What is the origin of the Qixi Festival? What are the legends about it?

What is the origin of the Qixi Festival? What are the legends about it?
Introduction: There are many traditional festivals in China's traditional culture, and many of them have legends behind them. So what is the origin of the Qixi Festival and what legends are there about it? The Fortune Teller website has carefully compiled detailed information about the seventh month of the lunar calendar in 2018. If you want to know about the lunar calendar content for the seventh month of 2018, please come to Mr. Shui Mo!

What is the origin of the Qixi Festival? What are the legends about it?

The Origin and Legend of Qixi Festival
The Qixi Festival, a festival for begging for cleverness, originated in the Han Dynasty. In the Western Capital Miscellaneous Records by Ge Hong of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, there is a record that "beautiful women of the Han Dynasty used to thread seven-hole needles in the open-collared tower on July 7th, and everyone was accustomed to it." This is the earliest record of begging for cleverness that we have seen in ancient documents. In later Tang and Song Dynasty poetry, women's begging for skills were repeatedly mentioned. Wang Jian of the Tang Dynasty wrote a poem saying "The dim stars are adorned with pearly light, and the palace maids are busy begging for skills on the Qixi Festival." According to "Kaiyuan Tianbao Yishi", Emperor Taizong of Tang and his concubines held banquets in the Qing Palace on the Qixi Festival every year, and the palace maids each begged for skills. This custom has been popular among the people and passed down from generation to generation.
During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the Qixi Festival was quite grand, and there was even a market in the capital city that sold items for the Qixi Festival, which was known as the Qixi Market. Song Dynasty Luoye and Jin Yingzhi compiled "Zuiweng Tanlu" said: "On the Qixi Festival, people buy and sell Qiqiao items in front of Pan Tower. From July 1st, the carriages and horses are congested, and three days before the Qixi Festival, the carriages and horses are blocked and cannot pass. The traffic is blocked and people cannot get out until nightfall." Here, from the grand occasion of buying Qiqiao items in the Qixi Market, we can infer the lively scene of the Qixi Festival at that time. People start preparing for the Qiqiao Festival from the first day of July. The Qiqiao Market is bustling with people and vehicles. When it is close to the Chinese Valentine's Day, the Qiqiao Market becomes a sea of ​​people, with vehicles and horses having difficulty passing through. The atmosphere and customs seem to be no less than the grandest festival - the Spring Festival, which shows that the Qiqiao Festival was one of the favorite festivals of the ancients.
Legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl
The Chinese Valentine's Day has always been connected with the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, which is a very beautiful love story that has been passed down through the ages and has become one of the four major folk love legends in my country.
According to legend, a long time ago, there was a smart man living in Niujiazhuang, west of Nanyang City. The honest young man lost his parents early and had to live with his brother and sister-in-law. His sister-in-law, Ma, was cruel and often abused him and forced him to do a lot of work. One autumn, his sister-in-law forced him to herd cattle. She gave him nine cows, but told him to wait until he had ten cows before he could go home. The cowherd had no choice but to drive the cattle out of the village.
The cowherd drove the cows into the mountains alone. On the mountain with deep grass and dense forests, he sat under a tree and felt sad. He didn't know when he could drive the ten cows back home. At this time, an old man with white hair and beard appeared in front of him and asked him why he was sad. After learning about his experience, he smiled and said to him: "Don't be sad. There is an old sick cow in Funiu Mountain. You go and feed it well. When the old cow recovers, you can drive it back home.
The cowherd climbed over mountains and walked a long way before he finally found the sick old cow. Seeing that the old cow was very ill, he fetched bundles of grass for the old cow and fed it for three days. When the old cow was full, it raised its head and told him that it was originally the gray cow immortal in the sky, but was demoted from heaven for violating the rules of heaven, broke its leg, and could not move. The cowherd's wound needed to be washed with dew from hundreds of flowers for a month to heal. The cowherd was not afraid of the hard work and took good care of the old cow for a month. During the day, he picked flowers and collected dew to heal the old cow's wound, and at night he snuggled up to the old cow to sleep. After the old cow recovered, the cowherd happily drove the ten cows back home.
After returning home, his sister-in-law was still mean to him and tried to harm him several times, but the old cow managed to save her every time. Finally, his sister-in-law became angry and drove Cowherd out of the house. Cowherd only wanted the old cow to stay with him.
One day, the Weaver Girl from the sky and other fairies came down to earth to play and bathe in the river. With the help of the old cow, the Cowherd met the Weaver Girl, and they fell in love with each other. Later, the Weaver Girl secretly came down to earth and became the Cowherd's wife. The Weaver Girl also distributed the silkworms she brought from heaven to everyone and taught everyone how to raise silkworms, reel in silk, and weave shiny and bright silk.
After Cowherd and Weaver Girl got married, the man farmed and the woman wove, and they were deeply in love. They had two children, a boy and a girl, and the family lived a happy life. But the good times did not last long. The Emperor of Heaven soon learned about this, and the Queen Mother came down to earth in person and forcibly took the Weaver Girl back to heaven, and the loving couple was separated.
There was no way for the cowherd to go to heaven, but the old cow told him that after it died, he could make shoes with its skin and wear them to go to heaven. The cowherd did as the old cow said. He put on cowhide shoes, took his children, and flew up to the sky on a cloud to chase the Weaver Girl. Just when they were about to catch up, the Queen Mother of the West pulled out the golden hairpin on her head and waved it. A turbulent river appeared in the sky. The cowherd and the Weaver Girl were separated on both sides of the river and could only cry to each other. Their loyal love moved magpies, and millions of magpies flew over and built a magpie bridge for the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl to meet on the magpie bridge. The Queen Mother was helpless and had to allow the two to meet on the magpie bridge on July 7th every year.
Later, every year on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the day when the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meet on the Magpie Bridge, the girls would come out under the moon and look up at the starry sky, looking for the Altair and the Weaver Girl on both sides of the Milky Way, hoping to see their annual meeting, begging God to make them as dexterous as the Weaver Girl, and praying for a happy and satisfying marriage. This is how the Chinese Valentine's Day was formed.

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