The customs for the Double Ninth Festival and the Qixi Festival
2 min readThe ninth day of the ninth lunar month is the Double Ninth Festival.
It occurs in the middle of autumn and peasants use the day to celebrate the harvest with varied activities：
a.Viewing chrysanthemums on the day is a delight.Chrysanthemums are flowers that smell sweet and blossom in spite of cold，frosty weather.At flower shows，thousands of chrysanthemums are on display.People appreciate them，poets write odes about them and artists paint them.
b.Drinking chrysanthemum wine is another custom.It is said that the wine is good for one’s eyes and helps bring blood pressure down.
c.People also climb mountains or go boating.
What is the Qixi Festival（the Double Seventh Night Festival）？
The seventh lunar month in China falls in hot summer.In the evening of that day，people would look up at the starry sky and tell fairy tales.One of these tales says that at this very night every year，a Cowherd and a Weaving Maid will walk across a bridge spanned by magpies over the Heavenly River（the Milky River）.It is said that the Weaving Maid is the seventh daughter of the Queen Mother.
She works at her shuttle in Heaven，while the Cowherd herds cows in the human world.Once the Weaving Maid came down from Heaven and by chance met the Cowherd.They two fell in love，got married and settled down in the countryside.When the Queen Mother found this out，she brought her daughter back to Heaven，separating the pair with expanse of the Milky River.
However，the true love between the Cowherd and Weaving Maid moved a kind-hearted phoenix who called on all the magpies in the universe to form a bridge across the river for the couple to cross and reunite on the evening of theseventh day of the seventh month.This story represents the wishes of people for a happier life.
