HERD BOY AND WEAVING MAID FESTIVAL / QIXIJIE / CH’I HOU CHIEH

29th August 2025

Chinese

This Double Seven festival perpetuates an ancient Chinese (and Japanese) folk tale of two stars, one on either side of the Heavenly River (the Milky Way). They are held to have been a herd boy and a heavenly weaving maid who had married but were then separated by a river (formed by the use of a magic hairpin) when the maid was summoned to return to heaven. The lovers are allowed a reunion once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, when a flock of magpies forms a bridge across the Heavenly River. But if it rains on that day, the river overflows and sweeps away the bridge, so preventing their meeting for a whole year. Women traditionally pray for clear skies on the night of the seventh day of the month.

There are several, varied versions of the story, most of them telling how the poor young farmer who looked after his herd of cows was taken to a lake where several women were bathing. He was told to steal the red clothing of the one who served a royal majesty by skilfully weaving clothes. The others fled but the weaver was promised the return of her clothes if she would marry the herd boy. After several happy years together she was forced to return to her heavenly home to continue her weaving, whereas he was trapped on the wrong side of the waters.

These legends portray and seek to explain several of the groupings of stars in the Milky Way, relating them to the various levels humans occupy in the social order and illustrating that the path to love is not always smooth.