What does it mean to eat chicken on Qixi Festival?

There is a Chinese Valentine's Day custom that some people don't know about. According to folk customs, there is a custom of eating chicken on Chinese Valentine's Day. So, do you know why people eat chicken on Chinese Valentine's Day? What's the point?

What does it mean to eat chicken on Qixi Festival?

In order to express people's wish that the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl can live a happy family life every day, a chicken is killed on July 7th, meaning that the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meet on this night, and if there is no rooster to announce the dawn, they will never be separated.

According to legend, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl can only meet on the Magpie Bridge on the Chinese Valentine's Day every year; and when the roosters crow at the dawn, they have to separate. In ancient times, people sympathized with the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, so it was popular to slaughter chickens on the Qixi Festival to pray that lovers would never be separated. Therefore, eating chicken has become a traditional custom in many places during the Chinese Valentine's Day.

The custom of knocking down the rooster on the Qixi Festival

The Queen Mother of the West stipulated that the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl could only meet once a year, and all the birds in the world would fly to the sky to form a Que Bridge for the two of them. Since sparrows were the most numerous among all birds, the bridge was named Que Bridge. Those birds that cannot fly into the sky will be transformed into chickens and remain birds for the rest of their lives, never able to fly into the sky. Legend has it that it was the Queen Mother of the West who decreed that the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl must separate as soon as the cock crows at dawn.

Therefore, there is a custom of buttoning roosters in Chengyang on Chinese Valentine's Day. In the past, when the Chinese Valentine's Day came, some families in Chengyang would take their big roosters out of the chicken coop and put them in the house in a basket. People believed that the roosters would be scared of being in a strange place and would naturally stop crowing, so the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl could stay together longer.