Chinese Version
11-09-2020, Monday

My grandpa is over 90 years old and he lives in China. I was very impressed when my mother told me that my grandpa wrote a story about Chinese Valentine. Here is my translation of my grandpa’s story:

The heavenly palace forbade the female weaver (ZhiNiu) in heaven from marrying the cowherd on earth (NiuLang)

The soldiers and general of heaven came to take the weaver back to heaven to be a prisoner.

The Heavenly Queen Mother used her golden hairpin to draw a silver river in the sky,

To keep the two halves of the couple far away from each other.

Luckily the holy birds made a bridge across the silver river in the sky on the seventh day of the seventh month in the Lunar calendar.

This allows ZhiNiu and NiuLang to meet on the bird bridge once a year with their two children.

In Chinese folktales, the ZhiNiu (ZhiNiu: the heaven cloth weave girl) constellation is a big star surround by four little stars in a diamond shape on one side of the Milky Way (the silver river). The NiuLang constellation is a big star with two little stars.

No matter how much the media currently praises this story, in my opinion, the Chinese Valentine’s Day remains a sad story.

Little Episodes

1. Background of “Grandpa’s Story about Chinese Valentine”
My 90 years old father likes to write and publish his articles on his own WeChat official account：“桑逢乐”.

My daughter knows that writing articles is a great hobby of her Grandpa. Every time we talk about her Grandpa, she will ask me: “What has grandpa written recently?”

I always tell her about the recent articles written by my father.

Before the Lunar calendar Double Seventh Festival, which is also called Chinese Valentine’s Day(July 7th), my father wrote a story about Chinese Valentine’s Day.

After heard about this story, my daughter commented, “The story about Chinese Valentine’s Day written by grandpa is very interesting. Can you translate that story into English?”

After I translated the story into awkward English, my daughter tuned it and asked me to show the English verion to my father, “Could you please show the translated story to Grandpa? Hope this will make him happy.”

2. The Chinese Valentine’s Day story my father published on his weChat

3. A typical picture of “NiuLang ZhiNiu”