Star-Crossing Lovers

Once upon a time, the king of heaven had a daughter, the Weaver Girl who weaves the colorful clouds at sunset. One night she was bathing in the river with her sisters and the mischievious Herdboy stole all their clothes. The Weaver Girl, being the youngest, is the one who has to go look for them. Tip-toeing down the river-bank in the dead of night, she comes upon the Herdboy. As the legend primly states, he saw her naked and so they had to marry. Fair enough, but I think the scene plays best if she's a lusty lass just waiting for someone to steal her clothes--if you know what I mean.

After getting together with the Herdboy, however, she is so wrapped up in bliss that unfortunately begins to neglect her dissertation--er, I mean, cloud-weaving. The king and queen of heaven gets annoyed about this. Also there's the problem of him being a lowly mortal while she's a princess in heaven. Hard words are exchanged. There may have been some maternal hairpin violence leading to the creation of the Milky Way (a.k.a. Heavenly River). Or maybe it was the river they bathed in in the first place. In any event, when the dust settled the Herdboy and Weaver girl had both been transformed into stars and exiled to opposite sides of the Heavenly River. She is the star we call Vega, and he is Altair.

She does her weaving. He takes care of the kids. . They only get to meet once a year, when all the magpies in the world fly up to to heaven and make a bridge for them. This happens on the seventh day of the seventh month by the lunar calendar, known as Chinese Valentine's day. That's why magpies get pretty baldy-looking around that time, because it's rough on them to be used as a bridge (don't believe any silly stuff about moulting).

This entire tale is a terrific cliche in Chinese culture, but then so is being separated from the one you love for months at a time. In fact, they call it "the Herdboy and Weaver Girl lifestyle" 牛郎織女的生活, which is far more colorful than "batching it,"* as far as I'm concerned.

Well, tomorrow we embark upon the Herdboy and Weaver Girl lifestyle. I will point out that this tale of "star-crossing lovers" is less tragic (well, he gets to be an immortal too, doesn't he?) and expresses what I think of as a typical Chinese sentiment, that with patience even happiness might be attainable. Right? At least we get to see each other more than once a year--a mere four months until we meet again. And we have this magpie blog to span the great water.


* And for those of you who might not know this inelegant bit of American slang, here are some amusing links for context: humble / fantastical / cranky-informative (maybe I misspelled it)!