CHINESE DOUBLE SEVENTH FESTIVAL (QIXI) - 7th day of 7th month on the Chinese lunar calendar
Check out these 10 Interesting Facts about Chinese Valentine’s Day (also known as Double Seventh Festival). How many of these do you already know?
- Chinese Valentine’s Day is also known as the Qixi Festival or the Double Seventh Festival.
- Double Seventh Festival is the most romantic day among all the Chinese festivals, and it is favored by young women who beg for bright heart and knitting and needlecraft skills from the goddess in heaven, pray for happiness, worship Qijie (the god of the weaver), and make wishes for a good husband. Therefore, this special festival is also called Chinese Valentine’s Day
- Double Seven Festival of 2017 falls on August 28 in the Gregorian calendar, and it falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. In the Gregorian calendar, it often goes into August.
- Double Seven Festival originated from a romantic love story, the legend of a cowherd and a weaver. The legend is very popular, and everyone in China, young and old, knows about it.
- The legend is about an honest and kind-hearted man named Niu Lang (the cowherd) and a fairy from heaven Zhi Nu (the weaver girl) who fell in love with each other. However, their love was not allowed, and the final decision that the Queen Mother in heaven made was that they could only meet each year on the 7th of the 7th lunar month. Therefore, their meeting date has been called “Qi Xi” (Double Seventh).
- On that day, Niu Lang and Zhi Nu meet on Que Qiao, a bridge made up of magpies, spanning the Milky Way.
- Scholars have shown that Double Seventh Festival originated from the Han Dynasty (207 BC to 220 AD).
- The legend of Niu Lang and Zhi Nu has root in the hearts of Chinese people, and Chinese people celebrated it as Valentine’s Day.
- The owners of flower shops, bars, stores are full of joy as they sell more products for love.
- Some of the popular food that Chinese people eat include dumplings, noodles, and wontons.
