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In West, to evoke the love and the lovers, it think often about the Valentine’s Day, to the roses and to the chocolates. Henceforth, the Chinese seem to adopt this fashion, for the biggest happiness of the young, also but to the big regret of some others.

These last years, with the diversification of the life styles, the feasts and the m.urs of the Western are accepted more and more in China. The Valentine’s Day is one of the two western feasts (the other is Christmas) the welcomed better by the Chinese. During these, the young give themselves of it to c.ur joy.

A simple trick of the tradesmen and medias?

" The Valentine’s Day is indeed the trick of the tradesmen and medias! The some need information to attract the readers and listeners, the other have the intention well to sell their goods", declare gentleman Yu, an aged journalist, honestly while criticizing the Valentine’s Day in China. " This feast is rather a day for the Chinese tradesmen that for the lovers", he adds.
The press and Internet don’t hesitate to make sink a lot of ink, even one month before these two feasts. The some lead some discussions on the most original ideas to celebrate, while the other benefit of this moment to solicit the consignment of manuscripts while making sparkle of the bonuses. As for the tradesmen, they don’t lose an opportunity to make the advertisement.

All this uproar gives to think that the Valentine’s Day is going to arrive soon. Should you make something? " one seems to insinuate. Even the most frustrated people on the sentimental plan are the target of the tradesmen. Long before February 14, one announces on some Web sites the organization of meetings of unmarried internauts. Of course, these meetings are not free; each must pour 100 or 200 yuans. One organizes these meetings so that the bachelors come out of their solitude and make the knowledge of new partners. This service is welcomed enough well by the only souls and the tickets of entry fly off quickly.

The market of the flowers is enlivened very for the Valentine’s Day. The rose dons a particular significance and be evidently enough expensive. It is normal that the roses cost two or three times more expensive than in plain time, and he is not surprising either that its price is multiplied by five or six the very day of the feast. The last year, although the price of a sort of blue rose reached 180 yuans the stem, in a market of the city of Nanjing, one nearly sold 10 000 of them.

For the Valentine’s Day, department stores install special counters of gifts. The business of the western restaurants are not in rest either. If one didn’t reserve any places there, one won’t find that day of it.

As for the state-of-the-art technologies, it is worth to say better than they serve to return some profits to the tradesmen more rather than to give a new face to the Chinese Valentine’s Day. Long before the feast, the main portals, of which Sina and Sohu, opened pages of e-trade. Even before Christmas, some Web sites already thought about a set of feasts while offering services of gifts to the internauts.

A quick desire of romanticism

Although the Valentine’s Day is tinted of a strong commercial color, it is incontestable that it satisfies the need of romanticism of the Chinese and that it is appreciated very by the young.

Wang Li, used in a foreign society, hopes to receive 99 roses for the Valentine’s Day. " What counts in this feast, it is the ambiance; I know that my friend likes me, but I hope that he will demonstrate it to me again while offering me a bouquet of roses", she confesses.

Liu Ping, engineer in data processing, account to offer a bouquet of roses to his wife. " Although my wife considers, as a lot of other Chinese, that a lover is synonymous of third person, we not only add some mates, but also of the lovers;  romanticism and tenderness are necessary more in our couple. "

" The enthusiasm towards this feast demonstrates the open-mindedness of the Chinese that was, during millennia, prudish and uncommunicative about the man-woman" relations, expressed a Chinese commentator in Internet. " Before the reform and the opening, love was a dangerous word. In some movies and plays of then, the main character was always unmarried", he has pursued.

According to a florist, the turnover of the Valentine’s Day represents more of the half of his yearly income, what not only shows the shrewdness of the tradesmen, but also the aspiration of the Chinese to the romanticism. Whatever is the price of a rose on this occasion, cost that costs, one wants to offer a bouquet of it to the beloved person.

Those that are interested the more in the Valentine’s Day are the young and those that have been influenced directly by the west.

As other western feasts, the Valentine’s Day made its beginnings to the first years of the decade 1990. Since then, the young try to dress to the Korean, to give itself an English name and to celebrate of feasts to the western. AT Christmas, the churches are crammed of non believers. At the time of the Halloween, they buy some masks. They hope to take advantage thus of a feast ambiance to dive in a romantic space. Nothing that the appellation Valentine’s Day, the feast of the c.ur, plunges a lot of Chinese in dreaming.

On the street, the girls who carry a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolate are less than 25 years old inevitably. For people of mature age, it asks a big courage to act of the sort to the Valentine’s Day.

To mark the Valentine’s Day of a Chinese key

The increase of the price of the roses and the animation of the sales of chocolates don’t mean as far as the western Valentine’s Day is accepted completely by most Chinese.

M. Li Jiangguo, used in a department of urbanism of Beijing, was one of the first students admitted at the university after the cultural Revolution in 1977. At the time of his studies, he didn’t know this feast. It is in 1993 that he discovered it for the first time at his florist and by the commercial activities surrounding the sale of the chocolates. To follow the fashion and to know this novelty, he had offered some flowers then to his beloved and had invited it to dine in a restaurant;  since he is married, he never underlined this feast. Indeed, to his eyes, a wife and a lover are two different people. One day, his wife proposed to him, all smoothly, to pass together the Valentine’s Day, but he refused while telling to him that he was not interested in this western feast.

" In other words, I am a traditional Chinese and I don’t accept many this feast;  what is more important, it is that I assume my "family’s responsibility, says M. Li while justifying itself.

Of course, most people long for to underline the Valentine’s Day, although they pass this feast to the Chinese. The mature man is more realistic. He/it offers his friend of the roses or chocolates rather than of the jewelry. However, most married women choose some jewelry;  although the price of the flowers is not very elevated, few women ask for the two.

For the Valentine’s Day, M. Wang, 65 years, projects to buy a bouquet of red roses to his wife. The couple makes common life since more of 40 years. In spite of his age, M. Wang wishes to pass a feast of the lovers with his wife. However, this man confided us to have a different project for the opportunity:  to organize an evening to reinforce the friendship between his family and his neighbors. This is not a surprising idea?

It is necessary to underline that it is only in the big Chinese cities that one celebrates the Valentine’s Day;  to the country, most people ignore this feast again.

The Valentine’s Day to the Chinese

Having celebrated the western Valentine’s Day during about ten years, China now found his own feast of the love:  the 7 of the 7th month of the lunar calendar. This way to make has been proposed by researchers who oppose to " the cultural infiltration". " The Chinese feast of the love, the one underlining the meeting of a drover and a weaver, sank in the oblivion", be sorry a professor in Internet. The some Chinese obstruction for the nearly made western feasts so that they disregard their traditional feasts. " At the time where one proposes to protect the cultural diversity in the world, we, the Chinese, must really keep our own traditions," he has put in guard

An enterprise of the province of the Jiangsu organized one symposium during which the researchers threw a word of order:  to replace the rose by the red pea (the red pea is considered like an object of love in China) and to create a Chinese feast of the love.

This proposition has immediately been welcomed by the press and by the tradesmen who are always to the look-out of commercial activities. However, the reaction of the market shows that most Chinese remain indifferent to the feast of the love of their own country. In the Rue Sanlitun, the street of the bars most animate in Beijing, no bar celebrates the Chinese Valentine’s Day. Quantity of flowers that one had prepared for the opportunity faded themselves, and in spite of the promotional activities carefully organized by the tradesmen, the sales of gifts were not better than in plain time.

No one believes that the stranger’s moon is rounder than the Chinese moon, but the western Valentine’s Day seems really more cordial than the one of China.

According to a researcher on history and the Chinese m.urs, actually, he doesn’t exist of Chinese Valentine’s Day. The legend of the Chinese feast doesn’t only tell the love between a fairy and a human, but it is one day holiday where the girl asks for wisdom to the weaver’s mind.

" In China, the important feasts are of feasts destined to celebrate the family’s union or to offer a sacrifice to the forebears, to the nature and to the minds. For their part, the western feasts. Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day. are centered on the human. The young of today need romanticism and entertainment, or even of stimulation. The western feast of the love seems well to satisfy psychological if need be with the young Chinese, without asking them to understand a serious religious or historic significance, explained a student to the mastery in history of an university of Beijing.

M. Chen Liansheng, professor of folklore of the university of Beijing, declared:  " The introduction of Christmas and the Valentine’s Day is a necessity of the cultural development. If the Chinese appreciate these feasts, they will include them in their cultural horizon and will make a new tradition of their culture of it. "

Another researcher approves this point of view:  " That some Chinese wear the western costume and celebrate of the western feasts, or that some strangers make inversely, all it reveals the opening and the tolerance of China with regard to the cultural diversity and show a tendency to the integration of the world culture. We must not make a whole dish of it. " These two points of view were strong appreciated by a lot of internauts.

The legend of the Chinese Valentine’s Day

July 7 of the lunar calendar is also called the feast of wisdom entreaty. One says that it is the day where a drover and a weaver met on the bridge that a magpie constructs once per year.

According to this legend, the weaver is the granddaughter of the queen mother of the Sky, while the drover is an orphan on earth. These two himself are married there in spite of the order of the emperor of the Sky that prevented the marriage between an immortal and a human. Having had wind of this business, the emperor of the Sky sent someone therefore to bring back the weaver in the celestial court;  with the help of a supernatural b.uf, the drover, husband of the weaver, tried to catch up it, but in vain. The queen mother pulled a hairpin with which she striped the sky then. Quickly, the Milky way separated the weaver’s drover. Yet, of the two sides of this way, the two lovers didn’t bend. Touched, the emperor of the Sky allowed them to meet on a bridge thrown by a magpie, the 7 of the 7th month of every year. It is this legend that gave birth to the Chinese feast of the love, and the magpie is considered by the Chinese like an animal of good omen.