Chinese Valentines’ Day, also known as Double Sevens Festival or Qixi Festival， falls on the seventh day of the seven lunar month. Qixi – literally the “night of sevens” – is the nearest Chinese equivalent to the Western St Valentine’s Day tradition. This year the festival takes place on August 26th and already bookings for romantic getaways are going off the scale.
The origin of Qixi Festival is about a story.
In late summer, the stars Altair and Vega are high in the night sky, and the Chinese tell the following love story, of which there are many variations:
Continue reading “Chinese Valentines’ Day”
There are two Chinese classic stories telling about star-crossed lovers.
The Both stories tell of star-crossed lovers. In “The White Serpent”, a young man falls in love with a beautiful girl and marries her but, unbeknown to him, she hides a dark secret – she is actually a huge white serpent disguised by a magic spell. The two lovers are then split asunder when a local monk betrays her secret.
“The Butterfly Lovers” has often been compared to the tale of Romeo and Juliet, except with a considerably greater degree of cross-dressing. Here a young woman disguises herself as a boy in order to secure an education. She spends three years sharing a room with a male classmate who never guesses her secret. She, however, falls in love with him.
When the truth is finally out, the two decide to marry, but their happiness is short-lived. The girl’s father insists she marry another and the young man dies of a broken heart. The two are ultimately united when the girl visits her dead lover’s tomb on her wedding day and the couple are transformed into a pair of butterflies.
Continue reading “chinese classical love stories–star-crossed lovers”
