Tomorrow will be the traditional beginning of Chinese New Year, the “Little New Year” (小年), which is celebrated on the 23rd day of the 12th month of the Lunar calendar (腊八二十三). Traditional festivities include paying respects to the Kitchen God (祭灶). The Sanjing City News from Shanxi puts the “Little New Year” warning on its front page, showing a child offering sweets to the Kitchen Gods.
The 5th Plenary Session of the 11th Shanxi People’s Congress (山西十一届人大五次会议) was also declared victoriously closed.
A sub-headline from the front page is to do the rise of marriage counseling in China. The article claims that as the post-80s stress a more romantic basis for marriage and have a lower tolerance level, marriage break-ups are more frequent. It’s estimated that the number of counselors that could be in demand has reached 1 million (for 3.7 hundred million couples in China today). To respond to this demand, at the end of 2010, Shanxi alone saw 59 trainees attend examinations for a Marriage Counselor certificate.
- Sanjing City News (Chinese): Tomorrow is “Little New Year”; Marriage counseling diagnoses and heals marriage problems; Shanxi is standing on a launching pad