In case you missed the announcement in Global Times, this was it:
“An online forum advocating ‘mistress rights’ has declared March 3 to be Mistress Day, in order to draw attention to their plea for ‘open acceptance in society.’
“Yesterday, the China Mistress Association conducted afternoon ‘festivals’ in various cities across the country to mark the occasion.
“According to San Jie (pseudonym), the association’s organizer, discussion topics will include ‘how to get my man to come to my place every day,’ ‘how much does your man give to you every month?’ and ‘when will he buy me a house and car?’”
Time Magazine comments (March 2):
“After decades in which straight-laced communist mores kept any romance – extra-marital or more conventional – in check, China is in the throes of a sexual revolution…. Many wives tolerate the liaisons, reasoning that as long as their husbands take care of their families, a little bed-hopping is acceptable.
“Nevertheless, fewer Chinese wives may be willing to put up with their husband’s peccadilloes. The country’s divorce rate is at an all-time high, with cheating a main reason for the splits. Detective agencies that specialize in catching wayward husbands are doing a booming business.
“Beyond the personal realm, mistresses have become a political issue. A 2007 government survey found that almost 90% of provincial-level officials convicted of graft in the previous five years had mistresses. One prosecutor from central China, for instance, was convicted of having siphoned off $2 million in government money, in large part to fund his seven-woman-strong mistress habit. It’s a chicken-or-egg question. Did the mistresses come first, leading to the corruption needed to support these latter-day concubines? Or did the availability of illicit cash make mistress-acquiring an attainable an enviable lifestyle choice?
“Some puritanical Chinese Communist Party intellectuals have tagged the increase in ‘little wives’ as just another sign of the excesses of China’s capitalist reforms. But the dirty secret, of course, is that Mao Zedong depended on a collection of young ladies dedicated to pleasuring the Chairman. Most other Chinese simply weren’t as free to indulge as their Great Helmsman. A Chinese friend of mine who once served as a mistress shrugged when I asked about her liaison. ‘Everybody’s happy,’ she said, although she admitted the wife, also her friend, probably didn’t know about the affair.”
A new video has been posted at YouTube about a novel published by Eric Koch in 2000 that takes place in Berlin in 1929 during the Crash, just before Hitler’s rise to power.
The book, Otto & Daria: A Wartime Journey Through No Man's Land, was launched on Saturday, September 24. 
Sketches 
I like this news bc my birthday is March 3. Unfortunately, or fortunately I suppose, my gf’s birthday is also March 3. I don’t think the term “mistress” applies to a gf unless the male already has a “wife”. At least I’ve never called anyone a “mistress”, as US mores, as opposed to morals which don’t seem to exist, seem reluctant to accept a formal term for something they (we) find unacceptable to our “morals” by which I mean what we like to believe are our actual morals.
I am sorry I missed your birthday, Ben. Congratulations, anyway.
You are right: instead of mistresses we – some of us, anyway – have exes. I was at a concert on Tuesday and found out later that a male acquaintance of mine with perfectly good eyesight, who was also there, did not (in intermission) recognize his ex, of whom, he said, he was very fond. (Both are remarried.) She was gravely miffed. Which means that, while the social institution of exes is universally recognized in our world, individual exes are – sometimes – not.
I wonder whether there may be an Italian influence at work. Maybe it all goes back to Marco Polo. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that some day North America may celebrate a Sex Trade Worker day?
It is all a matter of advertising.
I would like to think that mistresses in China exist not primarily to satisfy the sexual needs of frustrated husbands but as status symbols. Could I be wrong? No need to answer.
Questions arise: where does this leave concubines? does this mean that Mao Zedong, the Great Helmsman, is really the Great Swordsman?
Concubine: c.1300, from L. concubina (fem.), from concumbere “to lie with, to lie together, to cohabit,” from com- “with” (see com-) + cubare “to lie down” (see cubicle). Recognized by law among polygamous peoples as “a secondary wife.”
A Helmsman does nothing lying down.
Communist theory is based on the natural order of things and course of history, Chairman Mao was convinced by his doctor, as to the health of sexual relations but in fact they are designed to easily result in offspring when consentual, so they are not meant to be maintained with individuals with whom there is not a proper relationship of love, and complete ease, and mutual devotion, Chairman Mao thought himself of importance to the Revolution and believed his doctor….but let us see and we will find that the ratio of men to women is so roughly equal even without any centralized planning of gender of births that mistresses do not appear really justified.
It is obvious that multiple-partner relations always carry health and personal hygiene hazards (e.g. raising risk of spread and mutation of dirt-associated bacteria), Chairman Mao may judging from some reports not have been aware of the need of physical hygiene also for women, given the hardiness of some of the women of the people.
Concubinage re-introduced in whatever form threatens to compromise full realization of potential, half the heavens for the women of the people of the Far East, and discriminates against some men! It means they could be left without wives.
That is not the same necessarily as the freedom between comrades, possibly extended to married life.
Also serious Westerners of the people find additional girl friends, with intimate relationships, compromises the intellectual interchange and definitely spiritual level of the relationship. Moreover dishonesty in this regard might indicate in fact adultery The Revolution is “not a license to adultery”.- V.I. L.
“LOVE IS A UNION OF SOULS!”
Maybe a high aim, but interesting to all peoples, the ultimate of free union and community between all comrades, “and the two shall become one flesh”.
The pair become as one and in turn are united with other pairs of the collective.
There is no ownership of women, without equality in regard for each, or else they make themselves sex objects.
Do you know that in Malaysia, the Muslim male can have 4 “Mistresses” and it is legal in their Muslim law? Not sure if in China this “Mistress Day” has any significant to the Malaysian.