China's Qixi festival pits profit against passion
Updated
The Qixi festival is a romantic modern twist on an ancient tale - and a celebration that is being hailed as China's answer to Valentine's Day. But like Valentine's Day, some say Qixi is more about profits than passion.
Presenter: Bo Hill
Speaker: Professor Zhou Xiaohong, director, department of sociology, Nanjing University
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HILL: It's a story about a story about love - a movie musical based on the Chinese classic Butterfly Lovers, a classic, often referred to as China's Romeo and Juliet. And the opening night of Dance For Love coincided with the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's Day. Qixi falls on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. It celebrates a Chinese legend about two lovers - a cowherd and a weaver. But the head of Nanjing University's sociology department, Professor Zhou Xiaohong says the parallels drawn with the West's Valentine's Day are tentative.
ZHOU: Qixi was actually a very sad love story because Niulang and Zhinu can only meet once a year. But businesses have put a local spin on Valentine's Day and now there are two celebrations. The businesses think - the more festivals the better!
HILL: Across China, Qixi is celebrated in different ways. In the eastern city of Hangzhou, young women compete in a needle threading competition. The patterns the needle makes in a dish of water are said to represent the patterns a woman will sew in married life. In Shanghai, the Lover's Wall area on The Bund has been renovated in a romantic style for the festival. And in Xi'an is now a centre of mass weddings, with 77 couples tying the knot, and dancing to a theme of love stories and poems by local writers. The celebration of romance may help to sell flowers and cards, but it's also endorsed at the highest level in China.
ZHOU: The government is promoting nationalism and 7-7 is a date that's traditionally about a love story, so they're pushing the Chinese story.
HILL: As a festival, Qixi is barely five years old. But already it shows how strikingly different China is now compared to the China of the last century. Professor Zhou again:
ZHOU: In the time of chairman Mao you couldn't even imagine kissing your wife, let alone your girlfriend, in public. But we've gone through a sexual liberation and young people are much more open.
HILL: But it seems no matter how things change, some things stay the same. Despite this perceived greater openness, young single Chinese people still struggle in the romance department. Just as Professor Zhou couldn't speak to the girl he sat next to at school without fear of earning a bad reputation, a generation later there are still some obstacles to love.
ZHOU: On one hand, compared to 30 years ago, there are more channels for people to meet, better communications like the internet, compared to how rigid it used to be. But on the other hand, it's difficult because people have diversified - their values, lifestyles and incomes have changed, so it's more difficult to find the perfect one you're looking for. Because before everyone was identical.
HILL: And, Professor Zhou says, while the traditional shaming of lovers who display public affection is no longer common, matchmaking by parents still goes on, making the lessons of Qixi and the Butterfly Lovers, lessons that modern romantics would do well to remember.
