Qixi Festival: More than Chinese Valentine's Day

Falling on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the Qixi Festival, also widely known as Double Seventh Festival, takes place on August 10 this year.The traditional festival which was added to China’s National Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2006, has a lineage of over 2,000 years.

However, not many people know that it originated as a festival for young ladies and the “real” Valentine’s Day in ancient China was actually celebrated on the 15th day of the first lunar month – best known as the Lantern Festival.

The Qixi Festival was initially to highlight people’s worship of nature and women’s domestic skills. Only later did it become associated with romance thanks to a popular folktale of an ill-fated love between a cowherd and a weaving maid.

Editor：Lotus