July 7th, Valentine's day

Tomorrow, Aug 11 2005, the 7th day of the 7th month in the Chinese lunar calendar, is the Chinese Valentine's Day or Girl's Day.

Once upon a time, there is a poor cow boy living on a farm. Though this cow boy is poor, but he is hard-working, warm-hearted and always ready to help others. One day he met a beautiful girl, and they fell in love with each other at the first sight. Soon they got married and lived happy lives since then. But what the cow boy did not know was that his wife was a maid of the Queen of the Sky Palace (who we called in Chinese "Wang Mu Nian Nian"). And the Queen was very angry when she found out about this. So she took the girl back to the Sky Palace. When the cow boy found his wife was gone, he ran after them and tried to get his wife back.

As he got closer and closer to the Queen and his wife, the Queen cast a spell and made The Milky Way Galaxy between them so that the cow boy couldn't get closer any more. Even though they were separated by the Galaxy, they still loved each other very much. Finally, the Queen was moved by their love, so she allowed them to meet each other on the night of 7/7 every year. On that day, thousands of magpies (in Chinese, magpie is the lucky bird) flew to the sky. A pie-bridge accross the Galaxy was made for them.

And 7/7 is called

in Chinese.
First one is seven, the second one means night (pronunciation: /shee/)