If you now think because of the title of this blog entry: 'Katharina has found herself a Chinese lover' ,you are totally mistaken. No, today is just the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's day. "七夕"(say: tschi schi), literally the Day of the Seven" has a long history but not a history of giving presents and flowers to the beloved as it is in Western countries often the case.
The story of Chinese Valentine's origin goes as follows:
The seven daughters of the Goddess of Heaven caught the eye of a cowherd during one of their visits to earth. The daughters were bathing in a river and the cowherd, named Niu Lang, decided to have a bit of fun by running off with their clothing. It fell upon the prettiest daughter (who happened to be the seventh born), to ask him to return their clothes.
Of course, since Niu Lang had seen the seventh daughter naked, they had to be married. The couple lived happily for several years. Eventually however, the Goddess of Heaven became fed up with her daughter's absence, and ordered her to return to heaven. However, the mother took pity on the couple and allowed them to be reunited once a year. Legend has it that on the seventh night of the seventh moon (on the 'Day of the Seven' which this year is today), birds form a bridge with their wings for the seventh daughter to cross to meet her husband on earth.
Apart from that only Olympic news: This week I was on business trip to Suzhou and Tianjin and not only have additional airport security measures been taken, but also on the highway back from Tianjin to Beijing each car was 'security-checked' when re-entering Beijing.The driver told us they do that on every single road leading into Beijing. You can well imagine that this leads to traffic jams...
Also the number of Chinese flags on the streets and cars has increased a lot. But wasn't it the same at the World Football Championship in Germany (just the flag looked different :-))?
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