Celestial blessing for Valentine's Day
By Li Xinzhu (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-13 09:39
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Couples plan wedding ceremonies inside Expo Garden, Li Xinzhu reports.
A rare celestial union will take place in the sky above the Expo Garden on August 16, the day Chinese celebrate their Valentine's Day.
The stars, Altar and Vega, both integral components of China's Valentine's myth, will appear to meet in the sky, providing a perfect backdrop to the three mixed-marriage weddings taking place inside the Korea Corporate Pavilion.
Shanghai native Cao Xiaojun, 26, has still not held a wedding ceremony despite legally marrying her Korean husband last summer. She described Monday's Korean-style wedding, which includes complimentary photographs, make-up services and a honeymoon in Korea, as the perfect intersection of different worlds at the right place and the right time.
"Being able to get married inside the Expo Garden, in a Korean context but also in my hometown of Shanghai, at a time when my city is hosting its biggest-ever international event, this really means a lot to me," she said.
Meanwhile, the Henan provincial pavilion plans to invite 2,000 newlyweds and 10 couples that have been married for over half a century to join a group wedding ceremony designed to celebrate the special day.
Organizers said they are hopeful of setting a new Guinness World Record for a large nonprofit group wedding.
Next door, the Shaanxi Pavilion is planning a concert based on a famous love story from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) for lovers. Down the road, the Sweden Pavilion has designed a chocolate gift set to let couples commemorate the day with a calorific high.
Although the three big dates on the Chinese calendar are Chinese New Year (chunjie), Tomb Sweeping Day (qingmingjie) and the Mid-Autumn Festival (zhongqiujie), Chinese get loved-up during their version of Valentine's Day on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, as do Korea and Japan.
Called Qixi in Chinese, or Chilseok in Korea, it sees many young lovers march to the nearest matchmakers, or have their fortunes read to check their marriage prospects.
It also sees restaurants booked up and flower prices double - as is the case with Western Valentine's Day in February, which has taken a commercial foothold on the mainland in tandem with the economic reforms of the past several decades.
This year is particularly special in the eyes of superstitious Chinese as the Qixi festival falls on Monday, at the end of three days of comet showers and unusual planetary sightings in the skies above the city.
Altar and Vega are seen as the celestial incarnations of a young cow herder and the goddess he married. Vega's mother, who was distraught at the prospect of her daughter marrying a mortal, subsequently dragged her back to the heavens and created the Milky Way as a means of keeping them apart.
According to Chinese folklore, sympathetic magpies built a bridge across the sky to let them meet for one day, and this legend continues to be celebrated by young couples to this day.
Not that there are many magpies in Shanghai, nor inside the Expo Garden, which saw 34 couples tie the knot at the France Pavilion in May. Now it is Korea's turn to flash its cultural and romantic credentials on the world stage.
Cao, who was invited to join the proceedings after her love story caught the attention of those vetting the application forms, believes it was destiny that brought her and 28-year-old legal consultant Kim Hun-jong together.
They first met in 2006 at a university in Busan, Korea, when Cao was taking an optional course to find out how Koreans teach their students Chinese. She forgot her textbook and Kim lent her one of his. Things progressed, and three years later they were married.
It took a while to adjust to some of the cultural differences, said Cao, especially dressing and acting more conservatively in the company of her parents-in-law, or wearing socks in the sweltering heat of summer.
"Korean rules of behavior and etiquette were totally alien to me at first," she said. "But my husband was very patient in explaining to me how and why I should do these things, so I didn't have any objections to learning.
"After all, I married a Korean guy, so I'm obliged to fit into their culture."
Other couples are settling for having their wedding photos taken in the Expo Garden, despite being already married. Wedding photography is a huge industry in China, with couples often traveling across the country with groups of strangers to get snapped in exotic locales, such as frolicking on the beach or framed against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains.
Roxy Li, a 27-year-old woman from northeast China, and Aha Fang, from Hunan province, will have their photos taken at the New Zealand Pavilion, as it represents the country of their dreams.
"We've been in love with New Zealand for a long time and even more so after we watched the (movie) Lord of the Rings (which was partially filmed there)," said Aha, who proposed to his wife in May.
After the pavilion's managing board approved his idea, staff launched an online vote on July 29 asking visitors to suggest the best locations for the photos.
"But I've got my heart set on the rooftop garden," said Aha. "It looks like a beautiful oil painting."
The mayor of the city of Hastings is scheduled to greet the couple on Monday.