Ｔｈｅ　Ｅｖｅ　ｏｆ　Ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ　Ｖａｌｅｎｔｉｎｅ’ｓ　Ｄａｙ　ｉｎ　Ｄｏｎｇｂａｉ　Ｍｏｕｎｔａｉｎ

Ｊｉｎ　Ｙｕａｎｚｈｏｎｇ

The seventh day of the seventh month on the lunar calendar is the Chinese Valentines Day. On the eve of the romantic celebration, young men and young women as well as disciples in central Zhejiang, especially in Dongyang, Zhuji and Shengzhou, pilgrimage to Dongbai Mountain.

Part of the Kuaiji Mountains, Dongbai Mountain stands at 1,194.5 meters above sea level. It is regarded sacred by local people in love because it is said that seven fairies from heaven once took bath here. A young man from a village nearby peeped and later married one of the seven fairies. This is the briefest gist of a popular Chinese romance for thousands of years.

As history indicates, the earliest temple in honor of the seven fairies on the tiptop of Dongbai Mountain came into being in 1128. In addition to this important temple, the mountain is home to more than ten temples dedicated to different deities in different religions.

The present fairies temple was built in 1939 by disciples in Dongyang, Zhuji and Shengxian counties. Located on a spot only 6 meters away from the top, the temple stands five meters tall, six meters wide and 8 meters across from the front wall to the back wall.The foundation of the temple is in the rocks. Inside the temple are statues of the seven fairies.

The mountain is not the only folklore evidence of the bathing visits of the fairies. In addition to the streams and pools in the mountain, there are also sites where fairies presumably slept, or played chess. Dong Yong, the man who acted as a peeping tom and married one fairy, was presumably from a village at the foot of the mountain.

On the eve of the Chinese Valentines Day, people come to the mountain. The pilgrims from Dongyang drive up to the mountain while pilgrims from Zhuji and Shengzhou hike all the way to the temple. It is a spectacular dancing of car lights and torch lights in the mountain from different directions.

After reaching the top, pilgrims first pray at the temple. They spend the night on the peak, some standing, some squatting, some laying on the ground and some sitting, all waiting for the sun to rise. Spending a night on the peak and waiting for the sunrise is a response to kind of a lamentation in a popular ancient poem that says “cherish love even if the two cant be together in all the evenings and all the mornings”. An evening and a morning at the top of Dongbai Mountain is meant to say that people in love treasure all the evenings and all the mornings together. □