Chongyang Festival: Climbing High on the Double Ninth Day

Why the Ninth of the Ninth

The Chongyang Festival (重阳节), also called the Double Ninth Festival, falls on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month. In the logic of the I Ching (Book of Changes), odd numbers belong to yang — the bright, masculine, active principle — while even numbers belong to yin. Nine is the largest single-digit yang number, so the ninth day of the ninth month is "double yang," chongyang (重, "double" + 阳, "yang"). The same sound jiu also means "long" and "forever," which is why the day later became tied to wishes for longevity and why it is now, in modern China, a day for the elderly.

Scholars trace Chongyang's roots to the Warring States period (475–221 BC). It became widely observed after the Wei and Jin dynasties (220–420) and was formally declared a festival in the Tang dynasty (618–907). By the Qing dynasty the imperial family climbed Beijing's Wanshou (Longevity) Mountain to take in the autumn view, and commoners followed the custom in their own towns. The poet Wang Wei, writing in the Tang, made the day immortal with a single couplet about climbing a mountain and missing his brothers far away.

The Plague-avoiding Climb

The best-loved origin story is a near-fable of disaster avoided. During the Eastern Han dynasty a young man named Huan Jing (also written Heng Jing) studied with the Daoist master Fei Changfang. One day the master warned him: on the ninth day of the ninth month a pestilence would strike his hometown. He should tie a spray of dogwood (zhuyu) to his arm, climb the highest hill, and drink chrysanthemum wine. Huan Jing raced home, gathered his family, and did exactly that. When they returned at dusk, every animal in the yard — chickens, sheep, the ox — was dead, but the family was safe. The climb and the wine had carried the misfortune in their place.

"Since nine is the highest odd digit, people take two of them together to signify longevity. Therefore, the ninth day of the ninth month has become a special day for people to pay their respects to the elderly..." — ChinaCulture.org

Whether or not you believe the legend, the custom it fixed is sound: get outdoors on a clear autumn day, breathe, and look far. Mountain climbing remains the centrepiece of Chongyang, which is why it is also called the Height-Climbing Festival. The philosopher's version of the tale — recorded in the sixth-century Qi Xie Ji — is the one most often told, but a second variant set in the Han court, involving Empress Lü's plot against Consort Qi and a maid surnamed Jia who spread the dogwood-and-wine custom among the people, shows how the practice was remembered as both protective and populist.

What People Actually Do

• Climb high. Any hill, tower, or even a tall building will do. Wang Bo wrote his famous "Tengwang Ge Xu" after ascending a tower on Chongyang; Du Fu's "Climbing" is a Tang masterpiece on the same day. In Beijing, Xishan and other ridges fill with elderly walkers. The point is the view and the vitamin-D dose as much as the omen.
• Wear dogwood. Zhuyu (Cornus officinalis), a small evergreen whose fruit is spicy and whose leaves are used in medicine to "expel dampness" and regulate qi, was pinned to arms, hair, or sachets to drive away evil and illness. The custom was already common in the Tang dynasty and is still seen in rural Henan.
• Drink chrysanthemum wine and view chrysanthemums. The flower blooms in the ninth month, so the month is called "the chrysanthemum month." Tao Yuanming, the Eastern Jin hermit-poet, made the flower and the wine inseparable from the day; later courts and commoners followed. The wine, infused with dogwood, was reckoned wholesome for the eyes and circulation.
• Eat Chongyang cake (chongyang gao). A steamed cake of rice or millet flour, often nine layers like a pagoda topped with two sheep-shaped dough figures (sheep, yang, punning on the festival's name). Because gao (cake) sounds like gao (high), eating it stands in for the climb and wishes you a higher position and a better year. In the Song dynasty the cake was inlaid with chestnuts, ginkgo, pine nuts, and pomegranate seeds and given as a festive gift.
• Visit ancestors' graves. In Hong Kong and Macau, whole extended families hike to ancestral graves, repaint inscriptions, lay roast pig and fruit, then share the meal after the spirits have taken the essence.
• Fly kites and welcome married daughters. In several regions Chongyang meant flying kites on the hilltops and inviting married daughters home for a visit — another way the day knitted the family across the generations and the calendar.

From Omens to Honouring the Elderly

In ancient times the late-autumn date carried a nervous edge — cold coming, plants withering, an "unlucky" double-yang that needed climbing to deflect. Some regions even treated the day as a time to leave the house and avoid misfortune at home. Today that anxiety is gone and the day's bright side won. Because jiu jiu (99) sounds like jiu jiu (long-lasting), the festival became a natural occasion to wish seniors health and long life. In 1989 the Chinese government gave it a second name: Senior Citizens' Day (Laoren Jie). Taiwan had already rededicated the date as Senior Citizens' Day in 1966.

The shift is visible on the day itself. Families visit grandparents, communities host dinners and free health checks for the elderly, and local governments organise outings. The chrysanthemum — symbol of integrity and long life — sits at the centre of it all. Kaifeng, an eight-dynasty capital, leans hard into the flower with a large annual Chrysanthemum Culture Festival each autumn, drawing visitors who come as much for the metre-high displays as for the date.

A Traveller's Chongyang

If you want to see Chongyang as more than a date on a calendar, go where the custom is oldest. Shangcai County in Henan calls itself the "Hometown of Chinese Chongyang Culture"; its Wanghe Tower on the old Cai state wall is said to be the birthplace of the mountain-climbing custom, and in 2011 its Chongyang practices were named national intangible cultural heritage. On the day, residents still clamber up hills wearing dogwood and sipping chrysanthemum wine, much as Huan Jing's neighbours allegedly did two thousand years ago. The region has run a Chongyang Cultural Festival every year since 2003, folding modern events for the elderly into the old climb.

For the casual visitor, the simplest authentic act is the easiest: find a hill, climb it on the ninth of the ninth, and buy a chrysanthemum from a roadside stall. You will be doing exactly what Wang Wei described when he wrote, missing his brothers, "I know my brothers would, with dogwood spray in hand, climb up the mountain and miss me so far away." The dogwood may be harder to find than it was in the Tang, but the climbing and the looking-far are the same, and that is most of the festival.

Chongyang Beyond China's Borders

The double-ninth date travelled with Chinese culture across East Asia. In Japan it is Chōyō, also called the Chrysanthemum Festival (Kiku no sekku), one of the five sacred sekku days, marked on September 9 by drinking chrysanthemum sake and eating chestnut rice at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. In Korea it is Jungyangjeol, a day for ancestral rites, height-climbing, and chrysanthemum viewing. In Hong Kong and Macau it is a statutory public holiday (the Chung Yeung Festival) centred on grave-cleaning. The shared thread — climb high, honour elders, respect the turning season — shows how one yin-yang date became regional commons, retold in local accents.

A Practical Chongyang

You do not need a mountain. A stair-climb, a pot of chrysanthemum tea, and a call to an older relative covers the three ancient intentions: avoid misfortune by rising, welcome longevity by drinking the flower, and repay the elder generation. Bake or buy a sponge "gao" and tuck a tiny flag in it for the pun. The festival's modern gift is modest and within everyone's reach — which may be why, of all the old dates, this one translated most easily into a national Seniors' Day without losing its climb.

Why the Climb Still Matters

The dogwood Huan Jing carried is hard to find fresh outside Henan, but chrysanthemum wine and a hill are everywhere. The festival has always been forgiving of substitution — the climb is the point, not the plant. Stand on high ground on the ninth of the ninth and you join two thousand years of people who paused at autumn's edge to look outward, breathe, and wish the old well. That continuity, more than any single custom, is what Chongyang protects.

Sources: China Daily, "Chongyang: Out with the old, in with the elderly" (2018); ChinaCulture.org, "Double Ninth Festival"; China Today, "Shangcai's Chongyang Festival" (2023); Henan provincial government Chongyang feature (2021); China Daily "6 things you need to know about Double Ninth Festival" (2018).