Qingming Rituals

Qingming Festival (aka Ching Ming or Tomb Sweeping Day), like many traditional Chinese festivals, involves family, food and firecrackers.

Much like a western memorial day, this is a time for the living to remember those who have passed on. For the Chinese people, it is significant to celebrate their enduring lineage. Families take this day to clean and restore their ancestors' resting places.

Qingming in Chinese means "clear and bright," a solar term indicating when the sun is exactly at the celestial longitude of 15°. On our calendar, it begins around 4th of April. Thus last week Wednesday was official Qingming day.

Yet it was early morning the day before when my honey and I boarded a bus in Wuchuan with the extended family of our friend and spent until late afternoon visiting nine separate graves to pay tribute to their forebears.

On this first hot spring day after a wet chilly winter, we had a first-hand look at the rituals of the day. While specific details of traditional customs may vary from place to place in China, and even overseas in Chinese communities, here is a much abbreviated account of what people generally do at gravesites on Qingming:

1. Sweep the grave or clear it of all debris and plant overgrowth.



clearing the gravesite or sweeping a grave

2. Strategically place amulets around the grave to protect against evil unearthly influences. (This practice may be distinctive to certain regions.) Here it was in the simple form of small mounds of dirt with pieces of paper and rocks.

cleared grave with amulets

3. Burn candles and joss sticks (incense) to call the ancestors, imaginably like ringing the doorbell to announce one’s arrival.

4. Offer foods – such as a full roasted suckling pig, boiled chicken, barbecued pork, rice, fruits – and drink and place them in front of the tomb. Typically white rice wine is first poured into small glasses then spilt onto the grave.

5. Burn joss paper – fake money and other symbols of wealth like gold, silver, clothes, jewelry, gadgets (cell phones are popular these days!) – anything that gives us comfort as humans. (I’ve even seen miniature mansions and cars before.) Traditional belief holds that when burned, these symbols will transform into real wealth for their ancestors to enjoy in their place beyond.

"hell" money and other goodies burned for the spirit world

6. Pay respect and show devotion to the ancestor with kowtows; the number varies by region.

7. Surround the grave with firecrackers (this too may be unique to here) and light them to scare away gremlins or other nasty spirits hovering around the grave.

I'll not be surprised if you have some questions. There is still so much I could say about our fascinating experience, as well as about Chinese gravesites and this ancient traditional day of devoted offspring demonstrating they have not forgotten their predecessors.  But that would make this post unbearably long, so I may have to return to this story in future.

For links to posts by others with an interest in graveyards and cemeteries, visit Taphophile Tragics.

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