Today I learned that Chinese Valentines is also a day for Ingenuity-Begging Festival, since young girls ask for skills that will help them maintain the home.  Since Zhi Nu, the main character in the Chinese Valentine legend, was pretty much the ultimate weaver, young girls asked for blessings of skills on this special night  (she just weaved clouds, if you weren't ingenious to be able to do that, I don't know what is.)

So here is a picture I saw on http://www.cultural-china.com/ (thank you for letting me borrow the picture:-) about a nice depiction of the festival. 

In the picture you can see young girls learning to knit and sew.  The older ladies teach the young ones, and of course, like any festival, there is a lot of food to help the celebration along.  I'm guessing those are dumplings in the picture.

Chinese Valentines is also called the Seventh of the Seventh, meaning it's the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.  So in our time, that will be on August 16 this 2010.

Happy Valentines!

Labels: chinese valentines