Lunar New Year 2010 – The Tiger Versus Cupid

Hong Kong — A sea of pink and red flooded the flower market at Mongkok, Hong Kong with pots of peach blossoms competing with bouquets of roses as Chinese New Year clashed with Valentine’s Day on February 14 this year.

As the ring of cymbals ushering in the Year of the Tiger drowned out words of love, couples struggled to split the day — and their affections — between family and partners.

For the first time since 1953, The Lunar New Year coincided with Valentine’s Day, forcing many couples to alternate between traditional visits to their extended families and romantic dates with their partners.  Many found it frustrating to be forced to balance their time between the two.

Chinese New Year, also widely known as the Spring Festival, marks the first day of the first month in the lunar calendar. Chinese around the world celebrated the festival with traditional lion dances, red packets, and couplets, matching pairs of auspicious sayings inscribed on red paper-cuts. Red packets containing “lucky money”, or Lai See in Cantonese, are small red envelopes with money enclosed, given by married couples to singles, adults to children and often by bosses to employees.

Lovers juggled family time and Valentine’s Day treats with their partners. Many came to a day-time, evening-time compromise.

“I spent the morning doing the usual visiting and collecting Lai See, and I had dinner with my girlfriend at a famous restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui,” said Marco Li, a final year business student at the University of Hong Kong.

Catching up with extended family members over dim sum in the morning and watching the movie Valentine’s Day with her date after lunch, Christy Chu, a junior audit associate at accounting giant KPMG, said that she cherished time spent with both her family and her date, and believed that she managed both sets of expectations in a meaningful way.

Not every one managed as well.

“Initially I intended to have a Valentine’s Day buffet dinner with my fiancé, but (my) family’s reunion dinner was rescheduled to February 14, so I had to make do with lunch at a sushi bar with my fiancé to accommodate the reunion dinner,” said Fanny Chan, a trainee analyst at AASTOCKS, a financial data vendor operating throughout Greater China. “It [was] indeed frustrating!”

Torn between the conflicting demands of his family and his girlfriend, Lok Ting Law, a customer service officer at financial research provider, Morningstar Asia, found it hard to manage. Law said that he squabbled with his family when he defied their insistence he attend a family gathering. Instead, he went to a musical with his girlfriend at Hong Kong Arts Centre.

For some, the coincidence provided a dose of freedom. Howard Chu, a 24-year-old master of statistics student at The University of Hong Kong, had spent the past three Valentine’s Days with his girlfriend. This year, Chu’s girlfriend, Kathy, went on a family vacation as she does every year during the spring holiday, leaving Chu a free man; he eschewed romance to meet up with his buddies.

The clash dealt a blow to eateries and florists who traditionally look to both Cupid’s big day and the Chinese New Year as important annual earners.

“It’s a huge blow to the industry,” says Elizabeth Tse, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Flower Retailers Association.

It was not helped by the fact that Valentine’s Day falling on a Sunday meant that there was no pressure on husbands and boyfriends to take part in the expensive annual — and closely monitored — ritual of sending flowers to their partners’ office or workplace.