Festival for lovers proves highly lucrative for city’s hotels, florists
Print Edition
THOUGH the annual Qixi Festival has its origins in a millennia-old tale of forbidden love between a lowly cowherd and a heaven princess in disguise who possessed little beyond each other’s hearts, contemporary celebrations can sometimes appear more concerned with ostentation than romance.
Did you hear the one about the couple who paid 1 million yuan (US$156,000) for a two-night stay at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the Pudong New Area?
The five-star establishment declined to name the pair, but Shanghai Daily understands that neither works with cattle or looms.
Hotel employee Michelle Tan said that as well as a stay in the 410-square-meter presidential suite, the package included a helicopter flight over the Huangpu River, a boat cruise along it, a meal at the hotel’s rooftop restaurant and assorted other goodies.
While it’s too late for this year — the Qixi Festival was yesterday — loving couples on a budget might in the future want to consider the option of a trip across the Huangpu on the regular ferry service. Ticket prices start from a little over 1 yuan per person.
Cupid meets capitalism
The Ritz-Carlton wasn’t the only hotel in the city that enjoyed the sound of rapidly ringing tills last night.
At the Waldorf Astoria on the Bund, 58 people tucked in to a set dinner priced at 1,824 yuan per couple, while over at the Pudong Shangri-La, 160 diners, in two sittings, showed their devotion with a feast costing just over 1,300 yuan for two.
Away from the fine dining tables of the city’s top hotels, many thousands of Romeos and Juliets expressed their passion for one another yesterday with a lovely bunch of flowers.
That was especially good news for florists, who like the hoteliers saw their takings soar.
At the Jing’an Flower Store on Shaanxi Road N. in Jing’an District, single roses were priced at 25 yuan apiece yesterday. On a “normal” day, similar stems cost just 5 yuan ... but who can put a price on love?
For those with less of an appetite for food or floral arrangements and more of a hunger for nuptials, yesterday was seen as the prime time to tie the knot.
A total of 1,329 couples got married across the city, which was about four times the number for a regular day, officials said.
Even so, there was a lot less love in the air than there was on February 14, also known as St Valentine’s Day, when a massive 2,490 couples took the plunge.
That hefty figure, however, pales into insignificance when compared with the most loved-up day in Shanghai history — October 10, 2010 — when local authorities registered the marriages of no less than 10,150 couples.
In Chinese folklore, the 10-10-10 number combination symbolizes perfection in everything — so no pressure then.
Shanghai Daily was unable yesterday to confirm how many of those couples are still together.
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