Chinese Valentine's Day celebrated with various activities

Various places across China have celebrated the Qixi Festival, also known as Chinese Valentine's Day, with various interesting activities.

The Qixi Festival, originating from a 2,000-year-old legend of two lovers, falls on the seventh day of the seventh month on the Chinese lunar calendar. This year the festival falls on Aug 10.

In Zhucun Village of south China's Guangdong Province, the traditional customs of Qixi Festival have been kept relatively intact. At this time of the year, villagers often make relevant handcrafts to celebrate the day for lovers.

Art performances and parties were also held, allowing people to feel the romantic vibe of this traditional festival as well as the profoundness of the Chinese traditional culture.

Xihe County of northwest China's Gansu Province organized a series of themed events to comprehensively display the customs of Qixi Festival and the local culture.

Folk culture performances were put on stage at Yiyuan County of east China's Shandong Province to promote modern, new-style and frugal marriage culture.

On this special day, a total of 77 newly-weds tied the knot in Lushi County in central China's Henan Province via a collective wedding.

In Wucheng Town of east China's Jiangxi Province, a hundred couples got married and held a collective traditional wedding ceremony.

Chinese Valentine's Day celebrated with various activities

The European Central Bank (ECB) announced on Thursday that it would slash key interest rates by 25 basis points in a bid to wind down the restrictive monetary policy.

Effective from March 12, the interest rates on the deposit facility, the main refinancing operations and the marginal lending facility will be decreased to 2.50 percent, 2.65 percent and 2.90 percent respectively, said the central bank in a statement.

The disinflation process is well on track, with headline inflation averaging 2.3 percent in 2025, 1.9 percent in 2026 and 2.0 percent in 2027, the ECB said.

The decision to keep on cutting rates came at a time when the economy in the eurozone is facing increasing uncertainties.

In its latest edition of the staff projections on Thursday, the ECB lowered its forecast for economic growth in the eurozone to 0.9 percent for 2025, 1.2 percent for 2026 and 1.3 percent for 2027.

This marks a downward revision from the ECB's forecast in December last year, which had projected 1.1 percent growth in 2025 and 1.4 percent in 2026, while the 2027 outlook remains unchanged.

The ECB attributed the weaker growth outlook for 2025 and 2026 to declining exports and sluggish investment, citing high trade policy uncertainty and broader economic instability as key factors.

ECB cuts interest rates by 25 basis points