Qingming (Ching Ming) Festival, is also known as Tomb Sweeping Day or Pure Brightness Festival.

It falls on the 15th day after the Spring Equinox, which usually puts it between April 3 and 5 each year.

It is a day devoted to ancestor worship and filial piety — the Confucian ideals that have guided the Chinese culture for so long.

The primary activity is to clean the graves of the ancestors. In rural China, graves are placed where there is good feng shui, usually on the side of a mountain or hill. These dirt mounds are quickly covered with weeds and dense undergrowth, so the process on Qingming involves a lot of manual effort, from climbing up to the graves to hacking away the undergrowth with machetes.

Wealthier families build a flat semi-circular area covered in cement at the front of the grave mound, which makes Qingming much easier to celebrate.  For them, tomb sweeping can literally be done by sweeping the concrete platform with a broom.

Food, Firecrackers, and Burning Money

After the graves are cleaned, the family places many varieties of food and a strong Chinese liquor called baijiu as offerings to the ancestors. To ensure the departed have a comfortable and prosperous afterlife, the family sets off firecrackers, burns incense, and burns “paper hell money” and other paper depictions of things the beloved ancestor might want or need.

And then the family goes home and eats a meal –the food that is left after you give some to the ancestors. Depending on the region, these meals can be fairly simple or incredibly sumptuous. Occasionally clans will hold special Qingming celebrations together at their ancestral temple. The food prep for these can be daunting. Look at all the pigs that were roasted by the Guan Tang Chocks! And the fireworks can be deafening and unstoppable. 

In urban settings, Qingming is much more subdued. Firecrackers are not permitted anymore, deceased are cremated, and traditional graves have given way to Western-style cemeteries with small grave markers. So in larger cities, relatives gather at the graves, burn incense and leave flowers. And then, of course, it’s time to eat.

Traditional foods served at Qingming: 

• Sweet Green Rice Balls — made of a mixture of glutinous rice powder and green vegetable juice and stuffed with sweetened bean paste. They are jade-green.   
• Qingming Zong (Zongzi) — sticky rice dumplings filled with pork, chestnut, and red beans and wrapped in bamboo leaves.  
• Qingming cakes (Sazi) — a crispy fried food made of wheat flour or glutinous rice flour, eggs, sesame, onion, salt, and other ingredients.

Superstitions

Do this:

Since the dead — both good and evil — are roaming about on Qingming, people often wear soft willow branches and place willow branches on gates and doorways to ward off evil spirits. This practice comes to us from the Buddhist tradition, as seen in this old saying:  ‘Put willow branches up on gates; drive ghosts away from houses.’

Kite flying is traditional after the grave-site worship is done. People believe that they can boost their good luck by cutting the strings of their kites and letting them fly away, taking all their bad luck with them. 

Don’t do this: 

• Don’t take photos in tomb areas — bad luck.
• Don’t sweep tombs after 3 pm — bad luck.
• Don’t wear clothes with bright colors or skimpy clothes– disrespectful.
• Don’t eat or laugh loudly during the rituals — disrespectful.
• Do not participate in others’ grave sweeping — bad luck.

Saying the right thing at Qingming

It is not appropriate to wish someone a happy or merry Qingming, just as you wouldn’t wish someone a happy funeral day. This occasion calls for sentiments that express peace and hope for a bright future (since you will have pleased the ancestors by remembering them, they’ll be inclined to shower you with prosperity and luck from the other side).

Here are some good ways to greet Chinese people on Qingming: 

At Qingming Festival, may your tomb sweeping go well and your mountain worship bring fortune.

May the departed rest in peace, and I wish you and your family safety and health.

May the deceased rest in peace while the living live a blessed life.

Wishing you peace at Qingming Festival.

What’s left after the firecrackers are finally done!  Na Zhou Gu Clan 2023 Qingming celebration.

Guan Tang She Clan gathered at their newly renovated Grand Ancestral Temple to celebrate Qingming 2023.