How we celebrate one of the most important festivals in Chinese/Asian culture in the UK and everything you need to prepare.
What is Qingming?
Qingming Festival (清明节), also called Tomb Sweeping Day or Pure Brightness Festival, is an important traditional Chinese holiday. The festival is celebrated both in China and among members of Chinese communities around the world. The main activity that people engage in on this day is cleaning the tombs of their ancestors
The holiday is celebrated 15 days after the Spring Equinox, usually between April 3rd and April 5th. Like many Chinese holidays, its date is calculated using the Chinese lunar calendar. While the date of the holiday changes slightly every year, it generally falls in early April. Tomb Sweeping Day is an official public holiday in mainland China, and people are normally given one day off not counting weekends.
Where did Qingming originate?
Originally, Qingming didn't relate to tomb sweeping. It was the second of the 24 solar terms on the traditional Chinese solar calendar.
In Chinese, Qingming (清明) means 'clearness' and 'brightness'. The origin of the name was related to climate and nature in this season. At the beginning of April, it becomes noticeably warmer and brighter.
The day before Tomb Sweeping Day was the traditional Chinese Cold Food Day. As time passed, the two festivals were gradually combined into one. On the day of the Cold Food Festival, 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.
The Qingming Festival started in the Zhou Dynasty (1046–221 BC), and has a history of over 2,500 years.
It originated from the extravagant and expensive ceremonies that many ancient emperors and wealthy officials held in honor of their ancestors. They offered sacrifices to their ancestors and asked them to bless the country with prosperity, peace, and good harvests.
In the year 732, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, declared that respect could only be paid formally at ancestors' graves on the first day of the Qingming solar term. From then on, sweeping tombs on the first of Qingming gradually became popular with both royal and common families, and the tradition has lasted well over a millennium.
What do people do during Qingming Festival?
The most important activity as its name states cleaning the tombs. In addition to cleaning their ancestors’ tombs and making offerings to the dead, people also go on outings to enjoy nature, fly kites and eat special foods during this time. Here in the UK, we usually clean the tombs and then have a meal together with the family.
Tomb-Sweeping
Tomb sweeping (扫墓), is seen as a way to show respect to one’s ancestors. The practice is closely connected with Chinese traditions related to filial piety and ancestor worship. Tending to the tombs of one’s ancestors is a very important part of the Qingming holiday but since burial practices in the Chinese countryside are very different from those in the cities, the process of cleaning the ancestors’ tombs is different depending on where one lives.
In China, my grandparents tomb is a few hours drive out in the country side so my family make this journey every year but here in the UK, my parents tomb is only 30 minutes drive from my home in the city.
When to celebrate Qingming?
The holiday is celebrated 15 days after the Spring Equinox, usually between April 3rd and April 5th. You can visit and clean the tomb 10 days before or after.
For new graves (deceased less than a year) you will need to clean the grave before Qingming. You will need to do it before the 2nd day of the 2nd month (a month before QingMing)
Things to prepare
For the Tomb Sweeping
Gardening equipment: Shovel, rake, shears. Depending on where your ancestors grave is, and how much cleaning is needed you may need to prepare some gardening tools. It was our dads First QingMing, so we had to clean up the grave.
Bin liners: for the rubbish
Tissue/wet wipes: To clean the tomb stone or grave marker
Wellies/shoe coverings: It can get quite muddy depending on the weather.
Flower Vase: to replace old one if needed
Soil: To replace the existing top soil
Fresh flowers
For the Ritual
Disposable table cloth/Newspaper. To place the offerings on top
Red Candles: two needed for every ancestor tomb you will be visiting, plus an extra set for the "Earth Deity"
Incense sticks: Enough for 3 sticks per family member visiting per tomb
A lighter: It's a good idea to use a blow torch or a jet lighter to withstand strong winds
Food offerings: 3 meats also known as the 3 sacrifices (三牲), The most common combination of the three animals is one piece of belly pork, one whole chicken and one whole fish/Tiger Prawn. These three kinds of meat have auspicious meanings. The Chicken symbolizes family reunion; pigs mean that everything goes well, and fish represent more than one year. Usually the pork belly is placed in the middle with the chicken on the left and fish on the right. with the head of the chicken and tail of the fish facing the gods. Another reason for these 3 meats is that the Chicken has wings and represents the Sky, the pork runs on land so represents the Earth and the fish swims in the Ocean so represents the sea. To prepare these foods, you simply boil them and sprinkle some salt on top before serving. (We purchased our whole chicken with head and feet from the Vietnamese cash and carry Duc Tien in Charlton, London).
3 bowls of rice and 3 pairs of chopsticks: For each ritual
5 cups of white rice wine
3 cups of Chinese tea
Incinerator: To burn the paper offerings in. (You can buy these at Garden centers, we got ours from B&Q)
Paper offerings/Joss money
5 coloured papers: represents the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal and water) in five directions (north, south, east, west, and centre) placed on the tomb (this is optional, not all families do this, we didn't prepare this this year)
Red strips of paper: acts like a talisman, protecting the living and stopping angry spirits from disturbing the ancestral worship (We didn't actually prepare it this year but we will next year)
Other Items
Picnic blanket/camping chairs: Depending on how much cleaning you will need to do it might be a good idea to have some chairs around for the children or elder generation.
Picnic foods and drink: You could be here for as long as 3 hours so it would be wise to prepare some picnic foods to snack on
On the Day...
We all met up around midday. My brother in law took the children down to the local park in the cemetery whilst the rest of us set up a picnic table with picnic foods for everyone to snack on
For new graves (deceased less than a year) you will need to clean the grave before Qingming. You will need to do it before the 2nd day of the 2nd month (a month before QingMing) so this year that landed on 4th March 2022. My mum passed away on November 1st 2021 so we had already visited my mums grave on the 4th March to clean her grave. Being a fairly new Grave we kept the ritual simple as we couldn't do much with the grave as the soil was still settling.
My dad passed away on 8th December 2020, so this year Qing Ming landed on the 4th April 2022 so it would be the first time we celebrate Qing Ming for my dad.
The soil had pretty much settled so we started with unearthing all the weeds, lining the grave with large marble pebbles, planted a new vase with fresh flowers, and put fresh top soil on the grave, finishing with cleaning the grave marker.
Once the cleaning was done, we laid out a picnic mat and set up a picnic table with nibbles for the kids. We all helped prepare some foods, my sisters made home made water chestnut cake, pandan chiffon cake and 3 layer pandan jellies.
We then made an offering to the Tudi Gong, (土地公, “Lord of the Place,” “Earth Lord,” or “Earth God”)
Tudi gong is one of the eldest deities in Chinese religion, originating before the Han dynasty, thus predating both religious Taoism and the introduction of Buddhism into China.
Within the celestial pantheon, Tu Di Gong occupies a unique position, as he is at the same time the lowest ranking official in the bureaucracy, yet also the most commonly worshiped deity. He had been described as “greatest and the smallest” as he makes reports to the “God of Heaven” every three days. He is a deity protecting the land and all that is built or grows on it.
We don't have a shrine for Tudi Gong so we just placed an offering on the side of the grave. We offered a portion of rice with 3 meats, 3 cups of tea with two red candles and incense in the middle. (Not all families pray to Tudi gong)
After we made our offerings and prayers to Tudi Gong we then set up the offerings for my dad.
We then light the two red candles and we all make our prayers and 3 bows at the same time. We place a bunch of incense in between the red candles and then everyone places their incense around the grave.
Once the red candles are 3/4 burned we then light the paper offerings
As the incense were burning we all enjoyed our family time together; we spent about 3 hours in total at the cemetery.
Mum and Dad would have been really happy to see us altogether. They loved hosting family events and dinners.
They will forever be with us in spirit and in our hearts...
My paternal grandparents are buried in China, so my family in China sent us some photos of their day too. My granddads grave has a small shrine for Tudi gong. My family in China also placed some red paper on the tomb; traditionally, the red came from chicken blood (a rooster's, preferably); they hang "chicken blood paper" ("kwa huet zi" in Cantonese) on graves to create a barrier against negative energies or unwanted souls. Nowadays we use red paper which acts like a talisman, protecting the living and stopping angry spirits from disturbing the ancestral worship.
Some people also hang five coloured papers to represent the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal and water) in five directions (north, south, east, west, and centre)
This year was the first time we have done Qing Ming and I am learning more from my family abroad and I think next year I will also use the red and coloured papers too.
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