What is the real meaning of Tanabata?

The real meaning of Tanabata is to praise the constancy of love.

China Valentine's Day, also known as Qiaoqi Festival, Qijie Festival, Daughter's Day, Beggar's Day, Chinese Valentine's Day, Niuniu Festival and Qiaoxi Festival, is a traditional folk festival in China. Valentine's Day in China evolved from the worship of the stars, and it is Seven Sisters's birthday in the traditional sense. Because of the worship of Seven Sisters on the seventh day of July, it was named Tanabata. The real meaning of Tanabata is to praise the constancy of love.

It is the traditional custom of Qixi to worship the seven sisters, pray, seek skillful art, sit and watch morning glory and weave stars, pray for marriage and store water on Qixi. After historical development, Tanabata has been endowed with the beautiful love legend of "Cowherd and Weaver Girl", making it a festival symbolizing love, thus being regarded as the most romantic traditional festival in China, and even having the cultural meaning of "China Valentine's Day" in contemporary times.

The origin of tanabata

The legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl on Tanabata originates from people's worship of natural phenomena. As early as ancient times, the ancients who pursued order not only planned the sky in an orderly way, but also corresponded the stars with the ground area. This correspondence is called "dividing stars" in astronomy and "dividing fields" underground. Simply put, the ancients mapped each constellation in the sky to the physical geographical area on the ground. The purpose of ancient star division and demarcation is mainly to cooperate with astrology theory for astronomical observation.

In the ancient star system, "Taurus" consists of six stars, which are located on the east bank of the Milky Way, like two inverted triangles, which are very distinctive when going up and down, but the triangle above is bigger and brighter. The small triangle below is located on the ecliptic. These stars make up a cow with two horns on its head but only three feet, so the ancients called it Petunia.

There are nine little stars to the south of this cow, which constitutes the Tian Tian, where it cultivates. Looking further south, near the southern horizon, "Jiukan" has nine stars, which is a lowland for storing water and irrigating farmland. The east of Niusu is next to the "Luo Yan" No.3 star, which is a water conservancy facility similar to a reservoir.

Vega 3 is located in the north of Cebu, in which Vega 1 is the fifth brightest star in the whole day, second only to arcturus, so it is often called Vega directly. People refer to "Altair" and "Vega" as "Cowherd and Weaver Girl".

Baidu Encyclopedia-Tanabata