What are the customs of the Qixi Festival? This is how the ancients celebrated the Qixi Festival.

What are the customs of the Chinese Valentine’s Day? The seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar every year is the traditional festival Chinese Valentine's Day, also known as the Double Seventh Festival, the Qiqiao Festival, the Girls' Day, etc. Do you know what customs and activities are held on the Chinese Valentine’s Day? Next, let’s take a look at how the ancients celebrated the Qixi Festival.

What are the customs of the Qixi Festival?

Peach Branch

Breaking peach branches is one of the customs of the Chinese Valentine's Day. Peach branches can dispel evil spirits, detoxify insects, and relieve abdominal pain. Used for shampooing to remove dirt and grease.

Rubbing Hibiscus

On the Chinese Valentine's Day, most women would crush hibiscus leaves in water, filter out the hibiscus leaf juice and use it for washing their hair, which is commonly known as "kanshutiao". It is said that washing your hair with hibiscus sticks can keep your hair shiny for a long time without any harm, and its dirt-removing function is much better than soap and other cleaning products.

Washing and grooming utensils

The proverb goes, "On June 6th, books and seals are published; on June 6th, clothes are checked." In Jiading of Jiangsu, Huzhou of Zhejiang, Dexing of Jiangxi and other places, women mostly wash their hair and combs on this day.

Nail painting

During the Chinese Valentine's Day, women would pound the juice of the angelica flower and dye the tip of their ring finger nail, which they called red nail. According to legend, if the red nails are kept until the New Year's Day of the following year, the old people will see them and their blurred vision will be cured.

Happy Birthday to the Ox

July 7 is the day when the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meet. To celebrate, this day is called the Cow's Birthday. On July 7th, shepherd boys pick wild flowers and stick them on the horns of cows, which is called celebrating the cow's birthday to express their sympathy for the cowherd.

Tangram puzzle

Tangram, also known as the wisdom board, is a square thin board cut into seven pieces of different sizes, which can be arbitrarily pieced together to form various shapes such as characters, fonts, etc., to stimulate children's intelligence.

Threading a needle

In the customs of the Chinese Valentine's Day, the needle is a special festival prop that ancient girls must know how to use and is essential for doing "women's work", that is, needlework. On the night of July 7, if one can successfully thread the needle, it is considered "lucky". The "loser" has to give the gift he prepared in advance to the lucky one.

Seeding for a child

Just use a cardboard or wooden board and put an inch of soil on it, and plant mung beans and adzuki beans on the first day of July. When it grows buds of an inch in size, they are tied into a bundle with red and blue silk ropes. This is called a "seed pot", also known as a "five-pot pot" or a "flower pot". There were also wax baby dolls that women would buy and place them in water and soil to float them home, believing that this would bring good luck in having a child, a practice called "transformation."