Mother’s Day in China

Mother's Day in China 母亲节 (mǔqīnjié) is celebrated every year on the second Sunday in May (May 12th this year). The celebration of mothers is becoming more and more popular in China since being good to one’s parents is essential in Chinese culture. 

In China, respect for elders and devotion to parents are both important traditional principles. To celebrate this special day, Chinese people send sweet messages and show their affection and thankfulness. Also, a lot of China’s youngsters are looking for special activities on Mother’s Day and ideas are becoming more and more unique.

Which flowers are offered during Mother’s Day in China?

One tradition that has become customary is to offer carnations to mothers. However these recent years, a hundred Chinese scholars have been advocating that the celebration be moved to the birthday of the famous mother of the philosopher Mencius (孟子 Mèng Zǐ), and that carnations be replaced by lilies, flowers that mothers used to plant in the old days when a child left home.

Mencius’s mother is a female figure in Chinese culture. The story of Mencius’ mother (孟母三遷 mèngmǔ-sānqiān”) says that this mother moved houses three times to find the perfect location to raise her child. The title of the story 孟母三遷 (lit. Mencius Mother Three Move) became one of the most famous traditional chengyu and refers to the importance of finding the proper environment for raising children.

Mencius's father died when Mencius was very young. His mother Zhǎng (仉) raised her son alone. They were very poor. At first they lived by a cemetery, where the mother found her son imitating the paid mourners in funeral processions. Therefore, the mother decided to move. The next house was near a market in the town. There the boy began to imitate the cries of merchants (merchants were despised in early China). So the mother moved to a house next to a school. Inspired by the scholars and students, Mencius began to study. His mother decided to remain, and Mencius became a scholar.

Chinese mothers develop a strong relationship with their children

In China, building a happy family is a sign of success. Thus, everything parents do turns around their children's happiness. Most of the money they save or invest is to help their children go to private schools, study abroad, buy a car or even an apartment.

As for non-material things, a new phenomenon has risen: “parent-child learning” (亲子共学 qīnzǐ gòngxué). The concept is to take weekly classes where parents and children both participate together in order to make learning more fun and strengthen the parent-child relationship.

Activity centers and educational institutions across the country have all focused on this to break the traditional way of teaching and combine studying with parent-child activities outside the classroom.

On Mother’s Day, young moms then have another opportunity to have a moment of complicity with their child (dads or grandparents can obviously also participate). They can learn a lot of things, such as making lunar moon cakes.

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