Qixi Festival: Finding Love in Modern China
Valentine's Day is a time to celebrate love and lavish your significant other with extravagant gifts or overpriced flowers. But in China, it’s not all roses.
Friday is Qixi festival, also known as Chinese Valentine’s Day. The festival’s origins date back 2,600 years to a Han Dynasty legend about two lovers—Zhinu and Niulang, also known as the weaver girl and the cowherd—who fall in love but are only permitted to meet once a year: on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month on the Chinese calendar.
Traditionally in ancient China, women celebrated Qixi by worshiping celestials, taking part in rituals and burning paper items as offerings. But, in the modern age, the occasion is heavily marketed toward single, middle-class urban millennials who often have—in the eyes of their parents—fallen behind on the
