May is approaching, and spring is waving goodbye before waving goodbye. Mother's Day on May 8 is coming, and Mother's Day has been internalized as a cultural symbol of Chinese society, reflecting the spiritual inheritance of Chinese children who put filial piety first.
Although Mother's Day is deeply integrated into the current Chinese society, it is a real "foreign festival" originating from the United States.
▲ Great mothers
However, it must be admitted that at the moment when China 'resists the foreign festival' sentiment, the status of the foreign festival has become more and more embarrassing. Mother's Day can stand firm and successfully realize the normalization of identity, which is the most successful "foreign festival" in China' localization.
How did Mother's Day get into Chinese society? What new connotations did Chinese give her?
▲ Carnation for mother
Mother's Day, a veritable "American Day"
In May 1914, a bouquet of white carnations was placed in front of Ann Jarvis's tombstone, and it was her daughter Anna who came to see her.
Ann Jarvis was a legendary woman during the American Civil War (1861-1865) who rescued a large number of wounded soldiers from both the North and the South.
After the war, Ann Jarvis organized a "Mother's Friendship Day", in which she brought together the mothers of the wounded and injured soldiers of the North and the South to alleviate the antagonism between the two sides and remember the young lives lost on the battlefield.
In 1905, Ms. Ann Jarvis died. Her daughter Anna received letters of condolence from all over the United States, and people expressed their remembrance of Ann. Anna decided to push for Mother's Day to honor her mother.
Ann Jarvis (left) and daughter Anna (right)
In 1914, under Anna's campaign, the U.S. Congress finally legislated the second Sunday of May as Mother's Day. Anna came to the tombstone with her mother's favorite white carnation and told her mother in heaven the good news.
Second, Mother's Day was introduced to China
In the 1920s, on Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May, American missionaries came to China. The southeast coastal region, which is economically developed and has close economic ties to the West, was the first to accept Mother's Day.
▲Shanghai during the Republic of China
Born in 1905 in Wujin, Jiangsu Province, Sun Xiujun spent her childhood in this small town by the Taihu Lake. In the 1930s, the custom of Celebrating Mother's Day gradually spread from big cities such as Shanghai and Hangzhou to other parts of the Yangtze River Delta.
As a woman with a modern education, Sun Xiuying believes that Mother's Day can arouse the thinking of the Chinese people on motherhood and help to achieve equality between men and women, but she has not considered how to be a mother.
At this time, she had just graduated from wujin's normal school and was assigned to teach in Yongchun, Fujian Province. In Yongchun, the young Sun Xiujun met Yu Chaoying, who was serving as the local education bureau chief. Although there is a big age gap, the two have come together. In 1928, Sun Xiuying gave birth to a son, and Yu Chaoying named the child Yu Guangzhong.
▲ Female students during the Republic of China period, they used Mother's Day to promote gender equality
After getting married and having children, Sun Xiuying has never enjoyed happiness, and she has become a mother who is always busy with this family. In the afterglow of the memory, the image of the mother holding the sole of the shoe under the oil lamp will never be erased.
In 1937, Japan launched an all-out invasion of China, and the rich Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions were brutally burned by soldiers. With her husband away, Sun Xiuying fled alone with Yu Guangzhong, who was only 9 years old. The mother and son hid under the shrine of the temple for two days and two nights, and the mother held her son tightly in her arms, and her face showed a determination and strength that she had never had before.
After middle school, whenever Yu Guangzhong left home to return to school, the mother always said goodbye and stood on the hill, watching the child out of her sight.
▲ Yu Guangzhong with his mother
The turbulent years gave Yu Guangzhong a deeper understanding of maternal love, and for the needs of the War of Resistance, the Nationalist government also continued to improve the political status of Mother's Day, in order to comfort those mothers who lost their sons in the war.
Mother's Day, which "imported" from the United States, is different from Christmas, Thanksgiving and other holidays in terms of holiday attributes. Mother's Day does not have a strong religious color, nor is it simply a festival rooted in the soil of Western culture transplanted to China.
▲ Mother's love does not distinguish between countries
China is a country with a long tradition of filial piety, but this strong culture of filial piety has always lacked a platform for expression and bearing in the mainland, and Mother's Day is mainly to express respect for mothers and elders, catering to the filial piety ideas of the Chinese people.
At the same time, Mother's Day contains a response to the awakening feminist consciousness at that time. As a country with deep male rights ideas, in the recent era of enlightenment and progress, the rise of women's rights has shown a momentum that cannot be underestimated.
Shiren once said: Although China is based on filial piety, under the oppression of thousands of years of patriarchal society, the respect for mothers has been too neglected, so it is necessary for us to borrow Mother's Day in Europe and the United States to do Mother's Day in China, in order to arouse the credit of ordinary children to remember their mothers.
In this way, Mother's Day is also given the meaning of feminism. Against this backdrop, Mother's Day is increasingly accepted by the public.
▲Filial piety culture has a deep accumulation in China
WHY Mother's Day has been successfully "localized" in China
In 1948, Anna, who advocated the establishment of Mother's Day, died at the age of 84. Anna's departure did not make Mother's Day fall. On the contrary, gratitude for motherhood on the second Sunday of May has become the consensus of more and more countries.
Yu Guangzhong also missed his mother's kindness, but at that time, China was undergoing great changes in the world, and the smoke of war that filled the land of China made Yu Guangzhong's family embark on the road of escape again.
▲ In the afterglow of writing
In 1958, Yu Guangzhong's mother died of overwork at the age of 53. At this time, the child in the afterglow was not yet full moon, the grandchildren had not yet met the yin and yang, and the sad Yu Guangzhong wrote a famous article "This Life and This Life" to remember his mother.
▲"This Life and This Life" in the afterglow
In the 1950s, due to the international environment of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and China's "one-sided" foreign policy, Mother's Day with the "American brand" temporarily disappeared from the land of China, but people's reverence for mothers did not disappear.
The mother of each era has the unique mark of that era, but no matter how the external conditions change, the thickness of maternal love has never changed.
Mother in the 1950s (left) and 1990s (right).
After the reform and opening up, with the continuous development of the social and economic level, especially after the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States entered the honeymoon period. Many festivals with Elements of Western culture have re-entered China, and Mother's Day has returned to people's lives.
Mother's love is deep, and the love of a child's mother is full. Today, Mother's Day is deeply integrated into Chinese society. In addition to sending carnations and blessing cards to mothers from the United States.
China's traditional filial piety culture is deeply integrated with Mother's Day, and making a bowl of longevity noodles for mothers and combing their mothers' hair have become typical Chinese elements on Mother's Day.
With the development and progress of the times, people's blessings for mothers have become more and more diverse. But the acceleration of the pace of society has trapped young people in busy work and made it difficult to get out. Plans for family reunification are always changed by external forces, and postal expression of love for mothers becomes the only choice.
To this end, the international courier company "Gebu Small Bag" launched a new function, while sending holiday cards and gifts, you can leave a recording of yourself, the mother only needs to scan the courier number when receiving the mail, and your holiday wishes to the mother will jump out.
▲ Mail the blessing to the mother to your home
Build bridges with love, even if life is busy, Gebu bags make the distance of love closer. The feelings between my mother and us flow in both directions, and if you love her, you have to say it out loud.
Today, Mother's Day has become the most successful "foreign festival" in China, and Chinese care more about the true meaning of Mother's Day, that is, to thank and repay mothers, rather than the "foreign festival" identity of Mother's Day, which also fully illustrates the spiritual characteristics of Chinese civilization.