Festival recalls a match made in heaven ...
Print Edition
CHINESE Valentine’s Day, also Qixi Festival, is a traditional festival to celebrate the annual meeting of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid in Chinese myth.
The story goes that the Cowherd fell in love with the Weaving Maid who was the daughter of the Queen of Heaven. Against all odds, they got married on the sly without telling other gods.
However, their marriage was found out by the Queen of Heaven. She was so angry that she forced the Weaving Maid to return to heaven and forever banned the Cowherd from seeing her daughter.
Nonetheless, the Cowherd went to great effort to sneak into heaven to find his wife. The Queen of Heaven discovered this and was so furious that she created a wide river in the sky to separate the two lovers forever, thus forming the Milky Way between the stars Altair and Vega.
Thereafter, the Weaving Maid had to sit on one side of the Milky River while the cowherd watched her from the other side. But on the seventh day of the seventh month in the Chinese lunar calendar, numerous magpies flew to heaven and formed a bridge over the Milky River, through which the two could meet for a single night.
Through the dynasties, Chinese people considered the Altair and Vega the incarnations of the Cowherd and the Weaver Maid. It is said that if it rains on the Qixi Festival, the rain is the tears of the separated couple.
Since the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), Chinese people began to celebrate Qixi by holding a series of rituals. Although some of the customs have faded over the years, people still take Qixi as a key day to celebrate with their lovers.
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