Chóngyáng (Double Ninth)

When it falls

The ninth day of the ninth lunar month, in October. Nine is the yang number, so the date doubles it, which is where the name comes from.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

A man was warned by his teacher that disaster would come to his village on that day and told to take his family up a hill with chrysanthemum wine and dogwood. He did, and came back down to find the livestock dead. Climbing high on this day has been the custom since.

Too much yang was reckoned dangerous rather than lucky, so the day is about getting above it and airing the house out.

Because jiǔ, nine, sounds like the word for a long time, the doubled nine came to mean long life, and China made the date its day for the elderly in 1989. The pun did the work.

How the day is kept

• Climbing a hill or a pagoda, which is the one thing everybody does; parks charge for the view.
• Chrysanthemum wine drunk and chrysanthemums looked at — the flower is at its best now and shows are staged for it.
• Chóngyáng cake, steamed in nine layers where the baker is being literal, because gāo, cake, is the same sound as high.
• Visiting parents and grandparents: it is a legal duty in China to see elderly relatives, and this is the day the law is thinking of.

More spring and the seasons