Chengdon't

Chinese Singles’ Day    光根节 – Match-making in the middle kingdom

You could say that romantics in China are spoilt for choice.  Not only do young Chinese celebrate the western festival of romance that is Valentine’s Day, but the Chinese also have their own day traditionally devoted to love.  Qi Xi (七夕), or the seventh eve, is often referred to as Chinese Valentine’s Day, but is also known as the Seven Sisters Festival or the Festival of the Double Sevens.  It is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month in the Chinese lunar calendar (August 26th this year), and while the annual gift-buying frenzy synonymous with February the 14^th does not take place, there are many customs associated with this day of romance that lovers can partake in.

However, if the prospect of a second Valentine’s Day fills you with dread then November in China has just the thing.  For groups of young western (and increasingly large numbers of Chinese) singles, it has also become customary to organise a sort of “anti-Valentine’s” get-together on the day itself fourteenth, but here the Chinese go one better and have a dedicated singles’ day on November the eleventh.  Also known as bachelors’ day, in Chinese the day is called 光棍节 (guāng gùn jié or ‘single stick festival’).

The idea originated from the early 1990s, when college students in Nanjing first put forward the idea of choosing the day as a festival for single people and began organizing match-making parties on campus.  The date was chosen because the date “11/11″ consists of four 1’s, and first became a hit on university campuses in the area then spread throughout the whole country.

As it is no longer such a huge taboo for an adult to be single in Chinese society, singles’ day is seen as a chance for young people to shake off parental pressure to marry.  They go out to clubs and karaoke bars to have a good time or attend organised matchmaking events, and at these events ‘guang-guangs’ and ‘ming-mings’ (internet slang for single men and women respectively) are paired up in order of suitability through pre-prepared internet questionnaires to try and find their Mr. or Miss. Right.  Some universities hold masked balls to help Chinese singles overcome their initial shyness, and ‘blind date’ parties where singles are introduced through mutual friends are also quite common.

In Shanghai’s People’s Park a huge crowd of people gather every Sunday morning to search for love, but the difference here is that these are not generally single people themselves, but rather worried parents or grandparents who come along to try and speed up their errant offspring’s marital timeline.  The done thing appears to be to write your vital statistics on a piece of paper (age, height, weight, telephone number, place of employment and income), attach a photo and peg it to a line for other match-makers to investigate.  If you’re so inclined there’s even a foreigner section!

Other customs that have evolved around singles’ day include breakfasting on four youtiao (deep-fried dough sticks) which represent the four ones in 11.11 and one baozi (steamed stuffed bun) to symbolize the middle dot in the date.  This practice is supposed to bring the breakfaster good luck in their love life for the coming year.

With statistics showing that among Chinese in the 22-49 age bracket, males outnumber females by over 20 million, events organized on singles’ day are rising every year and will surely only continue to increase in number as millions of young, single Chinese go looking for love in an increasingly competitive and crowded marketplace.

All two my regular readers may remember from last year that the local shop in our compound was staffed by old Mr. He, who liked his Christmas decorations so much that he kept them up all year round and sported a Sichuanese accent so thick you needed a chainsaw to get through it. Sadly when our little store reopened after the Spring Festival break, it turned out that Mr. He had been gracefully retired by the powers that be and he was replaced by a friendly young couple from out of town, Xiao Feng and Xiao Ke.

Xiao Ke was already sporting the Chinese symbol of maternity that is the fetching blue dinner-lady’s tabard which all pregnant Chinese women seem to wear, partly to show off their status and partly to avoid being shoved over while ‘queuing’ for the bus.  Over the coming months she blossomed and grew until earlier this month she finally gave birth to a baby girl.  Naturally (well, naturally for me anyway) I asked Xiao Feng if she would be bringing the baby into the shop any time soon.  He looked at me as if I’d gone completely insane.

He patiently explained to me that if Xiao Ke left the house in the next month she would develop a condition I could roughly translate as ‘windy eyes’.  This mystified me at first, but with a little internet research I found that the windy eye condition is more commonly know as a ‘sitting month’ in other parts Asia.  During this month the new mother must stay in doors for at least thirty days, but this period of time can actually be as long as three months depending on how her mother-in-law (who acts as a kind of bodyguard during the pregnancy and the child’s early infancy) thinks she’s doing.

This in turn got me thinking; in a country that must rank among the most superstitious in the world, were they any other seemingly random quirks that needed to be observed during the child-bearing period in the middle kingdom?  Here are a few collected from Chinese friends and colleagues in a completely random, unscientific survey:

• According to the laws of Chinese traditional medicine, pregnancy and childbirth are considered ‘hot’ conditions. To prevent complications and to avoid upsetting the balance of ‘hot and cold’ after giving birth the woman must avoid showering, washing her hair or exposing herself to potentially cold conditions such as open windows, drafts, air conditioning or doorways for the entire sitting month.

• Women who are with child should also try to always think happy thoughts so their babies will grow up being happy, and expectant mothers must avoid any praise about the unborn child during the pregnancy as this will attract the attention of evil spirits. They must not criticize others, or the baby will resemble the person they criticize.  It’s also a good idea to hang posters of cute babies around the house, as the constant sight of these perfect little specimens will mean that their children will also be pretty or handsome.

• In terms of food and general nutrition, it’s generally not a good idea to eat rabbit, as it’s believed in some parts of Sichuan that this will cause the baby to be overly hairy and/or come out albino.  Pregnant women should also avoid eating rooster, as this means the child will be born prematurely.

• For the birth itself, squatting is ideal position; if you lie down on your back the baby will have no energy to come out, and will thereafter be listless and lazy.

• 3 months before and after the child is born, the mother should not sit on a bench next to other pregnant women, as this will mean that she will not have enough milk to feed to the baby.

• One month after the child is born a special ceremony takes place where several objects are placed before the infant such as money, a book or a farm tool.  Whichever object the baby grasps first acts as an omen for the child’s future – perhaps they will make bundles of cash, study hard or work the fields?  The answer is all in the ritual!

So, congratulations to the proud parents, and plenty to ponder on as I wait for Xiao Ke to arrive at the shop with her new little bundle of joy.  No offence intended, but I hope she’s taken a shower before she gets here…

The legend of Chang’e – the bunny-girl in the moon

As those of you in China will probably be well aware from the enormous quantities of moon-cakes stacked from floor to ceiling in all supermarkets, mid-autumn festival is almost upon us.  Although a certain 60th anniversary has slightly overshadowed it this year, the ‘full-moon’ festival will still be celebrated up and down the middle kingdom in various different ways, including the eating of ‘moon cakes’ and the worshipping of the moon god ‘Chang’e.  The tale of Chang’e and her husband Houyi is an ancient eastern classic, and like most other Chinese fairytales there are many versions.  One of the most commonly told is as follows:

Chang’e was a beautiful young girl working up in heaven where immortals and other good folk lived, ruled over by the all-powerful Jade Emperor. One day, she accidentally broke a precious porcelain jar. Angered, the Jade Emperor banished her to live on earth, and Chang’e was transformed into the daughter of a poor farming family. When she was 18, she met a young hunter from another village called Houyi, and they became lovers.

One day, a strange phenomenon occurred – 10 suns arose in the sky instead of one, scorching the planet and everyone on it.  Houyi, an expert archer, stepped forward to try and save the earth.  He successfully shot down nine of the suns, becoming an instant hero and eventually becoming a King and marrying Chang’e.  However, King Houyi grew to become a tyrant.  Seeking immortality, he ordered an elixir be created to prolong his life. This elixir was in the form of a single pill given to him by the Earth Mother of the West, who warned him that to gain immortality he should only take half the pill.

King Houyi stored the pill in a case, and one day Chang’e happened to come across this mysterious box.  Much like Pandora in Greek mythology she opened it, and (depending on the version) deliberately or accidentally swallowed the pill. This angered King Houyi, who went after his wife. Trying to flee she jumped out a window at the top of palace, and because of the pill’s effects instead of falling she floated into the sky and all the way to the moon.  Although Chang’e was lonely on the moon, she did have a rabbit to keep her company, who according to legend spends all of eternity mixing the elixir of eternal youth.

On mid-autumn festival day (this year falling on the 3^rd of October), an altar is set up in the open air facing the moon to worship the beauty of Chang’e, and most Chinese eat Moon Cakes to celebrate.  Moon Cakes symbolize the full moon, and are intrinsically linked with the mid-autumn festival and Chang’e.  Traditional moon cakes have an imprint on top consisting of the Chinese characters for “longevity” or “harmony” as well as the name of the bakery and the cake filling.

This legend is deeply etched into the hearts and minds of the Chinese, and China’s first moon probe was named Chang’e 1 in honour of the goddess.  However, the story of Chang’e is not just limited to Chinese space travel; before America’s first moon landing in 1969, this conversation between the shuttle Apollo’s mission control in Houston and astronaut Michael Collins on board the ship took place:

Houston: “Among the headlines concerning Apollo this morning there’s one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there for 4000 years. It seems she was banished to the moon because she stole the pill for immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit.  The name of the rabbit is not recorded”.

Collins: “Okay, we’ll keep a close eye for the bunny girl”.