When is Tanabata?
On a clear summer and autumn night, the sky is full of stars, and a huge white galaxy runs across the north and south. On the east and west banks of the river, there is a shining star across the river, that is, Altair and Vega.
It is a folk custom to sit and watch morning glory and weaver girl on Tanabata. According to legend, this night every year is the time when the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd meet at the Magpie Bridge. The Weaver Girl is a beautiful, clever and clever fairy. On this night, ordinary women prayed to her for wisdom and skillful skills, and they also prayed to her for a happy marriage. Therefore, the seventh day of July is also called Begging Festival.
It is said that on Tanabata night, you can look up and see the Milky Way where the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meet, and you can also eavesdrop on the love story when they meet in the sky under the melon and fruit shelf.
On this romantic night, facing the bright moon in the sky, the girls put the fruits and vegetables of the season in the sky, begging the goddess in the sky to give them intelligent hearts and dexterous hands, so that they can master their needlework skills, and even beg for the combination of love and marriage. In the past, marriage was a lifelong event for women to decide whether they were happy or not. Therefore, on this quiet night, countless sentient men and women in the world will pray for a happy marriage under the stars.
Qixi Qiqiao originated in the Han Dynasty. Ge Hong's Miscellaneous Notes on Xijing in the Eastern Jin Dynasty records that "women in the Han Dynasty often wear seven-hole needles on July 7 in the building, and everyone wears them", which is the earliest record of begging for cleverness in ancient literature we have seen. In later Tang and Song poems, women's begging for cleverness was repeatedly mentioned. In the Tang Dynasty, Wang Jian wrote a poem "The stars are bright and the pearls are bright, and Gong E is busy begging for cleverness". According to "The Legacy of Kaiyuan Tianbao", every time Emperor Taizong and his concubines held a banquet in the Qing Palace on Tanabata, the ladies-in-waiting begged with their own ingenuity. This custom is also enduring among the people and passed down from generation to generation.
During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Qiaqiao was quite grand, and there was also a market in Beijing that monopolized Qiaqiao goods, which was called Qiaqiao City by the world. Song He's series "Talking about Drunken Weng" said: "Tanabata, the property is a gimmick. From July 1 ST, horses and chariots were swallowed, and three days before Chinese Valentine's Day, horses and chariots were not allowed to pass, and they stopped driving again and again until the night. " Here, we can infer the lively scene of the Jocci Festival from the grand occasion of buying Qiao Qi goods from Qiao Qi. People have been putting up flattering articles since the first day of July, and people are coming and going in the flattering market. By the time of Tanabata, the market of Qiqiao was already crowded with people, as if it were the biggest festival-Spring Festival, which showed that Qiqiao Festival was one of the favorite festivals of the ancients.