Qingming Festival

Qingming Festival usually falls on April 4th or 5th. Qingming is the second of 24 solar terms on the traditional Chinese solar calendar. It is also a time for people to go outside and start enjoying the greenery of spring.

Some people show their respects to their ancestors by laying wreaths in the front of the graves. As for the celebrants of the Qingming Festival, it is an important day of sacrifice for people wherein they go and sweep tombs to commemorate their family line and ancestors.

There are various activities for Qingming Festival. The most popular ones, aside from tomb sweeping would be spring outings, kite flying and putting willow branches on gates, which all have been important to this festival since the beginning.

Locals and all other celebrants commemorate and show respect to their ancestors by visiting their graves and offering food, tea, wine, incense and joss paper, which to serves as the representation of money. They sweep the tombs, remove weeds and add fresh soil to the graves, stick willow branches on the tomb and burn incense, as well as joss or 'paper money'.

The day before Tomb Sweeping Day was the traditional Chinese Cold Food Day. But as time passed, the two festivals were gradually combined into one. On the cold food festival day, people used no fire and only ate cold food. Now people in some places still have the custom of eating cold food on Qingming Festival.

Sweet green rice balls are one of the most traditional Qingming food. It is made of a mixture of glutinous rice powder and green vegetable juice, then stuffed with sweetened bean paste. Sweet green rice balls are jade-green in color and both sweet in taste and aroma.

Qingming Festival is a national holiday in China. Many Chinese people will make use of the 3-day holiday to go traveling. Therefore, during the Qingming Festival, most attractions will be crowded, public transport is highly likely to be the same as well, and accommodation for travelers may be slightly more expensive. But nevertheless, the experience is still worth the trip.