Qingming, the Tomb-Sweeping Festival

Qingming (清明, "clear and bright") is both a festival and one of the twenty-four solar terms (二十四节气) of the traditional Chinese calendar: the fifth. The term begins when the sun reaches celestial longitude 15°, about fifteen days after the spring equinox, and the festival is held on that first day. In the Western calendar this is around 4 or 5 April (Chinese sources say 4 to 6 April, depending on the year), and the term lasts until about 20 April.

Its date therefore follows the sun, not the moon, which is why it barely moves from one year to the next in the Western calendar.

Chinese sources explain the name by the season: the air is clear and the landscape bright (气清景明), and all of nature looks clean and fresh.

In 2016 UNESCO inscribed the twenty-four solar terms on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, as knowledge of time developed in China by observing the sun's yearly course, and still of particular importance to farmers.

The heart of the festival is sweeping the tombs (扫墓): families go to the graves of their ancestors, clean them and pay their respects (祭祖), hence its other name, Tomb-Sweeping Day. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes offerings of food and flowers, and the burning of paper replicas, money above all: people believe they turn into goods and money that the ancestors can use in the spirit world.

Willow is everywhere at Qingming. Many families lay willow branches on the tombs or at the gates of cemeteries, because willow is traditionally believed to ward off evil spirits. People also put up willow twigs or wear them (插柳): in Huizhou (惠州, Guangdong), Chinese Wikipedia reports, willow, like peach, calamus and mugwort, is thought to drive evil away.

Visiting tombs in spring also has an official history. In 732 Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang (唐玄宗) issued an edict allowing officials and commoners to visit and sweep their family tombs at the Cold Food Festival, and had the practice entered in the state rites as a permanent rule. Since Cold Food and Qingming are only a day or two apart, their customs eventually merged, though no one can say exactly when: Cold Food was still very much alive under the Tang, and according to English Wikipedia it remained the more important of the two as late as the Song.

Qingming is not only a day of mourning. It falls in the middle of spring, and families customarily combine the visit to the tombs with a spring outing (踏青, literally "treading the green"): a walk in nature, often with a picnic. In the past the festival was even called the "Outing Festival" (踏青节).

The other great pleasure of the season is flying kites. According to Chinese Wikipedia, kites were flown not only by day but also at night, with strings of small coloured lanterns hung on the kite or its line, twinkling like stars: they were called "divine lanterns" (神灯). Swinging on swings (荡秋千) is another traditional Qingming pastime.

Each region has its own speciality. In Jiangnan (江南), the region south of the Yangtze, people eat qingtuan (青团): balls of glutinous rice kneaded with pounded mugwort, which makes them green, usually filled with sweet red or black bean paste. The herb is only edible in early spring, hence the link with Qingming.

Before Qingming there was another spring festival: Cold Food (寒食节), on the 105th day after the winter solstice, usually the day before Qingming. No fire could be lit for several days, and people ate only cold food. Today's Qingming took shape by absorbing these customs, along with those of another spring festival, Shangsi (上巳).

The legend told to explain it goes back to the Spring and Autumn period. Prince Chong'er (重耳) of Jin spends long years in exile. One day, when he has fainted from hunger, his loyal companion Jie Zitui (介子推) cuts a piece of flesh from his own thigh to feed him (割股奉君). Back in power as Duke Wen of Jin (晋文公), Chong'er rewards those who followed him, but Jie, who asked for nothing, withdraws with his mother to Mount Mian (绵山). The duke goes there himself, then has the mountain set on fire to drive him out; Jie refuses and dies with his arms around a tree: a willow in one version, a pagoda tree (槐) in another. Full of remorse, the duke forbids lighting fires on that day.

This legend grew over time. The oldest account, in the Zuozhuan (左传, 4th century BCE), says only that Jie did not claim a reward and withdrew with his mother, and that the duke, unable to find him, set aside the fields of Mianshang (绵上) to fund sacrifices in his honour. The thigh and the fire came later, by the Warring States period: the Zhuangzi (庄子) already says that Jie cut his own thigh to feed Chong'er and was burned to death with his arms around a tree, and at the end of the Western Han the Xinxu (新序) of Liu Xiang (刘向) tells how the duke had the mountain set on fire. Some scholars argue that the ban on fire had nothing to do with Jie Zitui at first; others reply that the earliest sources on the festival all connect it with him.

At Qingming, people often quote a quatrain simply titled "Qingming" (清明), traditionally attributed to Du Mu (杜牧, 803-852), a Tang poet. In the fine rain of Qingming, a traveller on the road feels his heart breaking; he asks where he might find a tavern, and a herd boy points far off to Apricot Blossom Village (杏花村).

Its authorship is debated, however. In 1983 the historian Miao Yue pointed out that the poem is in none of the collections of Du Mu's works. The earliest known source is a Southern Song encyclopedia, the Jinxiu wanhua gu (锦绣万花谷, preface dated 1188), which gives it under the title "Apricot Blossom Village", with no author, simply as a Tang poem.

The attribution to Du Mu only appears a few decades later, in an anthology of "a thousand poets" (千家诗) published under the name of the poet Liu Kezhuang but, according to these scholars, compiled by booksellers for profit. The Tang specialist Chen Shangjun sees it as a folk poem from the Song, later attributed to Du Mu; others, such as Professor Luo Man, defend the traditional attribution.

In mainland China, Qingming has been a public holiday since 2008. A State Council decision of December 2007, in force from 1 January 2008, amended the national rules on public holidays: it added three traditional festivals, Qingming, the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival, and abolished the Labour Day "golden week". Qingming gives one day off; the first Qingming public holiday was 4 April 2008.

What do people wish each other that day? Some feel that "Happy Qingming" (清明节快乐) is out of place on a day for the dead and prefer 清明安康, "peace and health at Qingming". Folklorists interviewed by the Chinese press are less strict. In 2021 Gao Wei, secretary-general of the Beijing Folklore Society, told China News Service that "Happy Qingming" has long been in use and that the idea that it cannot be said appeared only recently. The festival, he explained, brings together Cold Food, Shangsi and the renewal of spring: remembering the dead and enjoying the spring outing go hand in hand.