When modernity dates tradition and East meets West

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-08-07 20:50

BEIJING - Qixi, called the Chinese Valentine's Day by some, falls on Thursday, one day before the big show -- the Beijing Olympics.

For visitors traveling to China for the Games, their trip and feelings about this country would, on one hand, help them draw the seeing-is-believing conclusion of what it is with this ancient civilization's modernization and economic boom. On the other hand, it's a fine chance they are likely to discover other aspects of the country that is about tradition.

The forward and courageous dragon-shape design of the new Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital International Airport, the costly Bird's Nest to be used as the main stadium for the Olympic, and the National Center for the Performing Arts all make a loud statement that this country is rapidly catching up; but deep inside, its people still hang on fast to what their ancestry has handed down.

Newcomers will find contemporary China a seamless integration of modernity and traditions, and the coexistence of East and West, which could be easily observed in the actions of a young man a day before Qixi.

This was at a flower shop in Meishan City in the southwestern Sichuan Province, which had suffered heavily from a calamitous earthquake on May 12. Now this young man surnamed Wang was ordering 11 roses from the florist. This bit-shy, bit-smiling man probably had learned roses symbolized love and passion in the West; he intended to express his affection for his mate by sending flowers.

Yet, odd number 11, hid in its profoundness, had come from a widely used four-character Chinese idiom "yi xin yi yi," literally meaning "my one heart only for you; my one mind only of you." It is sweet, thoughtful, not without being romantically Chinese.

Qixi had derived from an ancient romantic tragedy of two cruelly-separated lovers, Niulang, the mortal orphan cowherder, and Zhinu, the weaving maid, a heavenly being; they were only allowed to meet once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, on a bridge formed by magpies.

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