Chinese Festival: Tomb-Sweeping Day (Qing Ming Festival)

Origin of Tomb-Sweeping Day
Tomb-Sweeping Day (Qing Ming Festival) is a traditional chinese festival to honour and pay respect to one’s deceased ancestors and family members. It comes on the 106th day after the winter solstice. Qing Ming is a “spring” festival that the whole family leave the home and sweep the graves of their forebears. The sweeping usually happens at 10 days before or after Qing Ming Festival. In some places, the sweeping can even last for one month.

Qing Ming Festival Poem

Custom of Tomb-Sweeping Day
1) Sweep graves
It is commonly known as “Shang Fen”. Wuxi city from Jangsu Province is more representative of sweeping graves custom. Pick up the new earth to cover the tomb, and all new tombs must be sweeped before Qing Ming Festival, while old tombs can pass through Qing Ming Festival but not through the beginning of summer. The new wife must go to sweep graves, which is commonly known as “the flower grave”. The sweeping is used to be accompanied with meat dishes, vegetable dishes, wine, rice and other memorial, which has been replaced by dried fruit cake later. Today, sweeping the martyrs cemetery in memory of revolutionary martyrs is to become a very important part of Ching Ming Festival, which makes Qing Ming Festival more educational to honor the memory of martyrs of the great achievements at the same time of ancestors.

sweep graves

2) Spring outing
The warm weather, the bloomy flowers and all green things makes the Tomb-Sweeping Day a right time for spring outing. Mountain climing, flying kites are popular in the Tomb-Sweeping Day.

spring outing

3) Plug wicker into the door and wear switchgrass cap
This custom is based on a chinese legend, which said that Lord Wen (also known as “Jin wen gong”) went to Mian Shan for sweeping graves of Jie zi zhui, a minister of Ancient China, after one year of his death, incidentally finding that the willow where Jie zi zhui hang himself has grown up with verdant wickers. Lord Wen pinched a wicker, tailed it around into a circle, and wear it. The ministers thereby follow the Lord Wen to wear switchgrass cap. The lord Wen named the willow as “Qing Ming Willow”, and set the day as “Qing Ming Festival”.

switchgrass cap

Candy seo tools, seo company, seo services, seo technology, seo solutions

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.