The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl

A pale band of light, like a haze of dew, stretches across the sky on summer nights, from one horizon to the other. On either side of it, two stars shine far brighter than the stars around them, standing a great distance apart. Every year they stay in exactly the same place. They look at each other quietly across a whole stretch of sky, never able to step any closer.

An old Chinese legend says that the pale band across the sky is the Milky Way. One of the two stars is Niulang, a young man who herded buffalo. The other is Zhinu, a fairy who wove cloth. Once they shared a happy stretch of life together on earth, before that river of stars appeared and parted them.

Niulang lost his parents when he was small. He lived alone in a poor thatched hut. Every day he went out to plow the fields, and every evening he came home to an empty house. One day, passing through a thin wood, he came upon an old buffalo lying by the roadside. Its coat was ragged, and its breathing was so faint that it seemed close to death. Niulang could not bring himself to walk away. He led the buffalo home. Every day he cut tender grass for it and cooked thin rice porridge. On cold nights he packed dry straw around it to keep it warm. Before long, the old buffalo grew strong again. Its eyes brightened, and it walked as steadily as a young buffalo just grown.

That buffalo, as it turned out, was no ordinary buffalo. It was a heavenly being that had come down to earth in the shape of a buffalo. Moved by the care Niulang had given it for so many days, the old buffalo decided to repay him. It led him to meet Zhinu, the fairy weaver from Heaven. She often sat at her loom, weaving lengths of cloud silk that shimmered with color. They were so lovely that anyone who saw them stood still in wonder.

Niulang was honest and hardworking. Zhinu was gentle and skillful. They met and talked, and before either of them knew it, they had grown fond of each other. Zhinu willingly left the splendid court of Heaven to live with Niulang in the world below, and they became husband and wife. Each day Niulang plowed the fields while Zhinu wove at home. The clack of her loom mingled with the faraway knock of the buffalo's wooden bell out in the rice field. They had two children, a boy and a girl.

But a fairy of Heaven married to a mortal man could not stay hidden forever. Word of Zhinu at last reached the Jade Emperor. In the old folk belief, the Jade Emperor is the ruler of Heaven. By the rule of Heaven, a fairy could not stay on earth and live an ordinary human life forever, so Zhinu had to return to the court of Heaven. It was not because anyone was angry or blamed Niulang. It was only because the rule of Heaven had been set since ancient times, and nothing could shake it.

After Zhinu left, Niulang stayed behind with the two little children. Every day he carried them out into the yard and gazed up at the high sky, missing his wife. Then one day, with the old buffalo's help, Niulang carried the two children up into the sky to find his wife. But just as he was about to reach Zhinu, the Empress of Heaven made a vast river of stars appear between them. From then on, they could see each other only as two faraway stars. However long they called, their voices could not carry across. However far they walked, they came no closer.

Seeing that their longing for each other held steady through so many moons, the Empress of Heaven softened too. She allowed Niulang and Zhinu to meet once every year, on the night of the seventh day of the seventh month.

On that night, from every corner of the human world, the crows gather and fly up into the sky. They perch wing to wing and form a long bridge across the river of stars. Zhinu walks over the crow bridge to find her husband again. The old tellers say that on that night their little family is together once more. It is a short night, yet unusually warm, and they tell each other everything that happened in the long year apart.

Then, when dawn is close, Zhinu must return to the court of Heaven. She crosses the crow bridge once more, back to her own place on the far side of the Milky Way. People say that the couple, unwilling to let go, shed tears at parting, and those tears fall to earth. They become the drizzling rain that lasts through the whole seventh lunar month.

The rain keeps falling like this for many days, never loud and never heavy. It is just enough to wet the thatched roofs and chill the shoulders of anyone still standing out on the porch. People in Vietnam call these long rains mưa ngâu. They call those days the days of Old Man Ngâu and Old Woman Ngâu. Many people believe the familiar word ngâu comes from Ngưu Lang, the name people in Vietnam give the cowherd. The story began in China and belongs to Qixi, the seventh night of the seventh month. Yet through those rains it has seeped into the childhood of generation after generation of Vietnamese children.

So on any clear summer night, anyone who steps into the yard and looks up will still see the hazy Milky Way across the sky. The two bright stars still stand on either bank, watching each other as they always have. That night might just be the seventh night of the seventh month. Somewhere among the layers of cloud, the crows might be quietly building their bridge, so that a husband and a wife can sit side by side once more. And the drizzle on the roof the next morning, people still say, is made of parting tears.