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A girl kisses her boy friend behind a
heart-shaped flower ring in a park in Jilin, Northeast China's Jilin
Province August 10, 2005. China is marking the Qixi festival dubbed the
Chinese Valentine's Day Thursday.
The festival has its origin from a romantic tragedy. As the story goes,
once there was a cowherd, Niulang, who lived with his elder brother and
sister-in-law. But she disliked and abused him, and the boy was forced to
leave home with only an old cow for company. The cow, however, was a
former god who had violated imperial rules and was sent to earth in bovine
form.
One day the cow led Niulang to a lake where fairies took a bath on
earth. Among them was Zhinu, the most beautiful fairy and a skilled
seamstress.
The two fell in love at first sight and were soon married. They had a
son and daughter and their happy life was held up as an example for
hundreds of years in China.
Yet in the eyes of the Jade Emperor, the Supreme Deity in Taoism,
marriage between a mortal and fairy was strictly forbidden. He sent the
empress to fetch Zhinu.
Niulang grew desperate when he discovered Zhinu had been taken back to
heaven. Driven by Niulang's misery, the cow told him to turn its hide into
a pair of shoes after it died.
The magic shoes whisked Niulang, who carried his two children in
baskets strung from a shoulder pole, off on a chase after the empress.
The pursuit enraged the empress, who took her hairpin and slashed it
across the sky creating the Milky Way which separated husband from wife.
But all was not lost as magpies, moved by their love and devotion,
formed a bridge across the Milky Way to reunite the family.
Even the Jade Emperor was touched, and allowed Niulang and Zhinu to
meet once a year on the seventh night of the seventh month.
This is how Qixi came to be. The festival can be traced back to the Han
Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). | 
