七夕简介
The Double Seventh Festival, on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, is a traditional festival full of romance.It often goes into August in the Gregorian calendar.This festival is in mid-summer when the weather is warm and the gra and trees reveal their luxurious greens.At night when the sky is dotted with stars, and people can see the Milky Way spanning from the north to the south.The Weaving Girl（织女） and the Cowherd（牛郎） in heaven would meet at the Magpie Bridge Also called Begging-for-Dexterity Festival（乞巧节） （The Weaving Girl is a beautiful and smart fairy with deft hands and the women in the mortal world will beg for intelligence and deft needle work from her）
七夕起源
自然崇拜
\"The Double Seventh Festival\" originates from nature worship of the human race at the earliest.From the historical documents, at least 4000 years ago, with the development of people\'s understanding of astronomy and the textile technology, about Altair Vega records have recorded.After the production of the imperial examination system, test of the champion also called „ the victory over the scholar world‟.Scholar call The Double Seventh Festival into “Kuixing Festival\", also known as the \"Sun book festival\" .It keep the earliest terace of the Double Seventh Festival comes from people\'s worship of the stars.时间崇拜
Double-Seventh Day was also the product of time worship of the ancients——\"Seven\" and \"period\" is a homonym.The number \"七\" appears in both month and day giving a strong sense of time.与妻谐音
\"Double Seventh Day\" is also a phenomenon of number worship——\"七\" bears the same pronunciation with \"妻\" (wife), thus the Double Seventh Day is to a great extent a festival related to women.汉唐宋元七夕起源
Scholars have shown the Double Seventh Festival originated from the Han Dynasty.Historical documents from the Eastern Jin Dynasty mention the festival, while records from the Tang Dynasty depict the grand evening banquet of Emperor Taizong and his concubines.By the Song and Yuan dynasties, special articles for the \"Qi Xi\" were seen being sold on markets in the capital.The bustling markets demonstrated the significance of the festival.
牛郎织女的传说
The fairy tale of the Cowherd and the Weaving Girl is one of the four most famous folktales of ancient China.It is a claic love story between a fairy and a human being enjoying a widespread influence.
This story, to some extent, reflects Chinese people\'s wishes to pursue the freedom of love and marriage.Meanwhile, girls on the ground hope to have clever hands and good sense, just like the Weaving Girl.They also pray for a happy marriage of their own
The fairy tale also contains Chinese people\'s understanding about star images.On the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar every year, Chinese women customarily look up into the night sky, searching for the Weaving Girl Star and the Cowherd Star on both sides of the Milky Way and hoping to see their annual gathering.
七夕习俗
投针验巧
Ingenuity test by floating needle is one of the common customs on the festival.Put some water in a veel and leave it in the open air until it is covered by a film of dust.Then cast a needle or thin straw on it to see the pattern of the shadow at the bottom, so as to test their ingenuity 穿针乞巧
In order to plead for skills, threading a needle（穿针乞巧） is the most long-standing means.It tests the speed of threading a needle under the moon.It is said that the needles used in the contest are the seven-hole needle of the Han Dynasty or the nine-tail needle of the Yuan Dynasty.With more holes than ordinary needles, they are rather hard to handle.
喜蛛应巧
Pleading for skills with cobweb is another common custom in the festival, in which everybody puts a spider into a locket and waits until the next morning to see if there is cobweb and if any, how it looks.The one with a most round cobweb of the most mesh will be the winner.巧果
Qiaoguo（Fried Thin Pastes）is in different shapes with the materials mostly being oil, flour, sugar and honey.The deft hands will nip them into all shapes related to the legend of the Festival.The melons and fruits used on the day are usually carved into the shapes of flowers and birds, or carved with patterns in relief on the melon peel, which are therefore called “carved melons”
为牛庆生
The children picking wild flowers hanging on the horn in the Double Seventh Festival, also called the \" To Celebrate the Cow‟s Birthday\".
