Superstitious Chinese mothers dress for success as students toil over college entrance exam
- Red silk dresses, complete with slits, are all the rage as anxious parents seek to persuade Lady Luck to smile on their offspring
- Yellow sunflowers, lucky licence plates also star as parents turn to homophones in bid to load the dice in their children’s favour
As millions of Chinese high school students sweated through the first day of their university entrance exams on Friday, superstitious mothers across the country used every trick in the book to convince the gods of good fortune to look favourably on their loved ones.
For the fashion-conscious parent, few things are more effective at winning over Lady Luck than the traditional Chinese dress known as the qipao, and there were plenty on show outside a test centre in Beijing’s Chaoyang district.
The perceived wisdom is that wearing such a dress with slits up the sides is bound to bring good fortune as its name in Mandarin – qipao kai cha – sounds a lot like the phrase for “success at the first attempt”, or qi kai de she ng.
“I only heard about this a week ago so I hurried to buy one,” said a woman called Chen outside the test centre where her 18-year-old daughter was taking the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, or gaokao. “My daughter had a good laugh about it but I’m serious,” she said. “This is the least I can do.”
Whether Chen’s sartorial selection does anything to boost her daughter’s exam score remains to be seen, but there is no doubting the benefit of the fashion trend for retailers.