Qingming Festival

Qingming 清明节 — “Clear Brightness”, also called Tomb-Sweeping Day — falls on a solar term, around 4 or 5 April, fifteen days after the spring equinox. Unlike most of the festivals on this hub, it is not dated on the lunar calendar. It is a public holiday. Families go to the cemetery, weed the grave, burn joss paper, and leave food and flowers. The living then picnic nearby, or fly a kite, which is as much part of the day as the sweeping.

An older layer is the Cold Food Festival, when fires were put out and only cold dishes were eaten. The two days have merged. Qingming is also the moment the countryside turns green, and a walk in the hills without a tomb in mind is still a Qingming outing.

It is not the Ghost Festival. That night, in the seventh lunar month, is for spirits who return; this morning is for ancestors whose names the family still knows, at the place where they are buried.