Is March 3rd “Chinese Valentine’s Day”? How did March 3rd Valentine's Day come about?

Is March 3rd “Chinese Valentine’s Day”? How did March 3rd Valentine's Day come about?
The third day of the third lunar month is also known as the Shangsi Festival, which is also the so-called "Chinese Valentine's Day". So how did the March 3rd Valentine's Day come about? In March, all things come back to life, willows are green, flowers are red, orioles are singing and swallows are dancing, and the earth is full of vitality. The Fortune Teller website has compiled detailed information for you about the third month of the lunar calendar in 2018!

Is March 3rd “Chinese Valentine’s Day”?

The reason why "March 3rd" can become China's Valentine's Day is based on many foundations, including ancient legends, folk customs and official promotion. "March 3" was originally called Shangsi Festival, named after the first Si day in March. Since the date of Shangsi Festival in March is not fixed every year, but is always around March 3rd, since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Shangsi Festival has been uniformly set on March 3rd. According to the content of this festival, people also call "March 3rd" the March Festival, March Meeting, Valentine's Day, Engagement Day, Daughters' Day, Child-Seeking Festival, and Spring Festival Outing.
According to ancient legend, Shangsi Festival is the day when Fuxi and Nuwa had intercourse. To this day, in some places there is still the custom of worshiping Fuxi and Nuwa on March 3rd. This shows that the origin of Shangsi Festival was originally related to people worshiping gods and praying for the birth of offspring, so this day is also a day for people to have fun and for young men and women to interact and talk about love. From the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors to Yu and Tang, they all inherited the ancient system and continued the custom of Shangsi in March. Although the six marriage rituals were strictly stipulated in the Zhou Dynasty, the ritual content of the Shangsi Festival for men and women was still stipulated for the purpose of population growth. This was to conform to the time of the year, enable men and women of marriageable age to have a family, and promote harmonious social development. On this day every year, everyone from the emperor to the common people put on their newly made spring clothes and went out of the whole city to play and bathe by the rivers, pick orchids in the mountains and valleys, or feast and have fun in the countryside, believing that this would ward off bad luck.
Unmarried young men and women are the protagonists of the festival. They sing and dance, and freely look for or date lovers. This not only conforms to the natural seasons of climate and human physiological development, but is also beneficial to human reproduction, social harmony and civilization progress. This event was even formally recorded in "The Book of Zhou: The Official of the Land: The Matchmaker": "In the second month of spring, men and women are ordered to meet. At that time, elopement is not prohibited." The government gave the "March 3" Valentine's Day a legal status. Therefore, the later "March 3rd" not only has the elegant event of Wang Xizhi and more than 40 people gathering at Lanting on March 3rd in the ninth year of Yonghe in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (353), drinking and writing "Lanting Preface", "the best running script in the world"; it also has the ambiguous and erotic story in Du Fu's poem "The Beautiful Woman" "The weather is fresh on March 3rd, and there are many beauties on the banks of the Chang'an water"; and it also has Cui Hu's melancholy story of "the beautiful face and the peach blossoms complement each other" "last year on this day". From then on, "meeting men and women" became the core, basic and important content of the "March 3" festival.

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