Chinese Newly-Weds Pray For a Good Marriage During the Double Seventh Festival

The Chinese are welcoming the arrival of August through the celebration of the annual Qixi Festival. The festival, also known as the Qiqiao Festival, is celebrated by the Chinese every summer on the seventh day of the seventh month, which falls somewhere during early to mid August. Other names for this exciting holiday include the Double Seventh Festival, representative of the holiday’s occurrence on both the seventh day and seventh month. Qixi literally means the Night of Sevens. 

As one can expect with most Chinese holidays and festivals, many traditions and rituals are associated with the Double Seventh Festival. It is celebrated by all Chinese, but particularly important to girls and newly-wed couples. On this day, young girls go to their local temple to pray for wisdom. As they burn paper items as offerings, they wish and pray to marry someone who will be a good and loving husband. 

Newly-weds are to worship and pray to Zhinu and Niulang, the mythological couple the holiday is associated with, for a long and happy marriage. Offerings can be made to the famous couple of fruit, flowers, tea, and face powder. Once the offerings have been completed, half the face powder is to be put on the new bride and the other half thrown on the roof. It is an interesting tradition, but said to bind the woman with the beauty of Zhinu. 

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For these couples, the holiday represents the symbol of a successful marriage and shows that the bride is treasured by her new family. 

The Qixi Festival is associated with many traditions but there are century-old legends behind those traditions and celebrations. To learn more about the legend behind the Qixi, or Double Seventh Festival, keep a look out for the second part of this blog! 

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Marriage Agencies Help North Korean Refugees Adjust to Life in South Korea

Each year, North Koreans risk their lives and leave everything they know to defect to the South, and many of these 26,000 refugees are women. Due to cracking down on the boarder by the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, the last two years have seen a drop of refugees by almost half of what it was in 2011. Even with sharp decrease in North Koreans arriving into South Korean, 3 of every 4 have still been women. 

These women leave their homes and make the treacherous journey through the Chinese border to South Korea in search of a better life. And once the long process of resettling is over, the realization that they are without friends or family in a brand new place becomes overwhelming. For this reason, one of the first things a North Korean woman looks for upon arrival is the love and companionship of a South Korean husband. 

Dating and marriage agencies have been a big part of Korean culture and business for some time now. Due to the number of single North Korean women pouring into the country, marriage agencies specifically geared towards helping North Korean women have become quite popular. 

The founder of Namnam Buknyeo, one of the most sought out marriage agencies, Hong Seung-Woo, says one of his companies main goals is to assist North Korean women in their resettlement process and help them to be as happy as possible in their new home. He adds, “To do that, they need to build a network that can support them.” 

Namnam Buknyeo tries to make this possible by servicing North Korean women for free and having a policy that all male clients must be screened before they can be paired with women. Any men who are disabled, already married, or unemployed are not able to register. 

Since Namnam Buknyeo’s opening in 2006, it has been responsible for 450 marriages. Hong Seung-Woo can express much confidence when talking about his company’s success, and all he has to do is use his own marriage as an example! Mr. Hong met his wife, Ju Jeong-ok, after she registered for his company, looking for a partner after coming to South Korea in 2012. He claims after just one date, he had fallen for her kindness, good nature, and beauty and was sure he would marry her! 

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