Heart of the holidays

With more recognition than Halloween and less than Christmas, Valentine's Day as a somewhat recently imported festival faces a precarious situation in China, where it's caught between shifting forces of tradition and fashion.

Valentine's Day has a natural foe in China. And it is not the Chinese equivalent, which falls on the seventh day of the seventh month on the lunar calendar, usually around half a year away from Feb 14. It is Spring Festival, also known as the Chinese New Year, that will keep the Feast of Saint Valentine at bay.

Because of the differences between the lunar calendar and the Gregorian calendar, the Chinese New Year shifts each year but generally falls in early February. The secret is not just the specific date, but the length of the celebration.