Why is Tanabata Valentine's Day called Chinese Valentine's Day?

In China, the night of the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the weather is warm, the grass and trees fragrant, which is commonly known as the Tanabata Festival, some people also call it "Begging for coincidence" or "Daughter's Day", which is the most romantic of the traditional Chinese festivals in the color of a festival, but also the past This is one of the most romantic of the traditional Chinese festivals, and it is also the most important day for the girls in the past.

On a clear summer and fall night, the sky is full of stars, a white Milky Way running across the north and south, the east and west banks of the river, each with a shining star, looking across the river, far away from each other, that is Altair and Vega.

Tanabata sitting to see Altair and Vega stars, is a folk custom, according to legend, in this night every year, is the heavenly Weaver and Cowherd in the magpie bridge meeting time. The Weaving Maiden is a beautiful, clever, dexterous nymphs, women in the mortal world will be begging her wisdom and skill on this night, but also less to her to ask for the gift of marriage, so the seventh day of the seventh month is also known as the Begging for coincidence festival.

It is said that on the night of the seventh day of the seventh month, you can see the Milky Way of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden, or you can overhear the words of love of the two men who meet in the sky under the shelf of fruits and melons.

Girls in this night full of romance, the sky's bright moon, seasonal fruits and melons, worship towards the sky, begging the goddess in the sky to give them a clever mind and dexterous hands, so that their own knitting red skill, but also begging for love and marriage of marriage coincidentally. In the past, marriage was a lifelong event for women to decide whether they would be happy or not, so countless loving men and women in the world would pray to the starry sky for a happy marriage on this night, when the night is quiet and the people are deep in the night.

The origin of Tanabata and the legend

The Tanabata Begging for Handicrafts, the festival originated in the Han Dynasty, the Eastern Jin Dynasty Ge Hong's "Xijing Miscellany" has "Han color women often wear seven holes on the seventh day of the seventh month in the seven-hole needle in the Kaixiao building, people are all accustomed to the" record, which is the earliest we have seen in the ancient literature on the begging for handicrafts records. Later in the Tang and Song poems, women's begging was also mentioned repeatedly, Tang dynasty Wang Jian poem said "appendant stars and buckets decorated with pearl light, Tanabata palace e begging busy". According to the "Kaiyuan Tianbao remains": Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty and his consort every Tanabata night banquet in the Qing Palace, the court ladies beg, this custom in the folklore also enduring, and continue from generation to generation.

Song and Yuan times, Tanabata begging is quite grand, the capital also has a market specializing in the sale of begging items, the world known as begging city. Song Luo Ye, Jin Ying Zhi collection of "Drunken Weng Talk Records" said: "Tanabata, Pan Lou before the sale of begging things. Since July 1, car and horse anger throat, to three days before Tanabata, car and horse do not pass, one after another congestion, no longer come out, to the night square dispersal." Here, from the begging city to buy begging objects, we can infer the lively scene of the Tanabata Begging Festival at that time. People from the first day of July began to set up begging items, begging city on the traffic, people flow like tide, to the approaching eve of the time, begging city simply into a sea of people, cars and horses difficult to travel, view its style, seems no less than the grandest festival - Spring Festival, indicating that the begging festival is one of the most favorite ancient festivals.

The legend of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden

The Tanabata Festival has always been linked to the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden, which is a very beautiful love story that has been passed down through the ages, and has become one of the four great folk legends of love in China.

Legend has it that a long time ago, there was a smart, loyal young man in the Niu Village in the west of Nanyang City, whose parents died a long time ago. Loyal young man, parents died early, had to follow his brother and sister-in-law, sister-in-law Ma's vicious, often abused him, forcing him to do a lot of work, one year in the fall, sister-in-law forced him to go to the cattle, gave him nine cows, but let him wait for ten cows can only go home, Cowherd had no choice but to drive the cattle out of the village.

The cowherd drove the cows into the mountains alone, and in the mountains with deep grass and dense forests, he sat under a tree and was sad, wondering when he would be able to drive the ten cows back home. At this time, an old man with white hair appeared in front of him and asked him why he was sad, and when he learned of what had happened to him, he laughed and said, "Don't be sad, there's a sick old cow in the Fuxiu Mountains, go and feed it well. Feed it, and when the old ox is well, you can drive it home.

The cowherd crossed the mountains and traveled a long way, and finally found the sick old ox. Seeing that the old ox was very sick, he went to call the old ox a bundle of grass, and fed it for three days in a row. The old ox was full, and only then did he raise his head to tell him: he was a gray ox in the sky, and he was relegated to the sky for violating the rules of the heavens, and broke his leg, so he couldn't move it. Their own injuries need to be washed with the dew of a hundred flowers for a month in order to be good, Cowherd braved the hard work, carefully cared for the old cow for a month, during the day for the old cow to pick flowers to catch the dew to cure the injury, at night snuggled up next to the old age to sleep, to the old cow is well, the Cowherd drove the ten cows back to the home in high spirits.

After returning home, his sister-in-law was still not good to him, and several times he wanted to harm him, but the old cow managed to save him, and his sister-in-law finally got angry and drove the cowherd out of the house, and the cowherd only wanted the old cow to follow him.

One day, the heavenly Weaving Maiden and all the nymphs came down to play together, bathing in the river, the cowherd in the old cow's help to recognize the Weaving Maiden, the two mutual love, and then the Weaving Maiden will secretly down to earth, to do the cowherd's wife. The Weaving Maiden also distributed the heavenly silkworms brought from the sky, and taught everyone to raise silkworms, draw silk, and weave light and bright silk.

After the cowherd and the weaver got married, the man plowed and the woman weaved, and the love was so deep that they had a boy and a girl and two children, and the family lived happily ever after. But the good times did not last long, this soon let the emperor know, the Queen Mother herself came down to earth, forcibly brought the weaving girl back to heaven, the loving couple was broken up.

The cowherd had no way to get to heaven, but the old cow told the cowherd that after he died, he could use his skin to make shoes and wear them to heaven. Cowboy in accordance with the words of the old cow did, wearing shoes made of cowhide, pulling their own children, together with the clouds and fog to the sky to chase the weaving woman, see is about to catch up, I do not know that the Queen Mother pulled down the head of the golden hairpin a wave, a wave of the heavenly river appeared, Cowherd and the weaving woman was separated from both sides of the river, can only be relative to the weeping and tears. Their faithful love touched the magpies, millions of magpies flew, built a magpie bridge, so that the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden on the magpie bridge to meet, the Queen Mother can not help, but to allow the two in the seventh day of the seventh month of every year in the magpie bridge to meet.

Later, every seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, according to legend, the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden magpie bridge will be the day, the girls will come to the flowers under the moon and look up at the stars, looking for the Milky Way on both sides of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden star, hoping to see their annual meeting, begging God to let themselves like the Weaving Maiden as dexterous, and praying for their own can be as good as the heart of the marriage, which has formed the Tanabata Festival.

The most common custom of the Tanabata Festival

is the begging activities of women on the night of the seventh day of the seventh month.

Begging for coquettishness is mostly done by girls threading the needle to detect coquettishness, making some small objects to race coquettishness, and arranging some fruits and melons to beg for coquettishness, and the way of begging for coquettishness in each region is different, and each has its own interesting way.

In Shandong Jinan, Huimin, Gaoqing and other places in the begging activities are very simple, just display fruits and melons begging for coincidence, such as the joy of the spider webs in the fruits and melons on top of the begging means that beg for coincidence. And Jancheng, Cao County, plains and other places to eat coquettish rice begging custom is very interesting: seven good girl set food set vegetable dumplings, a coin, a needle and a jujube were wrapped into three dumplings, begging for coquettish activities, they get together to eat dumplings, the legend of eating to the money of the blessing to eat to the needle of the hands of the clever to eat the jujube of the early marriage.

In some places, the activities of the Beggar's Day, with the nature of the competition, similar to the ancient custom of fighting. In recent times, the threading of the needle, steaming coquettish paradox, branding coquettish fruit, but also some places have the custom of doing coquettish bud soup, generally on the first day of July will be sprouted in the water soaked grains, Tanabata day, cut buds to do the soup, the children of the place pay special attention to eating coquettish buds, as well as with the face sculpture, paper-cutting, colorful embroidery and other forms of decorations made of is the evolution of the custom of the fight coquettish. The shepherd children would pick wildflowers and hang them on the horns of the cows on the eve of the 7th day of the 7th month, which is called "He Niu's Birthday" (Legend has it that the eve of the 7th month of the 7th month is the birthday of the cows).

Zhucheng, Tengxian, Zouxian area of the rain on the eve of the seventh day of the seventh month called "Acacia rain" or "Acacia tears", because it is the Cowherd and Weaving Maiden meeting caused. Jiaodong, Southwest Lu and other places in the legend of the day magpies are very few, are to the sky to build a magpie bridge.

In today's Zhejiang still have similar begging customs. Such as Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou and other places, in this day with a variety of small things made of flour, fried in oil called "Qiaoguo", the evening in the courtyard display Qiaoguo, lotus seed, white lotus root, red rhombus and so on. The girl to the moon threading needle, in order to pray for the weaver can give the skill, or catch a spider, put in the box, the next day to open the box, such as has been knotted web is called to get the skill.

And in rural Shaoxing, this night there will be a lot of young girls secretly hiding in the growth of lush pumpkin shed, in the dead of night when you can hear the cowherd and the weaving maiden will meet the whisper, the girl to be married later will be able to get the millennium of undying love.

In order to express people's hope that the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden can live a good and happy family life every day, in the area of Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, on the seventh day of the seventh month, every family has to kill a chicken, which means that the night the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden will meet each other, and if there is no rooster to announce the dawn, they will be able to stay together forever.

In western Guangxi, legend has it that on the seventh day of the seventh month morning, the fairies want to come down to take a bath, drink their bath water can be to ward off evil spirits, cure diseases and prolong life. This water is called "double seven water", people in this day when the cock crows, scrambling to go to the river to get water, retrieved with a new urn, to be used later.

Guangzhou's Beggar's Nest is unique, before the festival, the girls are prepared in advance with colorful paper, grass, string, etc., compiled into a variety of small and clever artifacts, but also will be put into a small box of cereal seeds and mung beans soaked in water, so that the germination, to be sprouted to more than two inches long buds, when used to worship the gods, known as the "worship of the fairy harvest" and "worship of the divine vegetable". When the buds grow to more than two inches long, they are used to worship the gods, which is called "Worshiping the Immortal Harvest" and "Worshiping the Divine Vegetables. From the sixth night to the seventh night, two nights in a row, the girls put on new clothes, wear new jewelry, everything is arranged, then burning incense and candles, kneeling to the starry sky, known as the "welcome to the fairy", since the third to the fifth night, to worship seven times.

After worshipping the fairy, the girls hold the colorful line against the shadow of the lamp will be threaded through the needle holes, such as a breath of seven needle holes can be pierced called coquettish, known as coquettish, less than seven needle holes pierced called lose coquettish. After Tanabata, the girls will be made of small crafts, toys to each other, to show friendship.

In Fujian, on the Tanabata Festival, the Weaving Maiden is allowed to appreciate and taste the fruits and melons, in order to ask for her blessing for the next year's fruit harvest. Offerings include tea, wine, fresh fruits, five seeds (cinnamon, jujube, hazelnut, peanut, melon seeds), flowers and pollen for women's make-up as well as an upper incense burner. Usually after fasting and bathing, everyone takes turns to burn incense in front of the offering table and pray silently for their wishes. The women not only beg for coquettishness, but also for children, longevity, beauty and love. Afterwards, we eat fruit, drink tea and chat, while playing the begging game, begging game there are two kinds: one is "divination", that is, with the divining tool to ask yourself whether it is tricky or stupid; the other is the race tricky, that is, who threads a needle fast, who will be tricky, the slow one is called "losing tricky", "losing tricky", and "losing tricky". The other is a race, that is, who is fast in threading the needle, who will get the trick, slow called "lose the trick", "lose the trick" the person will be prepared in advance to give a small gift to the trick.

Some areas also organized "seven sisters will", each area of the "seven sisters will" gathered in the Zongxiang Hall set down a variety of brightly colored incense, remote sacrifice to the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden, "incense" are papier-maché. "The incense burners are all made of papier-maché and are filled with a wide array of flowers, fruits, rouge powder, small paper dresses, shoes, daily necessities and embroidery. The "Seven Sisters' Meetings" in different regions would work on the joss sticks and compete to see who could make the most exquisite joss sticks. Today, this kind of activity has been forgotten, and only a very small number of clansmen guilds still set up joss sticks to worship the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden on this festival. The incense is usually prepared on the seventh day of the seventh month, and the begging to the weaving maiden begins in the evening.

The most famous food for begging for coquettishness on the eve of the seventh month is coquettish fruit. Qiaojiao is also known as "begging for coincidence fruit", and has many styles. The main ingredients are oil, flour, sugar and honey. In Tokyo Dreaming Records, it is called "Laughing Aversion" and "Fruit and Food Patterns", and there are drawings such as "Pressing Fragrance" and "Fang Sheng". Song Dynasty, the market has been the Tanabata coquettish fruit for sale, coquettish fruit practice is: first sugar in a pot melted syrup, and then and into the flour, sesame, mix well and then spread on the case to defend the thin, cooled with a knife and cut into rectangles, and finally folded into the shuttle-shaped coquettish fruit embryo, into the oil deep-frying to the golden brown that is. The women with good hands will also make all kinds of patterns related to the Tanabata legend.

In addition, begging with a variety of changes in the melon: or melon carved into exotic flowers and birds, or in the surface of the melon skin embossed patterns; this melon is called "flower melon".

Until today, Tanabata is still a romantic traditional festival. But many customary activities have been weakened or disappeared, but the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden, a symbol of faithful love, has been passed down in folklore.

Poetry for the Tanabata Festival

One of the Nineteen Ancient Poems

(Han) Unknown

The star of Altair is a long way away, and the star of the river is a bright one.

Touching the delicate hand, the loom is in a state of flux.

All day long, I can't make a chapter, sobbing and weeping like rain.

The river is clear and shallow.

The water is full of water, and I can't say a word about it.

The Tanabata Festival

(Five Dynasties - Later Tang Dynasty) Yang Pu

What if I have not met the Altair, I must invite the Weaving Maiden to play with the golden shuttle.

Year after year, I begged the weaving maiden to make the golden shuttle, but I didn't realize that there were already too many coincidences on earth.

Seventh day of the seventh lunar month

(Tang) Quan Deyi

Today, the clouds are crossing the magpie bridge, but it should not be a long way from the pulse.

Family members are so happy to open their makeup mirrors and wear needles under the moon to worship the ninth night.

Seventh Night

(Tang) Xu Ning

A bridge of magpies crosses over, and a thousand jade pendants pass over.

There are still many years to go before we leave each other, and our disappointment is not as great as the star of the river drum.

Magpie Bridge Immortal

(Song) Qin Guan

The clouds are delicate, and the flying stars transmit hatred.

The first time we met in the golden wind and jade dew, it was better than countless other things on earth.

The love is like water, the good time is like a dream, bear to take care of the magpie bridge to return to the road!

If two lovers are in love for a long time, how can it be in the morning and in the evening?

Drunkenly answering Juntung on the eve of the seventh lunar month (Ming) Tang Xianzu

The jade hall of fame opens to the spring cui screen, and new words are sung in the Peony Pavilion.

No one will know the sadness of the song, so I'll pinch the sandalwood mark and teach the young actress.

The Tanabata Pavilion

(Qing Dynasty) Yao Xie

Mulan paddles in the lotus root flower township, and sings the hall red and cool in the evening air.

Smoke outside the willow willow water outside the lake, mountain eyebrow tantalizing blue moon eyebrow yellow.