Du Mu s Qingming Calligraphy in Tang Dynasty;
Dondum
A drizzling rain falls like tears on the Mourning Day; The mourner's heart is going to break on his way.
Ask local people where to buy wine? The shepherd boy just laughed and didn't answer Xingshan Village.
Cold food is on the road.
Tangsong wenzhi
It's already on the way to late spring when I meet cold food immediately.
Poor Jiang, I can't see Luo Qiao people.
The Arctic cherishes the sage, and Nanwa is the vassal.
In the old garden, wicker is new day and night.
An outdated festival (Qingming Festival) that started one or two days ago in Tomb-Sweeping Day, when only cold food is served for three days.
Tang Han 'ao
In late spring, Chang 'an city is full of songs and dances, and countless flowers fall. The east wind of the Cold Food Festival blows on the willow trees in the royal garden.
As night fell, the palace was busy lighting candles, and smoke drifted to the house of the prince and the marquis.
The door is that thing.
Tang zhangji
The tiller loves the boat, and the spring grass is green and the fields are vast;
Try going to the Wumen Gate to see the county Guo, there is new smoke in Qingming.
Ouyang Xiu, one of the "Eight Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties", also left a famous sentence describing Tomb-Sweeping Day for later generations: When the spring in the south reaches the halfway point, the wind and the smell of Ma Si. Green plums are like beans and eyebrows, and butterflies fly every day.
The custom of Tomb-Sweeping Day
First, sweep the grave.
Grave-sweeping is the most important custom in Tomb-Sweeping Day. People will sweep graves before and after Tomb-Sweeping Day, trim graves for their loved ones, pull out weeds, cultivate new soil, place offerings, burn incense and pray, burn paper money, and sometimes present a bunch of flowers, plant trees and insert willows to express their memory of their ancestors and elders.
On the other hand, in the belief of the ancients, the graves of ancestors have a great relationship with the rise and fall of future generations, so sweeping graves is a commemorative content that cannot be ignored. The sacrifices are mainly food, and the varieties vary from place to place. They are all foods that locals think can be taken out according to the economic ability of sacrifice, or they are seasonal specialties.
Second, eat eggs.
Eating eggs in Tomb-Sweeping Day is also a long-standing custom. According to folk custom, Tomb-Sweeping Day will have good luck and health after eating eggs for a whole year, and will not be tortured by diseases. In some areas, eggs need to be dyed into colorful "lucky eggs" to symbolize reunion. The origin of Tomb-Sweeping Day's eating eggs is because there was a custom of forbidding fire in some areas in the pre-Qin period, and it was forbidden to eat cold food for many days. Hard-boiled eggs are the best food reserves to survive this period.
Third, fly a kite
Flying kites is also one of the Qingming customs. Kites are also called "paper kites" and "kites". During their stay in Tomb-Sweeping Day, people not only wore it during the day, but also at night. At night, a string of colored lanterns is hung under the kite or on the wind-stabilizing stay, like twinkling stars, which is called "magic lamp".
It placed the good wishes of the ancient working people. The ancients believed that if someone in the family was sick, they could write or draw their illness on the kite, and cut the thread after flying the kite, which meant that the disease disaster would fly away with the kite. Although it has some superstitions, it also contains people's desire for a better life.
Fourth, insert willows.
Tomb-Sweeping Day and China have the folk custom of inserting willows. Because willows have strong vitality, as the saying goes, "If you have a heart, you can't plant flowers, but if you don't have a heart, you can plant willows in the shade." Wicker lives when it is inserted in the soil, where it is inserted, where it is inserted every year, and there is shade everywhere. The ancients thought that wearing this vibrant plant on the body or inserting it in the home can drive away evil spirits with its vitality, which is essentially to express people's joy of returning to the earth in spring.