Love is in the Air, Back Home, and on the Net
Aaah. Valentine’s Day in China. Sometimes it seems like the only Western holidays the Chinese don’t celebrate are the Jewish ones. The flower sales associates hit the streets hard today. Rumor has it, the price for a Valentine’s Day rose is about 10 times what it is on a normal Chinese day. Who really knows though? And on February the 14th, who really cares? Shanghai’s fanciest restaurants are booked solid. Champagne will be flowing at the city’s finest bars. And there’s even talk of limousines. Something I observed on my first Chinese Valentine’s Day: there are way more guys carrying flowers here than back home. And I mean guys walking with girls holding flowers. On this Valentine’s Day, as Manhattan public access star Robin Byrd used to say, “lie back, get comfortable and don’t forget your rubber” (though it’s really okay if you do in this case). Here is China’s Valentine’s Day news:
♥SHANGHAI (Reuters) — The top U.S. matchmakers eHarmony and Match.com are looking to hook up with Chinese partners so that the Chinese can get their cyber-dating on. The top matchmaking companies see China as an emerging online market and view the Chinese as an untapped resource for cyber-dweebs desperate for sex.
♥BEIJING (China Daily) — While Valentine’s Day is cool and all, there is only one holiday that matters in China this week. And it’s not V-Day. It’s the mother of all Chinese holidays. It’s Chinese New Year a.k.a. Spring Festival a.k.a. chūnjié which begins Saturday all over China. Lovers this year were forced to choose between having dinner, drinks and sex with their partner or traveling back home to see their family. According to a China Daily article Wednesday, family won out over love. Many Chinese spent Valentine’s Day on a train by themselves to spend the lunar new year with the folks.
♥BEIJING (Xinhua) — As Valentine’s Day takes hold in the Middle Kingdom, new industries have been created to cater to the needs of lovers in China. A man in Lanzhou took advantage of a new movie service in which he paid 2,000 yuan ($250) to rent out an entire movie theater for him and his girlfriend. He plans on proposing to his unsuspecting lady using flash animation to be displayed on the theater’s screen. In Hangzhou, a website is selling $100 “stars,” whereby men buy a “star” with their lover’s name on it and present to her on the web. If you’re confused, so am I. And my favorite new V-Day industry: the extra-marital affair detective business. Wives in Zhejiang province can hire a detective to follow their husband to find out where and with whom those lying sons of bitches are spending the day. The detectives cost 3,000 yuan ($375) a day.
♥SHANGHAI (AP) — The official dish of Valentine’s Day in Shanghai is the “space spud,” or more specifically, the purple potato grown from seeds which mutated during a Chinese space mission. All true. Shanghai’s most exclusive restaurants are offering the space potatoes fried, boiled or even as iced drinks. While agricultural experts claim these taters to be more nutritious than regular potatoes, the aphrodisiacal properties of the “space spud” have not been confirmed.