Did you know that August 13th is considered Valentine’s Day in the Chinese calendar?
Falling on the seventh day of seventh lunar month, Qixi Festival is also known as Double Seventh Festival and falls on August 13 this year. The story behind Qixi Valentine’s Day originates from the legend of two lovers NiuLang, the cow-herder and Zhinu the weaver girl. The festival has been endowed with the meaning of great romance and has been celebrated since Han Dynasty 2600 years ago.
ZhiNu, the weaver girl who is also the seventh daughter of the Goddess, had escaped from heaven to look for some fun and met a young cowherd NiuLang. ZhiNu was deeply impressed with NiuLang’s kindness, soon fell in love with him. The both of them married in the mortal world without the knowledge and approval from the Goddess and lived happily with their two children.
Sadly, things did progress as happily as they had thought. The Goddess (Zhinu’s mother) found out the her daughter married a mortal and summoned her to return to heaven and back to her former duty of weaving colourful clouds. NiuLang was very upset that his wife had disappeared without knowing her real identity.
Suddenly, NiuLang’s ox began to talk and told him that he would be able to go up to heaven and find his wife if he killed it and put on his hides. NiuLang brought his two children off to heaven for ZhiNu and his action has made the Goddess angrier. The Goddess of Heaven took out her hairpin and created a wide river to separate the two love birds forever, thus forming the Milky Way between Altair and Vega.
Their remarkable love story was widely-spread and it touched the magpies. The magpies took pity on the lovers and gathered up all the magpies around the world and flew up into heaven to form a magpie bridge. They did it so the lovers may be together for a single night, once a year, which is the seventh night of the seventh month.
The tale of NiuLang and ZhiNu has become one of the Chinese Four Ancient Love Stories which include Liang Shan Bo and Zhu Ying Tai; the White Snake Tale; and the Meng Jiang Lady Crying till collapsing the Great Wall of China. Now, it has become a famous legend in Chinese culture and it is also dubbed as “Chinese Valentine’s Day”.
A lot of people mistake Qixi Valentine’s Day for Chap Goh Meh (the 15th day of Chinese New Year or known as Lantern Festival). In Malaysia and Singapore, Chap Goh Meh is celebrated by individuals who are currently looking for a new love partner. Single women will write down their contacts (probably their Facebook usernames now) on Mandarin oranges, and throw it into the river or a lake. The single men will wait to collect these contacts and eat the oranges. The taste is the indication of their possible love: sweet represents good fate while sour represents bad fate.
(Source)
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