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Editor's Note: The Double Seventh Festival, July 7 on the lunar calendar, now popularly known as Chinese Valentine's Day, gained popularity only in recent years, thanks to China's increasing commercialism that never stops making profit from tradition, according to researchers. Chu Dongai, a Phd in the studies of folklore at South China University of Technology, said the festival should be called "Girls Day." In ancient society, there was a tradition of single girls praying for wisdom, skills and deft needlework to the fairy Weaving Girl, heroine in a popular love story with a cowherd from the mortal world. The opinion is supported by Zeng Yingfeng, chairman of Guangzhou Folk Artists Association. Although the festival is related to the folk story between the Weaving Girl and the cowherd, it also showed the expectation of love and marriage of ancient society. People seem to care less about the cultural or historical significance of the festival, and they only want a reason to celebrate, a girl said about the ardor of the newly born Chinese Valentine's Day. |
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 Young couples release balloons during a group wedding ceremony to celebrate the Double Seventh Festival in Pingdingshan, Central China's Henan province, Aug 16, 2010. [Photo/Xinhua]? |
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 A young man holding a bunch of flowers waits for his girlfriend in Shanghai, Aug 16, 2010.[Photo/CFP] |
 A young couple kiss at a cinema in Dalian,?Liaoning province, Aug 16, 2010. Yang Chen expressed his feelings to the girl through a broadcast before the film started.?[Photo/CFP] |
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 Older couples greet each other during a ceremony to celebrate the Double Seventh Festival in Yuncheng, North China’s Shanxi province, Aug 16, 2010. Local authorities organized 100 couples married for at least 50 years to participate in the ceremony. [Photo/Xinhua]? |
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 Three couples, who have been married for over 60 years, share a cake to celebrate the Double Seventh Festival in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu province, Aug 16, 2010. [Photo/Xinhua]? |
