Everything that can be called folk custom is unique and unique. Every part of the country has its own way of celebrating Tomb Sweeping Day. This article collects some representative Qingming Festival customs from various places to enjoy the folk custom feast with you. A little popular science about Qingming
“The swallows come to the Spring Society, and the pear blossoms lag behind the Qingming Festival.” Every April 5th in the Gregorian calendar is the Qingming Festival, also known as the Outing Festival. It is said that it began with the "Tomb Sacrifice" ceremony of ancient emperors and generals. Later, the people also followed suit, worshiping ancestors and sweeping tombs on this day, which has been followed by generations and has become a fixed custom of the Chinese nation.
To talk about Qingming Festival, we must start with a very famous festival in ancient times that is now lost - the Cold Food Festival. The Cold Food Festival originated from the ancient practice of drilling wood and seeking new fires. The ancients used different trees to make fires due to different seasons, and had the custom of changing fires according to the seasons. And every time you change the fire, you have to get a new fire. People are prohibited from lighting fires until new fires arrive.
There is a custom of visiting graves during the Cold Food Festival, and if there is a grave, there must be a tomb sacrifice. Later, because it was integrated with the custom of summoning the soul and reviving the spirit in March, it was gradually settled on the Cold Food Festival. Since the Qingming solar term falls on the third day of Cold Food, later generations gradually moved the custom of Cold Food to Qingming as time went by.
The customs of Qingming Festival are rich and interesting. In addition to banning fires and sweeping tombs, there are also a series of customary sports activities such as outing, swinging, Cuju, playing polo, and planting willows. According to legend, this is because cold food and fire are forbidden during the Qingming Festival. In order to prevent cold food and cold meals from harming the body, everyone comes to participate in some sports activities to exercise. Therefore, in this festival, there are not only the sad and sad tears of paying respects to new graves, but also the laughter of outings. It is a unique festival.
Customs of celebrating the Qingming Festival in various places
Qingming Festival in Shanxi
Shanxi has an old saying: "The drizzle during the Qingming Festival makes people mourn, and wild flowers bloom in the desert soil. The folk song "Sacrifices carry shovels on their shoulders, they all come from the graves first" vividly summarizes the mood of the people at that time and the characteristics of tomb-sweeping.
In spring, people often repair their houses to prevent summer rain from leaking. Reminiscing about the dead from the living, the graves in the fields often collapse due to exposure to wind and rain. The most important feature of visiting the graves during the Qingming Festival is to eradicate the weeds from the graves and use new soil to heighten and strengthen the graves. This is called repairing the graveyard, which expresses the grief of the children and grandchildren for their ancestors.
On Qingming Festival, people in southern Shanxi make steamed steamed buns stuffed with walnuts, red dates, beans, etc., which are called Zifu. It means that your descendants will be blessed, all thanks to the blessings of your ancestors. Every family also makes black bean jelly, cuts it into thin pieces and pours it into soup. Shoveling withered grass and rubbing it on the kang mat is called driving away scorpions. In the southeastern part of Shanxi, people wear willow branches and dead leaves on their heads. Women should use gold-painted Caisheng (headdress) on their temples. In the northern Shanxi region, it is customary to raw black bean sprouts and eat them with corn bread and black bean sprout stuffing. In the northwest of Shanxi, people pay attention to grinding millet flour to make cakes, which is commonly known as "tanhuang'er". In Luliang area, on the day after the Qingming Festival, people have to pick up their daughters and invite their sons-in-law, which is commonly known as "fresh fire".
Hong Kong
Ching Ming Festival is an important local festival. Hong Kong people will go to their ancestors’ graves, burn incense and candles, and offer sacrifices, mostly fruits, flowers, roasted pigs or white cuts. chicken. Some Hong Kong people are accustomed to worshiping mountains several weeks in advance to avoid crowds. They do not need to abide by the tradition of worshiping ancestors on the first day of the Qingming Festival.
As early as the British rule, even though the border between China and Hong Kong was strictly guarded, during the Qingming Festival, the Sha Tau Kok restricted area on the border between China and Hong Kong would be opened to a limited extent, allowing people to worship at Shaling Cemetery; in the early years of China The reform and opening up policy has not yet been implemented. Many people will return to their hometowns under the pretext of worshiping their ancestors during the Qingming Festival. Everyone wears multiple layers of clothes and carries an unusually large amount of daily necessities to support relatives and friends in the countryside. China-Hong Kong train tickets will also appear Panic buying and ticket scalping.
In recent decades, when Hong Kong people were clearing weeds in front of the graves of their ancestors, some people believed in the Feng Shui theory of "burning the land with fire" and set fire to the weeds. As a result, many serious mountain fires were caused, causing much concern. social concern. In 2007, some groups organized a "Qingming Festival Fire-Free Pledge Rally" to appeal to citizens not to set fires to clear weeds.
The Qingming Festival also brought a local saying: "If you have anything to do, worship the mountain and tell it first (if you have anything to do, worship the mountain and then talk about it)", which means don't talk nonsense anymore and leave it to the Qingming Festival to talk to the dead.
Shanghai
The main activities of the Qingming Festival in Shanghai are tomb sweeping and outing. Every year, nearly 10 million people travel during the Qingming festival, and more than 1 million people travel to other provinces such as Suzhou and Jiaxing. Therefore, traffic is congested in the ten days before and after Qingming.
Sichuan
Dujiangyan Water Release Festival Sacrifice Ceremony, Qingming Festival (Erwang Temple Temple Fair) to honor Li Bing and his son (Dujiangyan, Chengdu)
Fujian
Southern Fujian does not necessarily only sweep tombs during Qingming Festival. There are generally two dates for tomb-sweeping. The custom in Quanzhou is on the Qingming Festival (usually April 5th in the New Calendar). In Zhangzhou, some people choose to sweep the tomb on the Shangsi Festival on the third day of March. For Hakka people, it is after the Lantern Festival. The method is that after cleaning up the tomb environment (such as weeds and trees), worship the land god first, and then worship the ancestors. After the worship, a small stone is used to press "tomb paper" on the tomb, which means that the tomb has been repaired. On the Qingming Festival, people generally do not cook food and only eat cold cakes. This is a custom originating from the Cold Food Festival.
Taiwan
In Taiwan, there is a day off every year during the National Tomb Sweeping Festival, which is also equivalent to the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday. Due to the differences in the customs of tomb sweeping in ancestral hometowns (Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Hakka, etc.), and modern In a busy society, people do not sweep tombs on the same day, so the name National Tomb Sweeping Festival is quite problematic (for example, it is not popular among Hakka people to sweep tombs during the Qingming Festival).
April 5th is also designated as the "Anniversary of the Death of Chiang Kai-shek" (some people think that Chiang Kai-shek did not pass away on this day). However, under the trend of de-Chianghua, Chiang Kai-shek has been Anniversary of public death is cancelled. Some pan-blue supporters and certain media created rumors that the government would abolish the Tomb-Sweeping Day as well. This rumor also spread in mainland China, but in fact the abolition of "Chiang Kai-shek's Death Anniversary" did not affect the Tomb-Sweeping Day holiday at all.
Qingming Festival in Zhoushan
Zhoushan people visit tombs to pay homage to their ancestors. There is a special feature of the offerings at the Jiuding Haihai Tomb. Many dishes are cold dishes and salads, as well as Qingming special snacks - green cakes and sliver cakes can be eaten cold. It can be seen that although the custom of the Cold Food Festival has long since faded, its The spirit still remains in the food customs of Qingming Festival, which will last forever.
Qingming Festival in Southern Fujian
On the Qingming day, every household gets up early, prepares incense and candles, cooks several bowls of vegetables and rice (or uses three animal wines), and offers sacrifices to their ancestors.
At noon, the custom of offering sacrifices to the ancestors will be carried out. The places where the ancestors are worshiped are mostly "ancestral halls" and "family temples" in the same township and community. All the descendants of the clan with this surname are adults or above (those who have married a wife) can enter the ancestral temple to enjoy the banquet. The elders from the hometown also took advantage of this time to discuss necessary matters for the temple, so they considered this day to be the most important day.