A Picnic, a Drink, a Grave

The Many Ways of Celebrating Qing Ming

By James Fee

On Qingming, the rain is drizzling down.
The traveler is growing dispirited.
He asks where a wineshop might be found
A farmboy points to far off Xing Hua village.
--Du Mu (803-852 AD)

A thousand or so years ago, Xing Hua village was a place known for its many "jiu jia" —rest stops that sold bai jiu to weary travelers. (These would be the forebears of the jiudian – the usual word for hotel) They were popular among Tang dynasty poets. But you don’t have to be a Chinese poet living in the Tang dynasty to understand what Du Mu meant.

If you’ve ever traveled on a major Chinese holiday, you’ve probably felt the desperate need for someone to point you toward the nearest drinking hole. And it’s probably always been a few hours not close enough away.

Qingming, the Clear and Bright Festival or Tomb-Sweeping Day, involves some pretty serious traffic. 100,000 people visited Shenzhen cemeteries last weekend in the hope of avoiding the holiday crush this Friday, April 4th when the holiday takes place and when over one million people are expected to make the same journey.

Some people will stay home or do something else for the holiday. Many can’t go home—that is, to their hometowns—because 3 days isn’t enough time to do that. There is even a website for migrants to post messages to their ancestors.

In spite of the frustration this holiday might engender, and the sadness that accompanies a visit to a graveyard, Qingming is meant to be a joyous occasion. Families have picnics and fly kites or go hiking. It is, after all, a day when the weather is supposed to be “Clear and Bright,” a true Spring holiday. And, of course, for those families who are able to reunite in full, there is the thrill of far-flung relatives all coming together for a celebration.

These families gather at ancestral graves. They sweep ancestral tombs, and burn incense and paper “spirit money”—along with paper spirit cars and spirit mobile phones or whatever else they feel their ancestors might need in the afterlife. They plant willow twigs in the ground to ward off the evil spirits who abound on the holiday. They lay out rice and tea, wine and pork as an offering.

Often the whole group kneels to pay respect: even the smallest children are gently pressed down and shown how to move their tiny hands up and down – palms together, fingers straight – in the proper gesture of respect to the spirits.

I have never observed this holiday.

Much of the information for this article came from my mother.

In fact, I was surprised by the sheer amount of information she was able to give me.

“Do you think I have time to make up stories?” she asked, when I questioned the source. “I have two books I bought years ago to teach my children about Chinese holidays.”

This was the first time I had even asked about the holiday. If it had come up before, I wasn’t listening. There was a good chance of that.

My mother is from Hong Kong. She doesn’t really need those two books. She has her own memories of the holiday. It was a day off from school, a day for riding bikes in the countryside, for climbing the Lion Mountain. It was a day for visiting her grandmother’s hut in the countryside, too. It was also a day that was often observed at home.

“Since our ancestor's graves are in China and both my dad and his brother were forbidden by the Chinese Government to enter China, they couldn't attend to the graves. My mother cleaned and polished their pictures and plaques. We followed the same rituals, but we set out all the items on a table on the balcony, facing the sky. We burned incense and paper money, and we bowed to our ancestors. Then we had a feast.”

Qingming is a time of family reunion, a time of communion between the living and the dead or the living and the living, between generations. But sometimes it’s just not possible to go home to be with your family. Sometimes you just have to celebrate in your own way—apart—like a foreigner.

Chances are you will be celebrating Qingming in your own way. But whatever way that is, whether it be hiking, picnicking, having a feast of some sort or getting a drink or two somewhere, your method will be coming close to some sort of age-old Chinese tradition. Spare a thought or a toast for the generations that came before and you’ll come even closer.

For a thoughtful explanation of ancestor worship please go here.

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About James Fee