Spring Festival meets with Valentine's Day

Yan Jun poses for a photo with his wife Zhang Yinghui and his baby, Yushu, at their home in Beijing. (CRI online Photo)

Spring Festival is a traditional Chinese festival for family reunion and this year's Spring Festival happens to occur on the same day as Valentine's Day which has been celebrated in China for many years.

What will the Chinese people do on February 14 2010? How will they deal with the conflict there might be between the families and lovers?

Song Juwei is a 29-year-old engineer who has been working in Beijing for many years. He met his girlfriend in a very romantic way when he visited Sichuan as a tourist in October of 2009. On first sight Song fell in love with the girl named Gao Dan and had a feeling that she was the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

Song Juwei comes from northeast China's Jilin province while Gao Dan is currently living and studying in southwest China's Sichuan province. Song says he has been to Sichuan to see Gao Dan three times since they met each other and he plans to go back home to see his parents in Jilin during the coming Spring Festival. He will call Gao Dan on Valentine's Day.

"The Valentine's Day just provides an opportunity to express love and not necessarily a need to express it on the exact day. If I can make her feel beloved in daily life, it is not a must to be together on that day."

Compared with Song Juwei and Gao Dan, Alice Zhu and David Song are luckier since both of them come from east China's Jiangxi province and their homes are very near to each other. Alice Zhu, a returnee from France, says her boyfriend was her classmate in senior school and they have been apart for many years. They won't miss the opportunity to celebrate this year's Valentine's Day.

"We will go back home together this time. Following Chinese costume, we will pay a New Year call to each other's relatives in the morning and then go shopping, have a cup of coffee and go to the cinema together afterwards."

Shanghai Evening Post cited an online survey on which festival is more important, the Spring Festival or Valentine's Day. Nearly eighty percent of the netizens chose the Spring Festival. Only three percent chose Valentine's Day. Most of the others chose to celebrate the two festivals together.

As more and more Chinese people choose to work and settle in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, the problem of where and how to celebrate festivals has become a social problem that affects many people.

Yan Jun, a project manager of an IT company in Beijing, married his classmate from university about three years ago. They each come from different places but began a family in Beijing. They now have a lovely daughter call Yushu.

Before the birth of Yushu, they went to each other's parents' homes to celebrate the Spring Festival in turn. While after Yushu's birth, especially while she is still very young, it is not convenient to take her back to their hometowns. So their parents will come to Beijing to celebrate Spring Festival with them in turn.

As a son, husband and father, Yan Jun has a new understanding of "love" and Valentine's Day not only means a rose for his lover but also responsibility to the whole family.

"Since I had a baby and my own family, I feel more responsibility to the whole family. Traditional understanding of 'love' is between lovers but now I think that love to parent and child is also love. It is another form of love."

Yan Jun says this year they will celebrate the Spring Festival and Valentine's Day together with his wife Zhang Yinhui's parents from northeast China's Jilin province. And some time later his parents will come from northeast China's coastal city of Dalian to be reunited with them.

Almost ninety percent of young couples with children around Yan Jun celebrate festivals in this way, he added. Representing his families, Yan Jun wishes all couples, lovers and families a Happy Tiger New Year and a nice Valentine's Day!

Source: CRI online