Legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl
01 · Historical Records
The legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl originated in the pre-Qin period and is one of the most widely current and influential of Chinese folk legends, being named together with the Meng Jiangnü, the Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai and the White Snake legends as the four great folk legends.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl first appears in the Book of Songs, Minor Odes, Great East, as an artistic imagining of the two stars Shang and Shen, the Cowherd star and the Weaver Girl star, separated by the Milky Way in the vault of heaven. This poetic image was gradually personified by later generations and given humanistic symbolic meaning, turning into the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. In basic content and ideological tendency the legend displays the social structure of men ploughing and women weaving under China's agricultural civilisation and the conditions of unfree marriage under the feudal patriarchal system. The love tragedy of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl won the wide sympathy of the people, which became the motive force of the legend's spread and multiplication and also promoted the formation of the Double Seventh custom of seeking skill. People often identify the protagonist of the legend with a real person near them and the place of the events with their own locality, so that many related historical relics have appeared, such as temples, caves and Cowherd villages; Xi'an in Shaanxi, Yiyuan in Shandong and Heshun in Shanxi all have sites related to the legend. After taking root at Heshun the legend interpenetrated with the local farming seasons, marriage customs and the Double Seventh custom, forming a narrative-singing tradition with a Taihang mountain regional colour. The story current in the Heshun area has a complete plot and vivid characters and is attached to actual place names such as the Southern Heavenly Pool and the Cowherd Valley, giving the legend the double character of oral literature and local scenery legend.
The Southern Heavenly Pool
A place name and relic in Heshun connected with the Cowherd and Weaver Girl legend.
The Cowherd Valley
A place name and relic in Heshun connected with the Cowherd and Weaver Girl legend.
The Double Seventh Custom of Seeking Skill
The Double Seventh custom whose formation was promoted by the Cowherd and Weaver Girl legend.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Heshun county lies at the western foot of the Taihang mountains and is said to be one of the main areas of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl legend; within its bounds are place names and relics related to the legend, such as the Southern Heavenly Pool and the Cowherd Valley. The locality combines the legend with the Double Seventh custom of seeking skill and temple fairs and other customs, forming a fairly complete space for the legend's transmission.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl · Legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
For a thousand years this beautiful legend has been handed down from generation to generation, exerting an important influence on folk ethics and the cultural psychology of the masses. In the course of modernisation the spread of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl legend has gradually shown a declining tendency, and protection must urgently be strengthened so that this treasure of national culture may continue to be transmitted.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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