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The Seven Sisters Festival

falls on the seventh day of the seventh Chinese lunar month and has a deep meaning for unmarried women.

It celebrates the day when the legendary Heavenly Weaver meets her lover, a cowherd, by crossing a bridge of birds spanning the Milky Way. Single girls pray for good husbands, placing their best pieces of weaving and sewing on the family altar, along with seven pieces of fruit, vegetables, and sweets. They hope to communicate with the Seven Sisters or with the Weaver herself.

The 7th day of seventh moon of Chinese lunar year. On this day we celebrate the Seven Sisters Festival, which is the most romantic day among all Chinese festivals: the Chinese answer to St. Valentine"s Day.

Disappointingly, the introduction depicted by our tourism board is too brief and missed one essential part, which happens to be one of the sweetest part of the story. For the legend also has it that on this very day, if you look up to the sky, you can see the couple have their yearly meeting in the middle of the "Bridge of Magpies." You see, even the magpies in heaven are moved by the endless love of this couple so that they decided to form a floating bridge linking the Milky Way (as you can see from the paper art, the couple are stepping on the magpies to meet each other).

Food wise, today we stew all the wild magpies we can ever find and eat them in celebration.

Ha, just kidding (I love dark humor!). That would be of capital cruelty and would have killed all the charm you resonated with the story above-mentioned, right? Seriously, the saying that we Chinese eat every movable creature is sometimes a legend itself. The truth is that people in the northern part of China eat "巧果," or "fruits of fortuitous" in English, which is a general term for various kinds of sweet dumplings.

Another enchanting tale of this festival is that for any girl who can listen the conversation of our weaver maid and cowherder in detail, in the thick of a pumpkin farm, her Prince Charming will be on her doorstep very soon -- Gee, eavesdropping to the pillow talks of celebrities -- who says paparazzi was invented by the Italian? Of course, for one reason or another, it is rather hard nowadays to locate a pumpkin farm in the concrete jungles we"re living in. The alternative is to go to the supermarket and stick your ear to a pumpkin on sale. It may look stupid, but, hey, there is a price for true love, right?

Hong Kong"s girls and young lovers have the Seven Sisters Festival all to themselves.

The festival has its origin in Chinese folklore dating back more than 1,500 years. The legend, features a weaver maid (with six older sisters), who led a lonely life working at her loom throughout the year. Her father, the Heavenly Emperor, felt sorry for her and allowed her to marry a cowherder from across the Milky Way. After the wedding, she neglected her weaving duties and the Emperor ordered her to return home and visit her husband only once a year - on the seventh day of the seventh moon.

The celebrations centre on religious rites and feature needlework competitions. As part of the worship, young women make offerings to the night sky and the two stars that represent the cowherder and the maid. They usually present fruit and burn joss sticks and incense in the open air, chiefly on rooftops, in backyards and gardens or at Lovers" Stone on Bowen Road in Wan Chai.