Double Ninth began as an escape. How did it become Seniors' Day?

The full narration of the video.

Everyone calls Double Ninth a day for the elderly, but it started as a day to escape disaster. In the legend, the whole family ran up a mountain that day, not for fun, but to save their lives. Here's the story: in the Eastern Han, a man named Huan Jing studied under a teacher called Fei Changfang.

One day the teacher told him: on the ninth day of the ninth month, disaster will strike your home. Go back now, and sew a red pouch for everyone, fill it with evodia, and tie it on their arms. Bring chrysanthemum wine, take the whole family up a high mountain, and come back after dark.

Huan Jing did as he was told. When they got home that evening, the chickens, dogs, cattle and sheep were all dead. The teacher said: they took the blow in your place. This story was written down in a book about fifteen hundred years ago. Climbing high, wearing evodia, drinking chrysanthemum wine: later generations said it all began here.

But why the ninth of the ninth? The ancients called nine a yang number. On the ninth of the ninth, two nines stack up, so it's called Double Yang. It falls right at the turn of the season, when the air suddenly turns cold, and people believed sickness and bad luck came along with it.

But behind this escape story, there's another thread. Nearly three hundred years before that book, Cao Pi wrote a letter to a friend. He wrote that nine sounds just like the word for 'long-lasting'. People loved the name, and took it as a wish to live long.

A book of old Han palace tales says the same: on the ninth of the ninth, wear evodia, drink chrysanthemum wine, and you'll live longer. To the ancients, escaping disaster and living long were really the same thing. Like taking an umbrella on a rainy day: it blocks the rain, but what you really want is not to get sick.

The ancients' umbrella was evodia. It's a small tree with a sharp smell, and in autumn it's covered in little red berries. You can still find it in Chinese herb shops. The rain they were blocking was seasonal sickness. Dodge the sickness, and you live longer. By the Tang dynasty, Double Ninth had become a day for families to climb together.

Wang Wei's famous line, 'everyone wears evodia, but one is missing', is about the brothers he couldn't be with. Over a thousand years, that thread of living long grew thicker and thicker. In nineteen eighty-nine, China named the ninth day of the ninth lunar month Seniors' Day.

In twenty twelve it went into law: every year, the ninth of the ninth lunar month is Seniors' Day. So Double Ninth never changed its heart. Back then, escaping disaster meant the family would live long. Honoring elders today wishes for the very same thing. When was the last time you spent Double Ninth with the elders in your family?