Valentine's Day in China

February 14, 2011

Was it really two years ago?

We went to downtown Changzhou (常州) on Valentine's day.  I didn't know that Valentine's day was observed at all in China, but it certainly was.

There were men everywhere carrying large bouquets, the bus, the sidewalk, riding home with a bouquet or two in the basket of a bicycle or moped.

The most popular were glitter-tipped roses.


Most of them were red roses dipped in silver, red, or pink glitter. But there were elegant-looking black roses and blue roses, and other unnatural colors that were quite intriguing.

Most bouquets were wrapped in the patterned cellophane we're used to seeing here in the States.  But there were a few fancy fabric-wrapped ones, like in this picture.

A few feather bouquets, plush animal bouquets were to be seen as well.  I was genuinely surprised by the popularity of plush-toy-on-a-stick arrangements.  They were often seen in flower shops: both mixed into bouquets of live flowers (as above), and on their own, as a complete bouquet (as right and below).

 Hello Kitty's general popularity in China surprised me.  (Hello Kitty is Japanese, and the Chinese as a rule dislike Japan.) Hello Kitty dolls on sticks in a bouquet surprised me even more.


The flower shops on the particular street we walked passed all had about the square-footage of the dry space an old Volkswagen Beetle would leave in a snowy parking lot.

Every flower store had enormous, displays out front, each individual display was lovely, but from a distance the overwhelming size and bright colors made each one look a little gaudy.  Some of the flower displays were probably six feet high.  Most were shaped like hearts, and colored-in by flowers, candy, and stuffed animals.

The jewelry stores were open late that night, advertising engagement rings, and the usual sparkly gifts.  (I could tell by the pictures. Reading Chinese is hard.)

There were surprisingly many couples in the jewelry stores, they all looked either extremely blissful, or extremely stressed out.

Overall, us foreign girls (all Americans) decided that seeing Valentine's day in China would ruin us forever.  And that our future boyfriends would despair.  I made a cartoon to illustrate:

THE END

P.S. If anyone has any V-day pictures from our trip, facebook me!