Box 7.5 Qingming Festival
The Qingming Festival (literally “pure brightness”) is a centuries-old tradition of rit-
ual mourning that falls in the first week of April every year. Although the festival is one
of remembrance of deceased ancestors and family members, it is not necessarily
bleak or joyless. Flying kites and enjoying a spring outing are common ways to pass
the holiday. It is sometimes known as Tomb-Sweeping Day, because the living family
visits the graves of the dead to tidy up and decorate it. Offerings are placed at the
graves, including food, cigarettes, and liquor. Family members burn ceremonial
money and other useful objects for the ancestors in the unseen world. This custom is
as old as the ancient practice of sending servants, horses, and terra-cotta warriors
into the afterlife with a dead king.
In 2008, the festival was officially reinstated as a national holiday, after having been
banned following the 1949 ascension of the Chinese Communist Party, which
attempted to stamp out all traces of ancestor veneration and Confucianism.
The festival survived and became especially important in the overseas Chinese
community. The commemoration of ancestors is especially poignant when the living
are not able to be near the ancestral home in China. One of the simplest and most
beautiful Tang poems captures this bittersweet sentiment, and Chinese schoolchil-
dren still memorize it as a lesson in beauty and concision.
“Quiet Night Thoughts”
Li Bai (Li Bo, 701–762 C.E.)
Before my bed there is bright moonlight
So that it seems like frost on the ground:
Lifting my head I watch the bright moon
Lowering my head, I dream that I’m home.Poem source: Arthur Cooper, tr. Li Bo and Du Fu. London: Penguin, 1973, 109.