Chinese traditional Festival - QingMing Festival

NOVA Vehicle Qingming Festival holiday : 2nd/April - 5th/April

The Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day, is one of the four traditional festivals in China, the other three are Chinese New Year, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. Chinese usually have a 3-day public holiday.

At the very beginning, Qingming was not a festival but the fifth of the 24 solar terms.The temperature rises after Qingming, it is the right time for spring plowing and sowing. Later, the day becomes more of a festival for Chinese people to commemorate their ancestors. Tomb sweeping day began around the Zhou Dynasty(1046-221BC), it has a history of over 2,500 years. It originated from ancestral beliefs and spring rituals in ancient times.

How do the Chinese Celebrate the Qingming Festival?

The most important custom is Tomb-Sweeping. People commemorate and honor the dead by cleaning graves, burning incense and joss paper, offering food, wwine and others.However, the custom has been greatly simplified, especially in cities. Some people only offer flowers to their loved ones.

What do we eat at the Qingming Festival?

People in south China usually eat Qingtuan, which is a sweet green glutinous rice ball.It is a seasonal snack made from a mixture of glutinous rice flour and Chinese mugwort or barely grass, then stuffed with Red Bean Paste. In north china, people eat cool foods like eggs and cold pancakes.