Double Seventh Day: China’s Valentine’s Day
Today is August 25, 2020. The seventh day of the seventh lunar month. Today is also Chinese Double Seventh Festival: Qi xi Festival. It’s Chinese Valentine’s day, according to a traditional festival handed down about the love between fairies and cowherd boys. Double Seventh Day: China’s Valentine’s Day
The festival began to be celebrated around 206 ad. On May 20, 2015, Qixi Festival was listed in the national intangible cultural heritage list by the State Council of China. Many traditional customs are being re mentioned and given new meanings.
Legend of Qixi Festival
A fairy came to the place where human beings lived by chance. She fell in love with a young cattle herding boy. They were married, the fairy could weave, her husband herded cattle, and they lived a simple and happy life. Two or three years later, the fairy gave birth to a boy and a girl. But the fairy’s mother, fairy queen, found them and forced her daughter to leave her husband. The herder went after his wife with two children. But the fairy queen separated them with the Milky way. They are only allowed to meet on July 7 every year.
So on July 7, magpies flew in one after another to build a magpie bridge to let the couple meet.
Qixi Festival and the stars
In Chinese mythology, the fairy and the cowherd became two bright stars in the summer sky. That is what Westerners often say: Vega and Altair. Double Seventh Day: China’s Valentine’s Day
Here is a love poem written by an ancient Chinese poet. It’s very popular. Middle school students in China can recite it.
Clouds float like works of art;
Stars shoot with grief at heart.
Across the Milky Way the Cowherd meets the fairy
When Autumn’s Golden wind embraces Dew of Jades，
All the love scenes on earth，however many, fade
Their tender love flows like a stream;
This happy date seems but a dream.
Can they bear a separate homeward way?
If love between both sides can last for aye，
Why should we stay together night and day?
Key words:
Chinese Valentine’s day; cowherd; weaving girl; the magpie Bridge
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