The Qingming Festival is a traditional festival in China and the most important festival of worship, a day of ancestor worship and tomb-sweeping. Tomb-sweeping is commonly known as visiting the graves, an activity to honor the dead. Most Han Chinese and some ethnic minorities sweep their tombs on Qingming Day.
According to the old custom, when sweeping tombs, people should bring wine, food, fruits, paper money and other items to the cemetery, offer the food in front of their loved ones' graves, then incinerate the paper money, cultivate new soil for the graves, fold a few young green branches and stick them on the graves, then bow and worship, and finally eat the wine and food and go home. Du Mu, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, wrote in his poem "Qingming": "The rain falls one after another during the Qingming Festival, and the pedestrians on the road want to break their souls. Where can I find a tavern? The shepherd boy pointed to the apricot blossom village." It writes about the special atmosphere of Qingming Festival.
The Qingming Festival, also known as the Treading Green Festival, according to the solar calendar, it is between April 4 and 6 every year, it is the bright and beautiful spring grass and trees spit out the green season, but also it is the people of the spring tour (the ancient called trekking) a good time, so the ancients have the Qingming trekking, and to carry out a series of sports activities of the custom. In ancient times, there is also a saying, "March Festival".
To this day, the custom of worshipping ancestors and mourning deceased relatives on Qingming Day is still prevalent. [1]
The Qingming Festival is one of the traditional festivals of the Han Chinese people in China, one of the twenty-four Chinese solar terms, and falls around April 5 on the solar calendar every year. In ancient times, the day before the Qingming Festival for the "cold food festival" said, according to legend, started in the Spring and Autumn Period, the Duke of Jin Wen mourning Jie Zi push "cut shares to fill the hunger", and gradually after the Qingming cold food into one.
According to legend, after Dayu cured the water, people used the word "Qingming" to celebrate the flooding has been removed, the world is peaceful. At this time the spring flowers, everything is revived, the sky is clear, it is a good time to spring trekking. As early as in the Tang Dynasty has begun, inherited through the generations to become accustomed to. In addition to appreciate the nature of the lake and mountains, spring scenery, but also to carry out a variety of recreational activities, add interest to life.
Tomb-sweeping is popular on Qingming Day, in fact, tomb-sweeping is the content of the Cold Food Festival one day before Qingming Day, which is rumored to have begun in the Duke of Jin's mourning for Jie Zi Tui. Tang Xuanzong Kaiyuan twenty years of imperial decree, "cold food on the tomb". Since the cold food was connected with Qingming, it was later gradually passed down as Qingming Tomb-sweeping. During the Qingming period, tomb-sweeping was even more popular. In ancient times, children often flew kites when sweeping tombs. Some kites were equipped with a bamboo flute, which made a loud sound like the sound of a kite when blown by the wind, and it is said that this is how the kite got its name.
The Qingming Festival was very common in the Northern Song Dynasty, and Zhang Zeduan's <<Qingming Riverside Drawing>> which has been handed down now, depicts the scene of people on both sides of the Bianhe River in Bianliang, Tokyo, during the Qingming Festival in the reign of Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty.
Beginning in 2008, China will be recognized as a legal holiday Qingming Festival, a day off. To 2009, and then changed to three days. It has continued to this day.
Tomb-sweeping is done on Qingming , to show respect for those who have passed away.