Tanabata is really not Valentine's Day From women begging for money to men and women settling down?

Today is August 28, 2017, the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, which is the annual Chinese traditional Tanabata Festival. When it comes to the Tanabata Festival, many people default to it as a love-themed festival, and now it has been hailed by some businessmen as "China's Valentine's Day" and a day for couples to celebrate. But according to history and folklore, Tanabata really wasn't a Valentine's Day to begin with, so today's calendar brings you the history of Tanabata's evolution from women's begging to men's and women's lovemaking.

When it comes to Tanabata, people's first thought is that the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden meet at the Magpie Bridge, equating Tanabata with China's Valentine's Day. In ancient times, Tanabata is indeed closely related to the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden, but it is a comprehensive festival mainly for women. On this day, women will visit their girlfriends and friends, worship the Weaving Maiden, cut up the women's red, and beg for blessings, so Tanabata is also called the "Daughter's Day". Women's days of joyful competition and entertainment, men also come together to enjoy the fun on the sidelines, men and women in love is just a "Daughter's Day" event in the by-products.

The legend of the cowherd and the weaving maiden comes from the star worship of the ancients. The earliest record of the cowherd and the weaving maiden in the literature was created in the Western Zhou Dynasty's "Poetry Classic - Xiao Ya - Da Dong": "Vi Tian has a Han, the monitor is also there! There is a Han in the sky, and there is a light in the prison. The Weaving Maiden is crawling to her, and she will be there for seven days. Though the seven Xiangs do not make a report, the cowherd and the ox are not to be served in a box." At this time, the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden are still only two stars in the sky that have been personified, so it can be seen that the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden initially originated from the people's reverence for and worship of the stars.

According to the late Warring States bamboo slips in the Sleeping Tiger Earth Qin Tomb in Yunmeng County, Hubei province, the tragedy of the Cowherd and Weaving Maiden's marriage has already begun to emerge and has been widely circulated. "Wushen and Heiyou, pulling the ox to take the weaving maiden but not fruitful. Not more than three years old, abandoned as dead." It means that Wushen and Heiyou, the marriages of Altair to fetch the Weaving Maiden were very unfortunate, and if people got married at such times, the husbands would desert their wives within three years.

At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, there was a record in the Huainanzi (淮南子), in which the magpies filled the river to form a bridge to cross the Weaving Maiden, and the earliest paintings and carvings of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden were made during the two Han Dynasties. For example, Ban Gu's "Xidu Fu" and Zhang Heng's "Xijing Fu" both recorded the western suburb of Chang'an Kunming Pond with a stone statue of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden.

And the Eastern Han Dynasty's Nineteen Ancient Poems has already given a preliminary account of the legend that the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden love each other but can't be reunited: "A long way to the Altair Star, a bright river maiden. Her hands are delicate, and her loom is a loom. All day long, no chapter, sobbing and sniffling like rain. The river is clear and shallow, how far away from each other. The river is clear and shallow, but how far away is it?"

"Seven" means a lot to women, begging and praying for good luck is natural, the weaver is good at weaving, and women pray for dexterous skills and a happy life by worshipping the weaver. Jin Ge Hong's "Xijing Miscellany", said the women's activities in the early Han Dynasty, Liu Bang's harem: "Han color women often wear seven holes in the seventh day of the seventh month needle in the lapel building, the club to practice", "to the seventh day of the seventh month in the Hundred children pool, for the über music, music, to the five-color strands of the phase of the restraints, so-called connected to the love! "

Jin Jin, a city in the south of the country, is the largest city in the world.

Jin Zhou Chu, "Records of Customs and Earth" in addition to describing the women's offerings of fruits and melons in the court, pray for blessings and pray for life, but also for the first time for the Tanabata added the connotation of the child: "the seventh day of the seventh month, the night of the sprinkling of sweeping in the court, Lush a few feasts, set up a drink drinking heavily when the fruits, scattering powder in the feast to pray for the River Drum, the Weaving Maiden, that the two star gods when it would be. Vigilantes salty private wish ...... see the person will worship, and wish no son to beg for a son, only one of them, not both."

So why did the ancients set the activities of women begging for money on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar? It turns out that when Nuwawa created life, she made people on the seventh day, and the seventh day is "Man Day". "Seven" is also a very auspicious number: people have seven orifices, music has seven sounds, people have seven emotions, there are seven fairies in the sky, Cao Zhi can make poetry with seven steps, and there are seven things in daily life.

Together with the "Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine" will be seven defined as the number of a woman's life: a woman's seven-year-old teeth more hair Zhang, two or seven on the development of menstruation, ready for childbearing, three or seven four or seven are the time of the body is strong and healthy, five or seven gradually weakened, six or seven began to have gray hair, seven or seven days of the exhaustion of decapitation, the termination of fertility.

In this way, the seventh day of the seventh month is not only the day of man, "seven" and the significance of the woman, the two auspicious numbers superimposed, Tanabata beg for blessings is logical.

South Dynasty, the story of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden is further complete, the Weaving Maiden became the daughter of the Emperor of Heaven, promised to marry the Hexi Altair, but the Weaving Maiden after the marriage of the passive-aggressive, the Emperor of Heaven's wrath, ordered to return to the Hedong, so that the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden will meet once a year. The origin of the love story of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden is not accidental, it is a product of the Chinese "male farming and weaving" way of production and life.

Secondly, "Jingchu Times and Hours" recorded the process of begging for coquettish gifts on the eve of the 7th day of the 7th lunar month in the Southern Dynasties, with special reference to the spider's web, which would bring good omens: "It is the eve of the women's colorful wisps of knots and seven-hole needles, and salty gold, silver, and lose the stone for the needles, and the melons and fruits are displayed in the court to beg for coquettish gifts, and there is a happy child's web in the melons, and then they think that it is a good sign."

The Tang Dynasty, adhering to the style of the Southern Dynasties, the "Kaiyuan Tianbao Legacy" recorded a grand ceremony to wear a needle begging for coquettish: Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Xuanzong and Yang Guifei in the Palace of the Huaqing Banquet, the night of the seventh day of the seventh month, the court ladies full of Chen fruits and vegetables, flowers, wine and food, listed in the court, begging for the Altair, Weaving Maiden, but also to catch the spiders, closed in the locket, the second day of the spider's web is sparse and dense, the dense more coquettish, sparse less coquettish, attracting the folk have to follow suit.

And from the Tang poetry can also be seen at the time of the begging event. Cui Hao's poem reads: "The moon in Chang'an City is like a trainer, and every family holds a needle and thread this night. The fairy dresses and jade pendants know nothing about each other, and they do not meet in heaven and on earth."

After the Song Dynasty, the prosperity of commerce in the city promoted the development of the Tanabata Festival, and the atmosphere of the festival was very strong, with a lot of traffic and people. Luo Ye and Jin Yingzhi edited "Drunken Weng Chat Records", wrote: "On the seventh day of the seventh month, Panlou bought and sold beguiling things in front of the building. Since July 1, carriages and horses fill the throat, to three days before Tanabata, carriages and horses do not pass, one after another congestion, no longer come out, to the night before dispersal."

Song Dynasty women Chen melon fruit, threading needles begging for coquettish, spider web accounted for similar to the previous dynasty. They will also be in the porcelain with water soaked mung beans, wheat, buds a few inches to the red and blue color building bundle, called "species of life", in addition to the courtyard cover the color building, called "Begging for coincidence floor. Children in the Tanabata can also participate in begging activities, boys "beg smart", the girl "begging for coincidence": "the capital city children set pen, ink and ink in front of the Altair bit, the book said: 'a begging smart! The children of the capital set up their brushes, ink and paper in front of the Altair, and wrote: 'I beg for cleverness. The children to the needle and thread box and box in front of the weaver's seat, the book said: 'a certain begging coincidence'."

On the eve of the seventh day of the seventh month, the streets are sold "mill drink music", also known as "Mo Shuo Luo" or "Moro", is to carve wood colorful decorated with a base of clay dolls, or with red yarn B cage dress, or decorated with gold beads and teeth. The clay dolls are decorated with red yarn and blue cages, or with gold beads and teeth. "Mill drink music" or "Moro" is a translation of the Sanskrit language, the original meaning of the Buddhist scriptures in the name of God, the Song Dynasty Tanabata appeared to this Buddhist factors.

Ancient poems let Tanabata become a love festival Tanabata evolved into "Chinese Valentine's Day", it should be said to be thanks to the imagination of the literati. "Poetry - Xiaoya - Da Dong" said: "Crawling his weaving girl, the end of the day seven Xiang ...... yipping his Altair, not to serve Cockscomb," the earliest record of the "Cowherd and Weaving Maiden" love legend of the text, for Tanabata This is the earliest record of the "Cowherd and Weaving Maiden" love legend text, for the Tanabata to become the later love festival laying the groundwork.

Specifically, after the improvisation of the Liang Dynasty's Xiao Tong, who chanted "A Long Way to the Ox Star, Bright River Women ...... between a water, pulse not to speak," the poets and lyricists who marveled at the "Tanabata" have proliferated. The poets and lyricists of "Tanabata" will be in the clouds. In the Tang Dynasty, more than eighty poems were written on the theme of Tanabata. Bai Juyi, Du Fu, Cao Song, Du Mu, Li He, Luo Yin, Liu Yuxi, Li Shangyin and so on have left poems in praise of free love and sentimental feelings to Tanabata as the theme.

The two Song dynasties can be said to be the heyday of the Tanabata Festival, with more than a hundred works on the theme of Tanabata in all Song poems, and Magpie Bridge Immortal has become the name of the word for which masterpieces are frequently written. Compared with the Tang poems, Song lyricists expressed their yearning for free love more often.

Whether it is Qin Guan's "If two loves are long-lasting, is it not in the morning and the evening", or Fan Chengda's "The new love is not as much as the old sorrows, but adds to the new sorrows to go home", or Li Qingzhao's "The starry bridge and the magpies drive by, and it takes years to see them. In addition to expressing the bitterness of longing, it also implies a strong resistance to the destruction of the free love system.

With the popularity of these poems, the "free love" of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden makes people feel a revelation of space and time and the light of hope, therefore, the Tanabata Festival "threading a needle and praying for coincidences" and many other customs related to material things have also faded away. The festival's "threading of needles, begging for coquettish objects" and many other materialistic customs have faded into the distance, while the spiritual dimension of the festival, such as the desire for free love, continues to be passed on.

Since the Yuan Dynasty began the Tanabata will be called "Girls' Day" the earliest Tanabata will be called "Girls' Day", is the Yuan Dynasty, Yuan "analysis of the Jin Zhi" cloud: "the court of the scholarly and common people's home salty shed, hanging Tanabata The palace of the scholarly and common people's home salted a large shed, hanging the seven eve drawings of the cow and the weaving woman, full of fruits, wine and cakes, invited the women to make a festival of coincidence, called the Girls' Day."

The Ming and Qing dynasties, the Beijing region, the Dragon Boat Festival, Tanabata, Chongyang have "Daughter Festival" called. Tanabata "Daughter's Day" needle threading custom changed to throw the needle begging, begging time from the night to midday. Woman begging, will be filled with water in a bowl in the midday sun, and then the embroidery needle in the bowl to float up, if the needle in the water shadow such as flowers like clouds, or birds and beasts, it is believed that "begging for coquettish"; if the shadow of the clumsy like a mallet, or bent not shaped, it is believed that "begging for clumsy If the shadow is clumsy like a mallet, or curved and not shaped, it is considered to be "clumsy". Qing Dynasty Tanabata, Beijing "Daughter's Day" and will be thrown to throw the needle changed to throw thin branches or pine needles.

Jiangnan women in the Qing Dynasty, there is the custom of dyeing nails on Tanabata: "Tanabata, women picking phoenix flower pounding dyeing nails, red as amber lovely." Moreover, there is a magical effect of dyeing red nails, which can make the eyes of the elderly not blurred. The "Qing Jia Lu" recorded Suzhou's July custom: "Pounding the juice of the Fenghuangxian flower, dyeing the tip of the ring finger and the tip of the little finger, which is called red nails. Legend has it that the old people read it on New Year's Day in the spring of next year, so that the eyes do not faint."

The Tanabata culture profoundly affects Asian countries

The legend of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden, also with the ethnic exchanges, spread to the Northwest, Northeast, Southwest of the various ethnic minorities inhabited areas, and y affected Japan, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries. The names of the stories, the names of the main characters and the details of the stories in these countries and regions may have regional and ethnic differences, and they have always maintained similar thematic ideas and characterization with the Han matriarchal stories.

Japan also has a Beggar's Day and holds similar observances. In the Manyoshu, the earliest collection of Japanese waka, the vast majority of which was composed in the Nara period (eighth century), there are more than 130 Tanabata waka. Starting from the middle of the Nara period, Tanabata festivals, needle-piercing begging, and Tanabata poetic assemblies imitating the practices of the Tang court became popular in the Japanese court and high society.

In Japanese folklore, in addition to the star festival and the sunburning of books, people also write their wishes on five-colored paper and hang them on the branches of bamboo sticks, which are then floated along with lanterns the next day to symbolize that their wishes reach the river of heaven. The "Tanabata-ryu" was an important Tanabata event before the Meiji era, in which young boys and girls hung lanterns on bamboo sticks, made a small boat with male and female dolls, and put the boat into the sea on the morning of the seventh day while singing a song to send off the gods.

The Deokheungri Tomb, excavated in North Korea in 1976, was built in 408, and its owner had both Chinese and Goguryeo official titles. In the mural painting of the tomb, there is a clear picture of "Cowherd and Weaving Maiden", where the Weaving Maiden and the Cowherd are looking at each other across the Milky Way. This shows that the aristocrats in the Koguryo region of Korea were already y influenced by the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden during the Northern Wei Dynasty.

The General Knowledge of Joseon clearly states that King Gongmin of Goryeo worshipped the stars Altair and Vega with his wife, Grand Princess Botasuri of Rukoku in the Yuan Dynasty, and rewarded his salary to all officials on that day. In the Joseon Dynasty, the Tanabata festival included begging for money, fighting for money, begging for literature, exposing clothes to the sun, and worshipping the star to make a wish, etc. In the court, there were the Tanabata tea ceremony and the Tanabata memorial service.

In our country, nowadays, Tanabata is mistakenly regarded as only a function of Valentine's Day, shouldn't the media, businessmen and the general public be more aware of the real underlying meaning of this festival?In 2006, Tanabata was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.

Since 2005, the "Guangzhou Beggar's Tale Cultural Festival" has received strong support from the local government, and in 2008, the Xihe Beggar's Tale in Gansu Province was upgraded to a national intangible cultural heritage. There are many other places where people are taking action to protect traditional culture.

Even when it comes to buying, wouldn't gifts with images of magpies, bishop birds, red beans, lotus seeds and lotus flowers stand out better against the same old Western-style gifts of roses and chocolates? At the same time, perhaps it is possible to start with the children and take the best from them after eliminating the dregs of male superiority and female inferiority, so that they can strengthen their knowledge of festive culture in star festival wishing, poetry recitation and handmade games, and subconsciously cultivate a sense of continuity of traditional Chinese culture.

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