Qixi on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month recalls the star-crossed Cowherd and Weaver Girl, once a night for needle skills and now a Chinese Valentine's Day.
Lunar date
7th day of the 7th month
Usual dates
Aug 1–29
Date and Origins
Qixi (七夕), 'the evening of sevens', falls on the seventh night of the seventh lunar month. Its story is written in the summer sky: the Weaver Girl star (Vega, in Lyra) and the Cowherd star (Altair, in Aquila) shine on opposite banks of the Milky Way. Their names already appear in the Book of Songs, and a Han-dynasty poem describes the two stars gazing at each other across the river of heaven.
In the folk legend, the Weaver Girl, a daughter of heaven skilled at weaving clouds, married a mortal cowherd. The Queen Mother of the West separated them with the Milky Way, allowing them to meet only once a year, on Qixi, upon a bridge formed by magpies. Versions differ across regions, but the magpie bridge reunion is the festival's lasting image.
Customs
Qixi was long called the Begging for Skills Festival. Han-dynasty records mention women threading needles that night, and the custom peaked in the Tang and Song. Women raced to pass coloured thread through seven-eyed needles by moonlight; others put a spider in a small box and judged their skill by the web it spun overnight. In the Ming and Qing, women floated a needle on sun-warmed water and read the shape of its shadow.
Qixi is also regarded as the birthday of Kuixing, god of examinations, and students in Fujian and Taiwan traditionally pray to him for success.
Festive Foods
The classic food is qiaoguo, 'skill fruit', small fried pastries of flour, sugar and sesame pressed into decorative shapes, still made in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Fujian. When honouring Qiniangma in Taiwan, families offer sesame-oil chicken, glutinous oil rice and tangyuan with a dent pressed in the middle, said in folk belief to catch the Weaver Girl's tears. Rouge, powder, mirrors and combs are offered too; afterwards half the cosmetics are tossed onto the roof for the goddesses and half kept.
Regional Differences
In Taiwan the day is the birthday of Qiniangma, the Seven Ladies who protect children. Tainan keeps a coming-of-age rite for sixteen-year-olds, who pass beneath a paper Qiniangma pavilion with their parents; it is traced to Qing-era dock workers whose children earned full adult wages at sixteen. In Guangdong and Hong Kong the festival is the Seven Sisters' Birthday, when women once displayed handicrafts and stored 'Qixi water' drawn at midnight, believed never to spoil; some Hong Kong villages still worship the Seven Sisters. In mainland China it has been promoted as Chinese Valentine's Day, complete with flowers and dinner dates.
Japan's Tanabata is mostly held on 7 July, with wishes written on paper strips tied to bamboo; Sendai's famous festival follows the old calendar and takes place in August. In Korea, Chilseok rain is said to be the lovers' tears, and Vietnam calls the drizzly rain of the seventh month mưa ngâu after the same couple.
Trivia
Because Qixi falls in the seventh lunar month, known in Taiwan as Ghost Month, some couples avoid getting engaged or married then even while celebrating the day itself. Children are told that hiding beneath a grape trellis on Qixi night lets you overhear the lovers whispering.
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