Niulang- Chinese FigureMortal"The Cowherd"

The Ox's Advice

Niulang was an orphan raised by a cruel elder brother who eventually drove him from the family home with nothing but an old ox. But the ox was no ordinary animal. It was an immortal being in disguise, and it recognized Niulang's pure heart. The ox told him that celestial maidens would descend to bathe in a pool nearby, and instructed him to hide the robe of the one called Zhinu, the Weaver Girl. Without her feathered garment, she could not return to heaven.

Niulang did as the ox advised. Zhinu, stranded in the mortal world, found in Niulang not a captor but a companion. They married, farmed the land together, and raised two children. For a time, the cowherd and the weaver goddess built a life that bridged the distance between heaven and earth.

The Silver River

Zhinu was a daughter of the Jade Emperor, and her absence from the celestial loom did not go unnoticed. When the heavenly court discovered her unauthorized marriage to a mortal, soldiers were dispatched to bring her back. Niulang pursued them into the sky, his two children slung in baskets on either end of a carrying pole, chasing the wife he was losing. But the Queen Mother of the West drew a line across the heavens with her hairpin, and the line became the Silver River, the Milky Way, and Niulang could go no further.

Moved by the couple's grief and the cries of their children, the celestial powers granted them one meeting each year. On the seventh night of the seventh month, all the magpies in the world fly up to form a bridge across the Silver River, and Niulang and Zhinu embrace once more. The night is celebrated as Qixi Festival. Niulang is the star Altair, Zhinu is Vega, and on clear summer nights the two stars shine on opposite sides of the Milky Way: close enough to see each other, too far to touch, waiting for the magpies.