Qixi Festival Chinese Valentine’s Day

Qixi Festival Chinese Valentine’s Day, Significant others across China have been scrambling to scoop up flowers, candy, and other gifts to give to their sweethearts for the Qixi Festival tomorrow, otherwise known as “Chinese Valentine’s Day”, and marketing campaigns centered around the holiday reflect the ongoing debate about whether it is losing too many of is “Chinese” characteristics.

Companies are making sure to remind consumers at every chance that they best not forget to make a romantic gesture on August 13. “Have you planned anything romantic with her yet?” automaker Jaguar queries its followers on microblogging platform Sina Weibo for its Qixi marketing campaign. If that blunt question doesn’t sound high-pressure enough, the brand then goes on to note that “Jaguar” sounds like “marry me” in Chinese, or jia gei wo (嫁给我), and provides advice on how men can use their own Jaguar to facilitate a special night to pop the question. Users who respond with their own schemes are entered to win a free dinner.

When composing their campaigns, marketers like Jaguar are unwittingly taking sides in a debate raging in China right now about the question of whether or not this holiday is becoming too “Westernized” and losing its sense of Chinese tradition. Jaguar is one of many companies opting to focus more on the “romantic” aspects of the holiday as opposed to the traditional Chinese characteristics.

Qixi (七夕) traditionally takes place annually on the seventh night of the seventh moon of the Chinese lunar calendar, a date when, according to mythology, two lovers separated by a river in heaven are allowed to reunite for one night out of the year. The holiday is sometimes called the “magpie festival”, because, according to the legend, the lovers are able to reunite when all of the world’s magpies show their sympathy by coming together to form a bridge across the river.

Now heavily commercialized, many marketers treat the day like a second Valentine’s Day, a Western holiday that has also been successfully adopted in China. Many Western brands offer gift recommendations for anxiety-ridden husbands and boyfriends: Godiva utilizes typical Valentine’s Day imagery such as hearts and cupid arrows to package and market its chocolates, YSL is advertising its perfumes as “elixirs of love”, Coach has been advertising its jewelry, and Gucci recommends its red luggage, because as the company says in its Qixi Festival ad, there are “two main urges in life”: love and travel.

Many critics, however, are not happy with the fact that the day is losing its sense of Chinese tradition. At a recent forum in Guangzhou featuring Chinese culture experts, the head of China’s cultural heritage protection committee, Wu Bing, said that the traditional elements of Qixi are becoming severely disparaged as young people ignore its Chinese roots. He argued that they are using the “excuse of keeping up with the times” to “tamper” with the traditional story of the lovers and the magpie bridge, “turning Qixi into Chinese Valentine’s Day.” Another expert said that the original intent of Qixi had nothing to do with love in the first place, but was rather focused on “friendship, mutual happiness, and prayer for good fortune.” These arguments reflect an ongoing debate in China over the benefits and drawbacks of trying to be more “Western” versus Chinese, and “modern” versus “traditional.”

Many marketers have indeed used elements from the traditional Chinese mythology in their marketing. Hong Kong jewelry company Chow Tai Fook, for example, creatively melded modern and traditional concepts in its advertising campaign for Weibo fans to “send their friends over the bridge of magpies.” The “magpies” in this case are the characters from the wildly popular smartphone game Angry Birds, and the mini-site for the campaign features a “bridge” of the Angry Birds. Users are encouraged to fix up two of their single friends in a Weibo message using the friends’ handles, and the “matches” appear on the Chow Tai Fook website, with a counter at the bottom to denote when the matches reach an auspicious number made up of all 7s. Participants are entered in a drawing to win-what else?-a gold Angry Birds necklace.

Qixi Festival (Night Of Sevens)

Qixi Festival (Night Of Sevens), Qixi Festival, also known as the Qiqiao Festival (Chinese: 乞巧節), is a Chinese festival that celebrates the annual meeting of the cowherd and weaver girl in Chinese mythology. It falls on the seventh day of the 7th lunar month. It is sometimes called the Double Seventh Festival, the Chinese Valentine’s Day, or the Magpie Festival. This is an important festival, especially for young girls.

The festival originated from the romantic legend of two lovers, Zhinü and Niulang, who were the weaver maid and the cowherd. The tale of The Weaver Girl and the Cowherd has been celebrated in the Qixi Festival since the Han Dynasty. The earliest-known reference to this famous myth dates back to over 2600 years ago, which was told in a poem from the Classic of Poetry. The festival inspired Tanabata in Japan and Chilseok in Korea.

The general tale is about a love story between Zhinu (the weaver girl, symbolizing Vega) and Niulang (the cowherd, symbolizing Altair). Their love was not allowed, thus they were banished to opposite sides of the Silver River (symbolizing the Milky Way). Once a year, on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, a flock of magpies would form a bridge to reunite the lovers for one day. There are many variations of the story. A variation follows:

A young cowherd, hence Niulang (Chinese: 牛郎; literally “cowherd”), came across a beautiful girl–Zhinü (simplified Chinese: 织女; traditional Chinese: 織女; literally “weavergirl”), the seventh daughter of the Goddess, who had just escaped from boring heaven to look for fun. Zhinü soon fell in love with Niulang, and they got married without the knowledge of the Goddess. Zhinü proved to be a wonderful wife, and Niulang to be a good husband. They lived happily and had two children. But the Goddess of Heaven (or in some versions, Zhinü’s mother) found out that Zhinü, a fairy girl, had married a mere mortal. The Goddess was furious and ordered Zhinü to return to heaven. (Alternatively, the Goddess forced the fairy back to her former duty of weaving colorful clouds, a task she neglected while living on earth with a mortal.) On Earth, Niulang was very upset that his wife had disappeared. Suddenly, his ox began to talk, telling him that if he killed it and put on its hide, he would be able to go up to Heaven to find his wife. Crying bitterly, he killed the ox, put on the skin, and carried his two beloved children off to Heaven to find Zhinü. The Goddess discovered this and was very angry. Taking out her hairpin, the Goddess scratched a wide river in the sky to separate the two lovers forever, thus forming the Milky Way between Altair and Vega. Zhinü must sit forever on one side of the river, sadly weaving on her loom, while Niulang watches her from afar while taking care of their two children (his flanking stars β and γ Aquilae or by their Chinese names Hè Gu 1 and Hè Gu 3). But once a year all the magpies in the world would take pity on them and fly up into heaven to form a bridge (鹊桥, “the bridge of magpies”, Que Qiao) over the star Deneb in the Cygnus constellation so the lovers may be together for a single night, which is the seventh night of the seventh moon.