Tomb-Sweeping Day in 2020 is on Saturday, April 4th, 2020. March 12th of the lunar calendar, Year of the Rat, Year of the Rat, Ding Chou Day.
2020 Qingming holiday arrangement
On April 4th, 2020, Tomb-Sweeping Day will have a three-day holiday from April 4th (Saturday) to April 6th (Monday).
Tomb-Sweeping Day is the Spring Festival of the Chinese nation, and the Spring Festival in Tomb-Sweeping Day corresponds to the Autumn Festival of Chongyang and the Spring Festival in Spring and Autumn, which has existed since ancient times. Since ancient times, the Chinese nation has been courteous to its ancestors and cautious about the future. Tomb-Sweeping Day has a long history, which changes with the development of the times. Later, it gradually merged the customs of Cold Food Festival and Shangsi Festival. In ancient times, the north and south of China had different customs. Before the Tang Dynasty, grave sweeping in northern China was mainly in the Cold Food Festival and the Cold Clothes Festival. According to the Book of Rites and other documents, before the Tang Dynasty, there was no custom of Tomb-Sweeping Day going to the grave to offer sacrifices to sweep, but in the Tang Dynasty, Tomb-Sweeping Day offered sacrifices to sweep has become an atmosphere. The Tang Dynasty was a period of integration of China's northern and southern tombs' sacrificial customs, which followed the Qingming tombs' sacrificial customs and spread all over the country. After the Tang Dynasty, the Cold Food Festival gradually declined, because it was similar to Tomb-Sweeping Day. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Tomb-Sweeping Day rose to the position of replacing the Cold Food Festival, and incorporated the custom of forbidding fire and cold food into the Cold Food Festival. Tomb-Sweeping Day combined two holiday customs, cold food and thinking above, and in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, it formed a mode centering on ancestor worship and grave sweeping, and combining the custom of forbidding cold food with the custom of thinking above outing. With the custom of forbidding fire and eating cold food in the Cold Food Festival moved to Tomb-Sweeping Day, some places in northern China still retain the habit of forbidding fire and eating cold food in Tomb-Sweeping Day. The Ming and Qing Dynasties generally inherited the old system of the previous generation, and Tomb-Sweeping Day still adhered to and developed its position as an indispensable festival in spring life. During the Republic of China, on this day in Tomb-Sweeping Day, in addition to the original customs of sweeping graves and hiking, tree planting was also determined as a routine project, which was actually just an official recognition of the long-standing tree planting folk custom.
Tomb-Sweeping Day custom
Worship of tomb ancestors
In the history of our country, it has long been a custom to ban fire and cold food and pay homage to ancestors. After the Tang Dynasty, the Cold Food Festival gradually declined, and Tomb-Sweeping Day's grave-sweeping and ancestor worship became a continuous festival tradition. Bai Juyi, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote in his poem "Cold Food and Wild Hope": "Who cries when birds are singing? The wind blows the paper money in the wilderness, and the ancient tomb is full of spring grass. The flowers in Li Tang reflect the poplars, which are full of places where life and death leave. Don't listen to the heavy spring crying, the rustling rain makes people return. "
Koguryo, a poet in the Song Dynasty, once wrote in a poem: "There are many tombs in the north and south mountains, and Qingming is different. Paper ashes fly into white butterflies, and tears are dyed into red azaleas. At sunset, on the fox's sleeping grave, a drop once reached Jiuquan! " Even in today's society, before and after Tomb-Sweeping Day, people still have the custom of going to graves to pay homage to their ancestors: uprooting weeds, placing offerings, burning incense and praying in front of graves, burning paper money and gold ingots, or simply offering a bunch of flowers to express their memory of their ancestors.
spring outing
Qingming Festival is the time when spring returns to the earth. People took advantage of the opportunity of sweeping graves, and the whole family, old and young, enjoyed themselves in Shan Ye. When they got home, they broke some branches and put them on their heads. They were very happy. During their stay in Tomb-Sweeping Day, some people go hiking in the suburbs to express their stagnant mood since the severe winter, and go to nature to enjoy and appreciate the vibrant spring scenery. This kind of outing is also called spring outing, which was called spring exploration and spring hunting in ancient times. It means stepping on the grass, playing in the country and watching the spring. Tomb-Sweeping Day is a good time to go for an outing, so it has become an important part of Tomb-Sweeping Day customs. Ancient women could not go out casually on weekdays, and it was a rare opportunity for Tomb-Sweeping Day to visit the grave. Therefore, in Tomb-Sweeping Day, women have more fun than men, and there is a folk saying called "Women's Qingming Year". Qu Yu Hui.
Chuanliuzhi
Tomb-Sweeping Day is the time when willows sprout and smoke is green. There are folk customs of folding willow, piercing willow and inserting willow. When people go out for an outing, they break off some wicker branches, which can be played with in their hands, woven into hats and worn on their heads, or taken home and inserted on the lintels and eaves. As the saying goes, "A beautiful girl becomes a bright eye without wearing willow in Qingming Festival", which shows that folding willow in Qingming Festival is a very common custom in the old society. It may also be related to the custom of using willow branches to beg for new fire in the past cold food festival. Today, it seems that breaking willow branches at will is a kind of damage to trees and should not be advocated. Tomb-Sweeping Day's habit of planting trees with willows is said to commemorate Shennong, who invented various agricultural production tools and tasted all kinds of herbs. On the other hand, it is said that the willow tree that meson held when he died came back to life. Jin Wengong named it Qingming Willow and folded it into a circle to wear on her head. This custom was later introduced to people. Although the sources of allusions are different, these customs are still inseparable from the joy of people returning to the earth in spring.
Dietary customs
Every time I go to Tomb-Sweeping Day, every household has to make a kind of food called Qingming fruit, which is used to sweep graves and worship ancestors. In my memory, the arrival of Tomb-Sweeping Day means that I can taste green and fragrant fruits. The shape of Qingming fruit is a bit like jiaozi, but its taste is quite different. The pericarp of Qingming fruit is made of a plant called Artemisia argyi, which is a perennial herb with small yellow flowers and leaves as small as Compositae.
Every year before Tomb-Sweeping Day, women would come to the fields in groups of three and five with bamboo baskets and happily pick mugwort leaves. Green and fresh mugwort leaves are piled up in the basket, which is really attractive. After Ai Yecai returned home, he began the complicated process of making Qing Guo. A woman is like a masseur. Green absinthe turns into delicious transparent fruit in the blink of an eye.