By SAM
Qi Xi Festival – Celebrating Love on the Night of Sevens
Forgot to celebrate Valentine’s Day? If you are a tourist in China there is always the Qi Xi Festival- the Chinese equivalent. The festival which falls on the seventh day of the seventh month according to the traditional Chinese lunar calendar is also known as the Night of Sevens.
According to Chinese folklore the 2010 Qi Xi Festival celebrates the tale of two lovers that were tragically separated. A young shepherd Niulang sees seven beautiful fairy sisters bathing and decides to steal their clothes. While attempting to retrieve the clothes one fairy incidentally also the most beautiful – Zhinü falls in love with Niulang and they decide to get married. However The Goddess of Heaven becomes infuriated that a fairy had married a mere mortal and orders the fairy to return to heaven. Desperate to be reunited with his wife, Niulang kills his ox and puts on its hide and flies to heaven. Further infuriated by the persistence of the shepherd the goddess separates the two lovers by forming the Milky Way.
However, once a year on the Night of Sevens magpies in an attempt to reunite the lovers soar up into to heaven and fly across the Milky Way. In celebrating this timeless tale of disgruntled lovers, women across China demonstrate their domestic skills such as melon carving and wish that they too find a lover as faithful as Niulang.
Among the other traditions of the Qi Xi Festival is to make offerings of fruit, flowers and face powder to Niulang and Zhinu. Half of the powder is sprinkled on the roof of the house while the rest is divided among the women of the household; it is thought that the women will acquire Zhinu’s beauty through this ritual. For travelers staying at Beijing hotel such as the Raffles Beijing Hotel, China these rituals can easily be observed in the city.
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A luxury hotel Beijing will also usually reenact these age-old traditions for the benefit of their foreign guests. Pushpitha Wijesinghe is an experienced independent freelance writer. He specializes in providing a wide variety of content and articles related to the travel hospitality industry. |
Tags: 2010 qixi
] (340?-278 b.c.), the chief poet in the Songs of Chu, was a member of the ruling house, a stateman and diplomat. In his youth, he has a brilliant official career and was made a court minister and at one time the Chu envoy to Chi (in Shantung), a great neiboring state. But Chu Yuan’s comet-like success incurred the jealousy of his fellow ministers, who slandered and intrigued against him. In consequence Chu Yuan lost the king’s favor and was dismissed from office. There were several ups and downs in his career – for after each banishment he was recalled to court, only to be again rebuffed and disgraced. In the meantime, his country was in danger. Failing to heed Chu Yuan’s advice, the king of Chu foolishly went to a conference with the king of Chin (in Shensi), the most powerful military state in that period; he was held there by the Chin army and died in captivity. His son, the new king, instead of avenging his father’s death, made a humiliating peace with his enemy. This, however, did not deter Chin’s aggressive designs against Chu, and Chu Yuan, who had started his exile as a result of his political failure, lived long enough to see the capital of his state plundered and ruined by the conquering army of Chin in 278 b.c. At that time, Chu Yuan was already an old man of over sixty, and the fall of the Chu capital was the last blow to his patriotic hope. He does not seem to have long survived his diaster, for the next we hear of him is that he had drowned himself in the river Mi-lo.
