering in central London to celebrate the same
occasion," reads an opinion published on Thursday's China Youth
Daily.
"We don't have to care where the holiday originates, as long as
it brings us happiness," it said. China "needs to be an open-minded
nation to embrace the world in a mature and confident manner" with
its people being "global citizens of an open society."
(Xinhua News Agency February 15, 2008)