Vega - July 15th, 1997.

Romeo and Juliet? Guinevere and Lancelot? Honestly, even Shrek and Fiona?

Forbidden romance always captures the hearts and minds of the people. Love deemed unsightly or unnatural by powerful natural forces often develops into folklore legends and famous tales of romance. 

We see this in the tale of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. Probably China’s most famous love story, it’s the inspiration behind the Qixi Festival (Chinese Valentine’s Day), which is celebrated as Tanabata in Japan and Chilseok in Korea. 

Qixi is celebrated on the 7th day of the 7th lunisolar month (NOT the lunar calendar, in the same way that Chinese New Year is NOT Lunar New Year). The tale is derived from a famous Song Dynasty poem and also from celestial phenomena. 

^ A picture of the Chinese lunisolar calendar (I might make a post explicitly on this calendar)

Maybe you’ve heard of the Summer Triangle, a phenomena in which three stars (Vega, Altair and Deneb) glow especially bright during the summer and form a beautiful triangle in the night sky. Qixi/ The Cowherd and Weaver Girl came about from the appearance of Vega and Altair as well as the Milky Way. Many Chinese legends are born of creating romantic/whimsical stories out of natural phenomena, such as the sun and the moon (Chang’e and Hou Yi, coming soon- stay tuned).

You can see in this picture that the Milky Way is in-between Altair and Vega!

The Weaver Girl is Vega, and the Cowherd is Altair. Every year in the summer these stars glow brighter, and seem to “outshine” the Milky Way- ancient Chinese people wrote poems about a possible legend behind why this is the case.

This is also the mythological explanation behind why there is a Milky Way in the sky- it appears like a river of stars, and ancient people obviously didn’t know what a galaxy was, so they interpreted it as a literal silver river of stars in the sky. (This is why the Milky Way Galaxy is called the Silver River Galaxy in Chinese today). 

Doesn't this look a little like a river, seperating two lovers?

The story goes like this: The Weaver Girl, either a granddaughter of the Jade Emperor or a seamstress (thus, weaver girl) immortal in the Heavenly Court, is bathing in a spring with several other ladies of the Court. A human cowherd, wandering the lands with his cow, sees her and is entranced by her beauty. The two fall in love and marry (with some versions of the story involving the cowherd stealing the weaver girl’s silk clothes, which symbolise her profession as a weaver in heaven and thus making her human). 

Fun fact: heavenly seamstresses/weaver girls aren’t normal seamstresses/weaver girls. They don’t make actual silk clothes- they make silk clothes out of the clouds and the stars. Perhaps this is just a metaphor for how beautiful the heavenly officials’ clothes are, but this is also sometimes attributed as the reason behind nebulas and constellations, as well as the light-scattering effect around bright stars which sometimes looks like clouds up in outer space- it’s these stars’ fancy silk robes!

See that brownish-green light-scattering effect?

Modern interpretations dismiss the “steal her silk clothes” part of the myth as made-up because it’s distasteful and implies a certain lack of consent. The Cowherd and Weaver Girl are the epitome of a loving couple- their tale should not involve a hint of unwillingness.

As such, we can ignore the “steal her clothes” part- it’s not the most popular interpretation of the tale anyway, I just thought I should mention it to emphasize that the two of them are very much in love- there is no forcing. 

There are other versions of the tale: sometimes, the weaver girl is entranced by the cowherd singing/playing music and the two begin a clandestine romance, and sometimes they meet while simply taking a walk. Regardless- the origin of their romance isn’t as important as the nature of it.

As with many other stories (see Erlang Shen’s backstory), an immortal and a human mortal marrying is very strictly against the rules of the Heavenly Court. The Jade Emperor banishes the weaver girl and the cowherd to opposing sides of the galaxy.

Either he sends officials to capture the weaver girl back to the Court, or he imprisons them in the sky very far away from each other. Either way- they don’t get to see each other anymore.

The cowherd’s cow (which is somehow magical now: either the weaver girl infused some of her powers into it, or some other gods took pity on the young couple and made the cow magical) tells the cowherd that its skin can be made as a tool to fly to see the weaver girl.

The cowherd sheds tears for his friend the cow, who has been with him all this time, but the cow reassures him that it’s just another animal, and that his love is important. Thus, the cowherd sadly kills the cow and uses its skin to try to see the weaver girl.

Wow. Talk about dedication. The details about this part of the tale (whether the cow actually dies, whether the cow was magical at all, whether the cowherd even flew up, whether it was the weaver girl who came to see him and not the other way around) are very iffy, so before you go blaming the cowherd for being an asshole to his friend the cow, just remember that it’s not necessarily the original tale, just one version of it.

Essentially, the cowherd and weaver girl wish to meet, so they try to sneak across the sky to see each other, but the Queen Mother of the West (a high-ranking deity in the Court) draws the Silver River (the Chinese name for the Milky Way) across the sky in order to separate them.

Being unable to cross the river, the two are sadly separated. In some interpretations it’s the Jade Emperor himself who draws the Silver River, in some interpretations it’s the weaver girl’s mother- either way, that’s how the Milky Way was created.

Source: Lin Lin

Vega and Altair are on opposite sides of the Milky Way, just as the cowherd and weaver girl are trapped on opposite sides of the Silver River. 

I'm sorry if you're getting tired of the Vega-Altair pics, but you can see where this myth came from, yeah?

However, their romance moves the hearts of many earthly and heavenly creatures. Once every year, when the Queen Mother of the West/the Jade Emperor aren’t looking, millions of magpies fly up to the sky and use their bodies to form a bridge across the Silver River (across the Milky Way) in order to allow the cowherd and weaver girl to meet for just one day.

This is the explanation behind the Summer Triangle- every summer, the two stars shine especially bright. (The triangle that Vega and Altair form with Deneb isn’t important, just the fact that these two stars are able to “meet”).

This day is the 7th day of the 7th lunisolar month, and is the day of Qixi. As I’ve mentioned, Qixi is Chinese Valentine’s Day, the day that couples celebrate by making grand romantic gestures to prove their love is as everlasting as the cowherd and weaver girls’.

Young girls also tend to pray to the weaver girl (to the star Vega) on this day to wish for a love like hers. I didn’t do this as a kid since I was a bit of a little shit and thought that was stupid, but a lot of my friends did! 

If we do take the cow dying and the clothes-stealing parts literally, the story becomes much less attractive and romantic to us modern people (the same way that Romeo and Juliet becomes much less romantic when you find out that Juliet is 13 and Romeo is around 18). These unsavoury aspects of the tale are also gaining more and more attention among young people.

However, we must remember this was written thousands of years ago when the idea of stealing someone’s clothes wasn’t really seen as problematic the way it is today. Ignoring the less-appealing parts of the tale to appeal to the spirit of the romance is not a problem considering that the cowherd and the weaver girl aren’t real.

Also, poor cow. 

Regardless. Their story is basically seen as the epitome of romance. Before Shakespeare came up with the term star-crossed lovers, they were the original star-crossed lovers, LITERALLY crossing stars to see each other. If your boyfriend/girlfriend is Chinese, consider doing something sweet for them on Qixi (August 19 this year, from what Google says). 

The summer triangle is a famous asterism in the northern hemisphere made up of 3 brightest stars from 3 constellations:

Vega (0.03) -a bright blueish star from Lyra the lyre. 26 LY away. (I can really see the light blue from my binoculars!)

Altair (0.77) - the 12th brightest star in the night sky from Aquila the eagle. 16.8 LY away

Deneb (1.25) - from Cygnus the swan. It is dimmest of the 3 even though it is a blue-white supergiant because it is 1500 LY away.

These 3 stars are so bright you can easily spot them in urban skies. From 4N, it can be seen as early as June after midnight rising above the eastern horizon as seen in this picture here, lying on its side. It can be seen all the way till early October. The first constellation that I always see will definitely be Cygnus as its 5 main stars makes up another asterism called the Northern Cross. Then followed by Aquila and lastly Lyra. I'd like to think the lyre's body as a parallelogram. Other than Vega, its other stars are quite dim and with the light pollution I see it clearly with my pair of cheap binoculars.

You can use the summer triangle to find north too!

Starting from Altair -> Deneb-> Vega-> Polaris. The pathway forms a "lightning bolt" pointing to the north star.