Daughters' Day, a festival for women, kicked off on Sept 1 in Guangyuan, Sichuan province, with a day's holiday for every female office worker in the city.

Girls from 10 universities in Sichuan, Xi'an and Beijing joined a boat contest, where the boat was shaped like a phoenix, the mythical bird associated with females.

The three-day festival included a music and dance gala, a display of calligraphy, painting and photography, besides basketball and football competitions.

Guangyuan is the birthplace of the only female ruler in Chinese history, Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907). For more than 1,300 years, local women marked the empress' birthday with celebrations on a boat. The local government restored the traditional festival in 1988 and called it Daughters' Day.