China - Chinese Valentine's Day

A long time ago, the Cowherd and the old cows lived together. One day, the old cow let the cowherd go to the edge of the woods, and he will see a beautiful girl and his husband and wife, and the cowherd wonders, but still go, things are the same as the old cow said.

After the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl got married, the men and women were weaving, and they were very affectionate. They gave birth to a man, a woman and two children. The family lived happily. However, the good times did not last long. This matter quickly made the Emperor know that the Queen Mother had personally brought her down and forced the Weaver Girl back to heaven, and the loving couple was dismantled. The Cowherd has no way to go to heaven, or the old cow tells the Cowherd. After it dies, you can use its skin to make shoes, and you can wear it when you wear it. In accordance with the words of the old cow, the cowherd wears shoes made of cowhide, pulls his own children, and goes to the sky to chase the weavers together. Seeing that it is going to catch up, I know that the mother-in-law’s smashing the golden scorpion on her head is a choppy The Tianhe River appeared, and the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl were separated on both sides of the strait. They could only cry and cry.

Their loyalty and love affected the magpies, and they only liked to fly and build a bridge to let the Cowherd and the Weavers walk on the bridge. The Queen Mother had no choice but to allow the two to meet at the bridge on July 7 each year. Later, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, it was said that the girls would come to the front of the flower, look up at the stars, look for the Altair and the Vega on both sides of the Milky Way, hoping to see their annual meeting. I beg God to make myself as ingenious as the Weaver Girl, and pray that I can have a happy marriage that is satisfactory, thus forming the Qixi Festival.

Qixi Festival:
   

    Qixi Festival, also known as Qi Qiao Festival, Qi Jie Festival, Daughter's Day, Qi Qiao Festival, Qi Niang Club, Qi Xi Festival, Niu Gong Niu Po ​​Day, Qiao Xi, etc., is a traditional Chinese folk festival. The Qixi Festival was derived from the worship of stars, and it was the birth of the Seven Sisters in the traditional sense. The festival was held on July 7th for the worship of the Seven Sisters, hence the name Tanabata. It is the traditional custom of Tanabata to worship seven sisters, pray for blessings, plead for art, sit and watch the maiden vega, pray for marriage, and save the water. Through the development of history, Tanabata has been given the beautiful love story of "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl", making it a symbolic love festival, which is considered to be the most romantic traditional festival in China. In the contemporary era, it has produced "Chinese Valentine's Day". Cultural meaning.
   Qixi Festival is a festival of worshipping the Seven Sisters and a festival of love. It is a comprehensive festival featuring the folklore of "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl" as the carrier, with the theme of praying, benevolence and love, and women as the main body. Tanabata's "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl" comes from people's worship of the natural sky. In ancient times, people corresponded to the astronomical star area and the geographical area. This correspondence is called "divided star" in terms of astronomy. In terms of geography, it is called " "The wilderness"; the cowherd and the female star image correspond to the geographical division in the literature "Han Geography": "Guangdong (Vietnamese), the wilderness of the cattle, prostitutes also." According to legend, every year in the seventh day of July, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meet in the bridge of heaven.
   Qixi Festival began in the ancient times, popularized in the Western Han Dynasty, and prospered in the Song Dynasty. In ancient times, Qixi Festival was the exclusive festival for prostitutes. Among the many folk customs of Tanabata, some gradually disappeared, but quite a few were continued. The Qixi Festival originated in China, and in some Asian countries affected by Chinese culture, such as Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and Vietnam, there is also a tradition of celebrating Tanabata. On May 20, 2006, Qixi Festival was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage by the State Council of the People's Republic of China.

Folk custom editor:
Fragrant Bridge:
    In Yixing, Jiangsu, there is a custom of Qixi Xiangqiao. Every year on the seventh night of the seventh month, people come to participate and build the bridge. The so-called Xiangqiao is a bridge with a length of four or five meters and a width of about half a meter made of various thick long-skinned incense sticks (paper-wrapped incense), fitted with railings, and tied with five-color thread on the railing. Made of flower decoration. At night, people worship double stars and beg for Fuxiang, and then incinerate the Xiangqiao, symbolizing that the double stars have passed the Xiangqiao and are happy to meet. This incense bridge was derived from the legendary legend of the bridge. [18]
Receiving dew:
  In rural Zhejiang, the custom of using a washbasin to expose dew is popular. Legend has it that the dew on the Qixi Festival is the tears of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. If you put it on your eyes and hands, you can make your eyes clear.