The Double Ninth Festival

The name comes from the Yijing. The ancients counted odd numbers as yang and even as yin, and nine is the greatest of the yang; on the ninth day of the ninth month both meet, two yang doubled — Chongyang, also Chongjiu. In 2006 the festival entered the first batch of the national intangible cultural heritage list as item Ⅹ-6.

As a festival it took shape roughly in the Han, matured in Wei–Jin, and flourished in the Tang — when it became a statutory holiday with leave and gifts from the court, and climbing heights, drinking wine and writing verse became the fashion.

Folklore explains the climb through Huan Jing of Runan (Eastern Han), who was advised to lead his family up the mountain on the ninth of the ninth, wearing dogwood and drinking chrysanthemum wine, and so escaped a plague. The story is preserved in the Xu Qi Xie Ji and the Jingchu Suishiji; scholars mostly treat it as later embroidery to explain the customs. Trace it further up and the festival's bedrock is the autumn tasting — qiu chang — and the old rites of honouring the aged and praying for long life: the Liji's 'Monthly Ordinances' instructs to 'care for the ageing, present armrests and staves, serve gruel and food'. The festival's respect for elders was planted that early.

Climbing is the festival's main text — hence its other name, the Climbing Festival. The Xijing Zaji of the Western Han already records the ninth of the ninth as a day to 'wear dogwood, eat peng'er cake, drink chrysanthemum wine'. Autumn skies run high; to climb and look far carries the old sense of avoiding harm and praying for blessing, and suits the season's itch to move the limbs. Where plains offer no mountain, people climb towers; where no tower, they eat cake instead — gao, cake, puns on gao, high. That is how Chongyang cake came about.

Viewing chrysanthemums and wearing dogwood are the festival's other half — hence also the Chrysanthemum Festival, the Dogwood Festival. The chrysanthemum blooms against frost; the ancients called it the flower of longevity, brewing it into wine, pinning it in the hair, setting it before the desk. Dogwood's sharp scent repels insects and damp; people tied it to the arm, tucked it in the hair or into a small sachet, and called it the 'ward-off-evil lord'. When Wang Wei wrote, 'I know my brothers climb the heights, dogwood pinned — and one of us is missing', these two plants became, forever after, what the Chinese reach for to speak of longing.

Cake is the festival's most tangible food. Chongyang cake of old layered rice flour with dates and chestnuts, a little coloured flag stuck on top — a spoken charm of 'rising step by step'. In Tengzhou and Linyi, Shandong, the old practice of brewing chrysanthemum wine on the ninth of the ninth survives to this day: 'Nine-nine, Double Ninth, chrysanthemum wine fills the vats with fragrance.'

Nine-nine sounds like 'long-long', and nine is the greatest of numbers — longevity follows the sound. In 1989 China named the ninth day of the ninth month 'Seniors' Day'; the Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly, in force from 2013, fixed it in statute as the national Elders' Day.

Nor is the day only for the old. The ancients called the climb 'bidding the green farewell', answering spring's outing — one last good walk before winter. Today some keep it as autumn hiking: up the hill for chrysanthemums, down for tea. Underneath, the sense is unchanged: while the weather holds, get out and walk.

A modern Double Ninth mostly looks like this: a phone call in the morning to promise dinner at home; an afternoon walk with the elders in a nearby park or up a city gate tower, some gentle slope. The mountain need not be high — stairs that can be climbed are enough.