- Title: CHINA: Chinese celebate double fun as Valentine's and New Year overlap
- Date: 14th February 2010
- Summary: VARIOUS OF VENDORS HOLDING ROSES PEOPLE BUYING ROSES FROM VENDOR BELL RINGING COUPLE RINGING BELL (SOUNDBITE) (Mandarin) QING MENG FROM JILIN PROVINCE SAYING: "It's great. In fact, we're spending the festival with his family, and it's pretty good. I don't feel it is conflicting and having it at the same time as the New Year saves the hassle." VARIOUS OF GIRL POSING W
- Embargoed: 1st March 2010 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: China
- Country: China
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
- Reuters ID: LVACRHPALWPPG4JSYST7GPEQ0V1D
- Story Text: Chinese celebrate Valentine's Day on the first day of the Year of the Tiger, while a 'bank' offers storage space for parted lovers who can't bear to throw away the souvenirs of past relationships.
This year, Valentine's Day fell on the same day as the first day of the Year of the Tiger, and young couples across China were making the most of the double celebration.
At a Chinese New Year's Day event held in a Beijing park on Sunday (February 14), couples jostled with the usual festival crowd to win stuffed tiger toys for their partners.
In addition to the stalls selling tiger paraphernalia and meat kebabs were armies of unofficial vendors hawking red roses at the park's entrance.
Valentine's Day has become popular amongst the younger generation in China, but it is still considered a distinctly Western holiday and doesn't really compete with the Lunar New Year, the most important of all Chinese festivals.
Nonetheless, Qing Meng from northern China's Jilin province and her husband Wang Qingzhi, said it was practical having the two at the same time.
"It's great. In fact, we're spending the festival with his family, and it's pretty good. I don't feel it is conflicting, and having it at the same time as New Year saves the hassle," said Qing.
But for many, the Spring Festival may help to take their minds off the absence of past lovers, a common problem which one man is keen to capitalise on.
Beijing's 'Dinosaur's Love Bank' is no ordinary bank - it does not give out loans. Rather it provides a new way for people to deposit memories of past loves without letting go completely.
Owner Gong Yelong, who set up the shop two months ago, said his service was a unique one - the chance to preserve memories, that can then be ignored, but revived later if needs to be.
"The majority of my customers are parted lovers, because they tend to have items that are not too convenient to store at home. There are a lot of such cases. But there are also some couples in love who want me to do something for them, for example providing a sort of romance service," he said.
Twenty-seven-year-old Beijing resident Li Jie came to store a mug with her face printed on it given to her by her ex-boyfriend.
She explained that such mementoes from her past relationships had increasingly become the cause of arguments with her current husband, so she decided to store it away ahead of Valentines' Day.
"I cannot throw this cup away because it's a souvenir from a time when I was more naive. So I thought of depositing it here after my friend recommended this bank, telling me that I can come visit and see the cup after a long time," she said.
Currently the item to be stored for the longest time is a divorce certificate deposited for 30 years by a man who wanted to come back and see how his life has changed.
While the bank stores sad memories, it also allows happy couples to celebrate their love by making a deposit they can retrieve to later in life.
The bank currently houses items from more than 50 customers, Gong said.
The cost of storage varies depending on the value and size of the items, but the annual fee per item is around 200 yuan ($29 USD). - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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