Qixi Festival Book Showing Festival

The Qixi Festival, also known as the Qiqiao Festival or the Daughter's Day, is a day when girls pray to the Weaver Girl for dexterity and a happy life.

During the Han Dynasty, palace maids often competed in threading seven-hole needles in the Kaijinlou on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. As more people imitated them, it became a custom. During the Song Dynasty, the capital even had a Qiqiao Market, selling items specifically for the Qiqiao Festival. It was much like today's shopping streets and was bustling.

The Qixi Festival, which became a Chinese Valentine's Day, stems from the well-known romantic love story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.

The Qixi Festival also has the simpler name of the Book Drying Festival. Taoism believes that the star Kuixing, the star in charge of literary fortune, was born on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, and scholars also worshipped it on this day. Of course, the ancients also had another important purpose for drying books: to protect them from moisture and insects.