Does Brazil have Tanabata and Qixi?
Not observed here
Brazil gives the day no place in law, but it does hold the festival - and here the date has come loose from its calendar altogether. Sao Paulo's Liberdade district has run the Tanabata Matsuri, the Festival of the Stars, since 1979, organised by the Liberdade cultural and welfare association (ACAL) and the Miyagi prefectural association of Brazil, with support from the Se subprefecture; the city's own description calls it the largest Japanese street event in the world. The Praca da Liberdade-Japao and the streets around it are hung with eighty giant bamboos carrying tanzaku in six colours - white for peace, yellow for money, green for hope, red for passion and gratitude, pink for love, blue for health and the protection of the heavens - burnt at the end so the wishes reach Vega and Altair. Scale and dates are both on record: the 29th edition, 7-8 July 2007, drew an estimated 150,000 people; the 32nd ran 24-25 July 2010; the 41st, 13-14 July 2019, with around 800 volunteer dancers from member associations. And that is the point for this page: in Brazil the date detached completely. Not the seventh of the seventh, and not a fixed day at all - a July weekend the organisers choose each year.
What is this topic?
One legend about a weaver and a herdsman, one date in the seventh lunar month, and three societies that made three different festivals out of it. Taiwan keeps it on the lunar calendar and stacks two things on the same day — a couples' evening and a coming-of-age rite in Tainan. China registered it as national intangible heritage but left it off even the list of days explicitly named as non-holidays. Japan moved it onto 7 July when the country switched calendars in 1873, while Sendai pushed it a month later to 6–8 August. This page compares where the day sits in law, who gets time off, and what each place kept of the story.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.