Qixi Tribute

The Qixi Festival (Qiqiao Festival) is an annual event on 7th day of the 7th lunar month in the Chinese calendar, celebrating the love story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. Because the Weaver girl is the youngest sister of seven fairies, she is also known as "the Seventh Sister". Young girls in China are accustomed to worship the Seventh Sister while praying for their true love. Every year, not only young girls but also boys, the elderly and children are fond of taking part in the Qixi festival. In order to show their worship to the Weaver Girl, almost every family holds a ceremony. Firstly, the family prepares tributes like melon, apples and some desserts. Young girls like to make some handicrafts of their own to show their eagerness to the Weaver Girl. Then the family places a table in the front yard under the sky aiming to show their great respect to the goddess. At the same time, the whole family shares the food and blessing together. Apart from worshiping the Weaver Girl, people are fond of showing their respect to the other six goddesses, so worshiping the Seven Goddesses has become a regular custom.

One of the famous customs is "the Seven Goddesses Worship", which dates back to the Five Dynasties period (AD. 907–960) in China. It is always held on the night of 6th day of the 7th lunar month in the Chinese calendar. Wangniudun has a custom of making Qixi tribute, worshiping the Seven Goddesses. This activity was once discontinued during the Cultural Revolution (1967–1977), and resumed in the early years of Chinese Economic Reform (December, 1978–). A group of villagers organized the Qixi tribute during the Qixi Festival. Gradually, more and more villagers took part in the activity. They worked together with folk artists, assuring the forms of Qixi tribute with some crops grown locally, a river region in Dongguan. From then on, celebration of the Qixi festival, as well as Qixi tribute, has been a prosperous social activity in Wangniudun, Dongguan and even in Southern China.

Local craftsmen in Wangniudun are skillful at creating their tributes. Their materials are accessible and environmentally-friendly. For instance, they use waste like foamed plastic, bamboo sticks, woolen yarn, parget and so on. They also use some kinds of crops as the main materials, such as cereal straw, garlic husk and so on. Craftsmen practiced in making chrysanthemums with rice, making lotus flowers with garlic husks, making wintersweet flowers with pistachio shells, making cherry blossoms with red melon seed and making lamps with eggshells. Craftsmen creatively add plastic beads, plastic sheets, colorful paper, colorful cloth and so on as materials, aiming to make exquisite Qixi tributes to help people to show their great worship to the Seven Goddesses.^[1]

Sculpture, embroidery, drawing and hand-making are the main forms of Qixi tribute.

The following tools are used to make Qixi tributes: scissors, plane, drawknife, ruler, chisel, brush, mallet, nails, abrasive paper.^[2]

The theme of the Qixi Tribute is always relative to fairy tales and rural customs. As soon as the theme is decided, the characters, scene and story are designed.^[3]

The materials are collected from daily life, such as some types of waste and crops. In modern times, objects such as chromatic lamps may be used in the tribute. This makes the Qixi tribute an emblem of tradition and modernization.^[3]

The whole table of tributes is handmade, taking the form of sculpture, embroidery, drawing and some other crafts. In order to produce a table of Qixi tribute, dozens of craftsmen have to spend several months working hard on it together.^[3]

Qixi tributes usually can be divided into five parts, and each part is endowed with different blessing.

The first part is preparing tea, white spirits and some vegetarian food (茶酒齋飯). These are necessities in every Chinese worship ceremony, such as Spring Festival, Qingming Festival and Mid-autumn Festival. During Qixi Festival, this preparation is on behalf of the invitation to the seven goddesses to share it.^[4]

The second part is the dragon dance and lion dance (龍獅賀節).^[4] Craftsmen usually model dragon, phoenix, lion, qilin and other Chinese mascots in exquisite size. These mascots are not stiff but are vivid, expressing the scene of dragon dance and lion dance. The dances also play an important role in Chinese festival celebration and are helpful to create a joyous atmosphere.

The third part is produce and harvests (五穀豐登).^[4] Craftsmen are accustomed to display an abundant harvest of rice, red beans, green beans, corns, peanuts and other grains, which symbolize hope for a wealthy year. Meanwhile, craftsmen display seven flowers, seven fruits, seven pairs of embroidered shoes, seven sets of desks and chairs and seven garments in hand for seven goddesses. This implies the sharing mortal happiness with gods.

The fourth part is the annual meeting of the cowherd and the weaver girl (the Seventh Sister) across the Milky Way (鵲橋相會).^[4] It represents the touching scene of the loving couple, showing the beautiful happiness and expectation to the immortal love.

The fifth part is burning incense and worshiping (拜祭香燭). With a table of well-prepared tributes, people hold the ceremony in front of the table at eleven o’clock on the night of 6th day of the 7th lunar month. It marks the start of Qixi Festival.

There are three different production scales of Qixi tribute: family group, union of seven families, and collective cooperation.^[1]

The first one is family group.^[1] Every family make some exquisite tributes on their own, and set a traditional big square table (八仙桌, usually dines eight persons) to place the tributes on it. According to family group, the scale is small so that the tribute is simple but varied.

The second is a union of seven families.^[1] They have to set more than one big square table to worship the Seven Goddesses. Due to the large production scale, the tribute's forms are varied and its amount is large, which can present colorful, abundant details about the love story and mortal's lives.

The third is collective cooperation, which is the largest production scale.^[1] The village head calls villagers together to buy a piglet. And every family takes turns to feed the piglet for several days. In the past, when the pig became bigger near the Qixi Festival, the villagers would sell the pig out to earn some money to fund the making of Qixi tributes. But nowadays, instead of being sold, the pig is killed on the eve of the Qixi Festival as an offering to the Seven Goddesses. After the ceremony, the pork will be distributed to every family in the village. A craftsman Huang Wenzheng (黃文正) said that nothing is more valuable than sharing the happiness together.^[5] Being the largest scale of Qixi tributes, collective cooperation makes people work together, which is beneficial to creating colorful, creative and abundant tributes.