Tag Archives: tomb sweeping

Tomb Sweeping Day [Qingming Festival] Rituals

Age: 19

Text:

Tomb Sweeping Day, or [Qingming Festival] in Chinese, is a traditional, nation-wide festival that usually takes place in April. It is typically when we would go to sweep the tombs of our deceased ancestors and honor the family members who passed away by just cleaning their tombs, bringing food to their tombs, and sometimes burning fake money in front of their tombs.

These acts related to this traditional festival carry their own symbolic meanings. For example, burning money—typically, it will be fake paper money—is a gesture of providing basic needs in life, or ensuring the material needs, for our ancestors. We will also put food like fruits, desserts, and nuts, or anything that the deceased loved to eat, on top of their tomb. This, symbolically, allows them to enjoy the food they like to eat and enjoy the material well-being we as descendants provide for them in the afterlife. I think that through these acts of giving, or offering, of material things, we are trying to give back to our ancestors who passed away the way they took care of us before. And so our ancestors wouldn’t have to worry about not having enough food to eat or money to spend in their afterlife.

This, to me, is also a way of expressing reassurance—a way of telling them (the deceased ancestors) that we are having a good, decent, and dignified life, and we are making genuine efforts in our lives as independent and capable individuals—so here’s the proof: we are making our own money, and we are buying you food, so no need to worry about us!

Family members typically gather together to visit the tombs of their ancestors. Some families, like mine, would typically talk to our deceased loved ones in front of the tomb. We would update them about our recent lives, like our progress at school or at work, just like having an everyday chat with them when they were here, right in front of us. Finally, at the end of this tomb sweeping ritual, we express kind words and blessings to them in their own world.

Context:

The informant learned this ritual by participating in this festival every year, visiting the graves of ancestors with his family since he was a child. As time passes by, he begins to remember the important steps of this ritual, such as burning paper money and talking to the graves as if speaking to ancestors. He thinks that this festival is meaningful in the sense that it allows everyone who participates in its rituals to remember their loved ones who have passed away, and show them care.

Analysis:

  • Death and afterlife: The Tomb Sweeping Day (Qingming) rituals reflect the Chinese’s beliefs about death and afterlife in their culture—people believe that when someone passes, they don’t end their life entirely, and instead, they are just living in a different space and dimension, in their afterlife. This belief in “afterlife” has many cultural origins, including, possibly, Buddhism’s impact in China.
  • Performance: This ritual is performed by a family, with all family members, as a group. This makes tomb sweeping on Tomb Sweeping Day almost a familial thing. This reflects unity and family harmony’s importance in the Chinese culture. In addition, the performance of this ritual—showing up, bringing food, and burning money—is an act of showing respect for the deceased ones in a symbolic (not material) way. Even though the “food” and “money” cannot get to the deceased ones on a material level, on an emotional level, it is an effective way of showing love and care.

Qingming

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 23
Residence: Irvine, CA
Language: English

Text:

A: informant

B: Interviewer

A: It’s this festival question mark. Called Qingming. It’s the date where the dead will supposedly return from, supposedly come back to life and yeah, I don’t remember the story associated with it. But I do know that this day every year, most Chinese people visit their deceased people, deceased family or friends’ grave and then bring them food and stuff.

B: Do you remember the date of this festival?

A: If I search I can find it *laughter*

B: Do you know what kinds of food people would bring?

A: People bring all kinds of food. Something special I guess question mark. We have something it’s called hell’s—not hell but like, there isn’t a concept of hell or heaven but there is a place where people go to when they die and Chinese people will believe that is where reincarnation occurs. Um what we do on Qingming is that we burn money to them and we also burn other paper products like we burn a paper car, a paper house. And supposedly anything that’s burned by smoke should be received by them. And so we also it’s not particularly related to Qingming. People do that on Qingming, but it’s not just Qingming, it’s anytime for their dead family friends. It’s called, they do, it’s like some kind of intense. It’s sort of similar to what you would see in a budest temple. I’m not sure if you’ve seen one before. People like to burn three of them for dead people. It’s said that two is for alive and three is for dead and then sometimes people do one. Anyway, it’s singular and people just use the smoke to convey their thoughts, feelings, and emotions to people it’s believed that anything that burns can be transferred.

Context: The informant was born and grew up in China before moving to the United States to attend High School. The informant grew up always away of Qingming, but has not partaken in the tradition as of yet.

Analysis: Qingming is also known as Tomb Sweeping Day. It is celebrated in China and several other countries in South East Asia. It is celebrated around April 5th as the spring time is supposed to be a time for people to enjoy the outside and take care of their deceased loved ones’ graves. Burning paper makes the paper disappear similar to how a deceased person disappears from their body when they die. Furthermore, fire and smoke climb upward away from human existence and therefore mirrors the deceased’s journey. Therefore the offerings are following a similar path to the person they are supposed to reach. The informant is unsure as to the reasoning behind the purpose of burning three incenses as opposed to two.   

Qing Ming Jie (Tomb-Sweeping Festival)

Context:

B is a 17 year old Taiwanese-American high school student who is from Northern California.

This happened online through a zoom call after I reached out to them about sharing any folklore that they may have. For more context, their grandfather had recently passed away and they had gone to visit his grave recently for the holiday described below. 

Text: 

B: The thing is just known as Qing Ming Jie, otherwise known as the Qing Ming Festival. And in English it kinda just means like… tomb sweeping day. And it’s a Chinese tradition, I’m Taiwanese but we hold a lot of the same traditions as China. But basically, during this festival or Qing Ming Jie, you clean your ancestor’s tombs. I think it’s pretty well known but like Asian cultures are very big on familiy and honor and like respecting the dead like especially your ancestors. So this is like a part of that and it’s basically like the most important thing for like, one of the most important things about honoring your an cestors. You clean their tombs and then like make offerings to them, like give them food typically. You can also, we don’t do this here because I’m not in Taiwan right now, but in American we do it in an easier way. But I know you can also, it’s kinda like also a festival, Qi Ming Festival-

Me: Yeah

B: So I know you can also fly like kites. I know flying kites is pretty popular. Americans don’t do that I realize. I thought Americans flew kites but they don’t.. Or at least not commonly. Basically you just eat food and honor the dead. It’s just very… respect.

Me: Do you guys like, because I know when I visited my Grandpa’s grave when I was in China, it wasn’t on Qing Ming Je, because it was just when I was visiting, but we like burnt the offerings? At least some of them.

B: Yeah. So like for us, you can visit the grave anytime, it doesn’t have to be on Qing Ming Jie, but everyone or most people do go on that specific day because it’s special. My mom goes every sunday or so, obviously because its her father so she goes to see him. But all of us went on Qing Ming Jie, to like honor the specific day. And for offerings, we burn the paper that we make. I don’t know if thats specific, I think it might be specifically buddhist.

Me: is it like, I know I burnt like paper money?

B: Yeah, paper money but we also like fold origami paper like.. You know how gold nugget dumpling things? Those are like specifically for the Buddha. I mean not just Buddha but also just money, currency whatever. But it’s a very specific paper that we have to buy that’s like a specific material thats like very thin and like in the middle has fake gold or fake silver. And we fold it into the shape, its really easily to fold, or at least for me because I’ve had to fold so many. But at the grave we just burn all of it so they can use it in the afterlife and stay rich. So we fold like a lot of many so our grandpa can spend to his liking.

Me: I remember burning the money because we bought it at like the graveyard place because they had a stand for it. But I think it’s also like in China they’re probably more likely to have it because more people are doing it.

B: Yeah over here, we don’t have that. On Qing Ming Jie specifically they had like Buddhist stands, they didn’t sell paper but they sell flowers. Which is fair because the place he was buried is not for Asians, it’s majority asians, but its just flowers being sold there. 

Reflection: 

Qing Ming Jie is a holiday that embodies the values of Chinese traditions of respecting your elders and honoring your ancestors who came before you. While the informat is Buddhist and therefore had specific traditions that tie their religion and the holiday together, these rituals that are conducted on Qing Ming Jie are a common practice in order to honor our ancestors who helped us. This also brings up how many Eastern cultures like China and Taiwan are primarily focused on the past because of its impact on the future and the present. While I have never explicitly celebrated Qing Ming Jie, it was interesting to see the connection between my experiences visiting my Grandfather’s grave in China and the informant visiting their grandfather’s grave for this particular holiday in the US. The festival is one that is celebrated in order to show respect for your ancestors by cleaning up the tomb leaving offerings that the person enjoyed in the living for them to enjoy in the afterlife. Paper money and incense are also often burned together in order to reach the heavens for the person to use in the afterlife. 

Meredith, Anne. “What Is Qingming Festival and How Is It Observed?: Tomb Sweeping Day.” CLI, Chinese Language Institute, 1 Apr. 2022, https://studycli.org/chinese-holidays/qingming-festival/.

QingMing Festival

Nationality: Taiwanese/Singaporean
Age: 21
Occupation: Student

Description: It is a Taiwanese holiday where people would visit the graves of their ancestors and loved ones. 

Background: It was considered a national holiday in Taiwan, where she lived.

Transcript:

BL: So there is a holiday in Taiwan called QingMingJie or QingMing Festival, some people call it Tomb-Sweeping day. It’s when we go to family burial grounds and we clean and decorate the graves and stuff.

Me: And it’s something you do every year.

BL: Yeah, it’s to honor and remember our ancestors and family. People also put stuff in front of the graves too, like food and flowers. Some people would also say prayers to the dead people. Oh we also burn paper, like burning paper money, we write things that we want our ancestors to have in the afterlife and burn the paper.

Me: I think my family does something similar.

BL: Yeah, but I think it’s more recognized in Taiwan because China used to not allow it. Like the cultural revolution and all that stuff.

My thoughts:

As said previously, the holiday was banned in China during the cultural revolution. I have heard about the holiday and participated in a few occasions. But I think this is a strong point of identity for Taiwan because of the banning of the festival, it is for this reason that it is a national holiday in Taiwan while it is a simple tradition in the mainland. Of course, the celebration and honoring of one’s ancestors is something that is consistently prevalent in Chinese and General East Asian culture. The main reason being the celebration of legacy and the immortality of the lineage. Someone is alive as long their ideas are passed on.

Qingming – Tomb Sweeping Festival

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/19/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese, Mandarin

Text (I is the informant, M is the collector)

I: There’s this festival called “Qingming” or, like, tomb sweeping festival. And, basically, it’s where we go to a cemetery, or.. Um… what do you call those other thing?

M: A graveyard? I’m not sure

I: Just cause cemetery and graveyard sounds like too dark and gloomy, but like, it’s on a grassy hill with flowers, it’s chill. Anyways, we kind of just cleaned up the graves… and the tombstones — hence tomb sweeping day. And, I — I think it’s supposed to be like a family reunion type of thing, because that’s how it was, where all my aunts and uncles and stuff would come and clean up the graves and eat some pork and stuff. But, now it’s just been like two — yeah, two families at a time or something.  I missed it, ‘cause I was at school this year, but yeah…. Um, oh yeah. And during the festival week, we kind of sweep the other tombs around — like the neighbors of my ancestors grave. Out of respect, I think. And, I think my mom told me, so we don’t piss off the neighbors. Also, during that time, we kind of burn these…. Patterned paper? It’s cut into shapes of like shoes and clothes and stuff for, um, my great-grandpa. And there’s also, like, fake money called hell money and then… these two other similar hell currency

Thoughts

The informant seemed to focus mainly on the social/familial aspect of this tradition. This makes sense as the informant’s parents are from China, but she is herself American and has never visited China. She says that she views Chinese traditions as similar to family reunions, as they are times where her family gets together to celebrate. It seems that the meaning of this festival for her has less to do with the traditions themselves, and more to do with the people she performs them with.