Happy Valentine's Day!- Take 1

In the ever constant exportation of American everything to the rest of the world, Valentine's Day is not left out. In fact, it seems that Chinese do Valentine's day bigger than Americans, or at least they do it more often. Apparently, the Chinese celebrate not only the traditional February 14, but also a separate, Chinese Valentine's day, which is the 7th day of the 7th month of the lunar New Year (sometime in August). And due to some sort of leap month in 2006, it was celebrated 3 times last year. Valentine's Day is celebrated quite traditionally here. As expected, florists are doing mad business, the day price of roses is exorbitant, and restaurants pull out all the stops with romantic, overpriced, set 'love menus'. What struck me as a little odd, but not surprising is the lengths guys have to go through on the holiday(s), at least in Shanghai.

To give some background, Shanghainese woman are renowned for wearing the pants in the family. It's standard protocol for Shanghainese women to collect their husband's checks and issue 'allowances' back to him, and Zach and I have seen on more than one occasion a Shanghainese woman yelling at her boyfriend/husband on the street, only to have the boyfriend/husband resort to a submissive, crying mess. In fact, our Chinese teacher validated this positioning, by telling us her parents were a very traditional Shanghainese couple, her father did all the cooking and cleaning, and when it came to family decisions, her mother made the decision and her father would listen to and agree with her mother. As a disclaimer, this female dominated arrangement is only popular in Shanghai, and according to Chinese friends, does not carry to other cities or provinces. Due to the unique nature of the Shanghainese relationship dynamics, it apparently makes Shanghainese men a hot commodity for other Chinese women who are looking for husbands.

This relationship is apparent on Valentine's Day. Last year, Zach and I were out and about walking the streets of Shanghai, and saw dozens of Shanghainese women being lovingly followed by their boyfriends, each struggling with gigantic bouquets of flowers, to what we assume was to an expensive 'love feast'. And bucking tradition this year, I decided to surprise Zach by sending flowers to his office. When I told my assistant my plan, she laughed at me and responded 'That is so interesting', which her token phrase for most things I do and loosely translates to 'you Americans are so funny and strange'. After leaving my office, I could hear her telling the other girls in the office, which sent them into fits of giggles. Zach's office reacted similarly, in fact, you can see his office 'ayi' in the right of the photo giving him and his bouquet the stare-down. When he called me to thank me for the flowers, I heard fits of laughter in the background, and he said they did not believe the flowers could have been from me, but must be from some secret admirer! Either way, we seem to continue to perpetuate the belief that Americans are unpredictable and strange.