Double Seventh Day - China's Valentine's Day

[Greg.D.]

An ongoing topic -- click here for Most Recent Post

 

https://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/double-seventh-festival.htm

 

The Double Seventh Festival (Qixi Festival) is one of Chinese traditional festivals, and also known as a Chinese Valentine's Day. It's based on a romantic legend about a weaver girl and an ox herd.

It falls on the 7th day of the 7th Chinese lunar month. In 2017 that's August 28 (Monday). There is no public holiday.

Ignore at your own risk

[Randy W]

I should probably try to consolidate or at least link together some old posts on this

Chinese Valentine’s Day traditionally falls on February, but few know it
(This was from a Global Times article earlier this year)

Qixi ( Chinese Valentine's Day) and Fireflies

A "special gift" from Jon Bon Jovi

Qi Qiao Jie - a poll

Qi Qiao Jie

Edited August 28, 2017 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

That would be TOMORROW.

Quote

It falls on the 7th day of the 7th Chinese lunar month. In 2017 that's August 28 (Monday). There is no public holiday.

Qixi Day - 七夕节

or

Qi Qiao Jie - 乞巧节

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[wawster]

Whew! Thanks for the heads up! I have just enough time to get a lil sumfin for my lovely Rose on the way home tonight!

[Randy W]

The reunion of the couple of The Weaver Girl and the Cowherd on the bridge of magpies. Artwork in the Long Corridor of the Summer Palace in Beijing.

 

Quote

The Qixi Festival, also known as the Qiqiao Festival, is a Chinese festival celebrating the annual meeting of the cowherd and weaver girl in mythology. It falls on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month on the Chinese calendar. Wikipedia

 

Date: August 17, 2018

Also called: Queqiao Festival

Related to: Tanabata (in Japan), Chilseok (in Korea)

 

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

[Randy W]

in the Shekou Daily -

 

 

Guide to QiXi - What It Is and How to Celebrate It Tonight

 

Friday, August 17 is Qixi (七夕), the seventh day of the seventh month in the Chinese lunar calendar, commonly known as Chinese Valentine's Day. Where legend has it a pair of star-crossed lovers are reunited for one night only.

http://shekoudaily.com/custom/domain_1/image_files/ckeditor/sitemgr_WeChat%20Image_20180816150024.jpg

The basic tale of this now traditional festival is of the forbidden romance between a weaver girl, Zhinü (织女), and a cowherd, Niulang (牛郎).

 

[Randy W]

from the People's Daily on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesDaily/videos/381924749008628/

People's Daily, China

1 hr ·

Quote

777 drones put on an amazing light show in celebration of Qixi Festival, or Chinese Valentine’s Day, at Orange Isle in Xiang River, Changsha, Hunan Province

Edited January 31, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

from SCMP on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/355665009819/posts/10157427135179820/

Aug. 7, 2019

Edited January 31, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

. . . and, this year, from China Daily on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/191347651290/posts/10158774515056291/

Quote

On the eve of the Chinese Valentine's Day, 15 couples in Dongying, Shandong province, celebrated their Golden Anniversary, by taking photos, sharing wedding cakes and their love stories. #Qixi

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

also from China Daily on Facebook

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10158774607531291&id=191347651290

Quote

On the eve of the Double Seventh Festival, also known as Chinese Valentine's Day, bouquet and fresh flowers are sold like hotcakes in Handan, Hebei province. #Qixi

Edited January 31, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

from The China Trips - the romantic tale behind

 

The Double Seventh Festival

 

 

Zhinv chased over Niulang for her clothes but ended up falling in love with this young man. They married secretly and had two children together. Xiwangmu, also known as the Queen Mother of the West and the Goddess of Heaven is Zhinv’s mother, and she is not a fan of this love. She was furious when she found out about this relationship.

The Goddess of Heaven sent her celestial soldiers to bring her precious daughter back. The Goddess forced Zhinv back to her former duty of weaving colorful clouds, her task that had been neglected while living with Niulang.

 

[Randy W]

from the Sixth Tone

Modern ‘Ai’: Passion, Patriotism, and China’s Politics of Love

In honor of Qixi Festival, Chinese Valentine’s Day, Sixth Tone is publishing the first in a three-part series on the politics — and politicization — of love in modern China.

Left: Lin Shu’s portrait; Right: A copy of “Stories of Heroic Sons and Daughters” by Qing dynasty novelist Wen Kang, published during the Republic of China period. From Kongfz.com

 

Quote

Ai didn’t always mean “love,” at least not as it’s currently understood. According to the Han dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) dictionary “Shuowen Jiezi,” ai was synonymous with hui, meaning generosity, clemency, or kindness. This interpretation is backed up by the even earlier “Analects.” When asked the meaning of “benevolence,” Confucius is reported to have said, “It is to love (ai) all men.”

In China’s case, I find that focusing on love — ai — as a public discourse, or more precisely, a political discourse, can help illuminate the country’s modern history. At almost every stage, various manifestations of ai have exerted a radicalizing pull on contemporary China, even as the term itself was successively appropriated by predominant political actors and ideologies for their own ends. By understanding this history, we can learn much, not just about China as an emerging world power, but also about how ordinary Chinese understood and responded to the upheavals of the past hundred years.

. . .

What Confucius’ ai didn’t refer to, however, were interpersonal relations such as romantic love.
 

Instead, like many other modern colloquialisms that emerged alongside China’s forced opening to the world in the mid-19th century, ai as an expression of affection and sentiment grew out of the process of encountering and seeking to translate Western, primarily Christian, philosophies and texts. Nineteenth-century missionaries to China adopted ai to render the word “love” as it appeared in scripture, such as in the line, “For God so loved the world.”

 

This process wasn’t always smooth. Whereas American missionary Sidney Gulick could rhapsodize that love “was the sweetest word in the English language,” to most Chinese audiences it would have sounded like a Confucian injunction.

 

Yet ai would come to be valued within a broader, secular context, too. Lin Shu, a famous literary figure in the late Qing (1644-1912) and early Republican periods, was the first to coin the more personal aiqing, or “sentimental love.” Breaking with Confucianism, Lin saw public displays of emotion as a marker of aesthetic sensibility and moral superiority. His appalled fellow townspeople, meanwhile, derided him as a wild scholar.

 

. . .

 

This leads us to a new concept — aiguo, or “love of country” — and another genre of literature popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Heroic Sons and Daughters. Writers of Heroic Sons and Daughters literature associated heroism with serving the nation as a citizen. And in so doing, they subsumed love within the encompassing narrative of nationalism.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)