Qixi Festival is not and has never been the Chinese Valentine's Day.

When I arrived in China in 1991, on that day precisely, I was told the wonderful legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver maid, and that in the old days, Chinese girls spent the day sitting under vine plants sewing and praying they might become as skillful as the Weaver maid.

It was also said that on that night, the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, people would stay outside admiring the stars, a fan in hand, and only a few would have a chance to see the Weaver girl in a diaphanous white dress crossing the Celestial river on a bridge made by a flock of magpies. If those lucky ones kneeled down their wish would come true within three years.

I found this legend, which goes 2,000 years back, very moving, and started to spend the night under the stars on that day every year.

Some years later, the Western Valentine's Day entered China, and the Chinese asked me what the meaning was. Timidly, young men started to offer a rose to their girlfriends on Feb 14, and later, it became the day for proposal.

It's only at the beginning of this century that Qixi was transformed into the Chinese Valentine's Day.

Chinese children now have never heard about Qixi, but they know what Valentine's Day is. It's a good idea to revive Chinese culture before it disappears completely, but that should not mean falsifying it. The Qixi festival has been celebrated for centuries. Aren't Chinese proud enough of their own culture to propagate it instead of burying it under imported elements, in the name of business opportunities?

LISA CARDUCCI, via e-mail

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