Is Qingming Festival Ghost Festival?

"Tomb-Sweeping Day is a Ghost Festival and a traditional festival of sacrifice in China. Tomb-Sweeping Day has a long history and many customs and taboos. It is also one of the traditional 24 solar terms. July 15th is Ghost Festival, so Tomb-Sweeping Day is called Ghost Festival. We have burial, cremation, sea burial and temple worship to pay homage to our ancestors. No matter what kind of burial form, it is the place where the remains of ancestors rest. People are divided into three souls and seven souls. People die or go to hell or reincarnation, but there are still many souls in the cemetery. Therefore, this is why the older generation like to call Tomb-Sweeping Day "Ghost Festival". The so-called Ghost Festival, as its name implies, is a festival related to ghosts and a festival to worship ghosts (undead). Many countries and nationalities in the world have their own ghost festivals. In China, there is more than one Halloween a year. Today, people are familiar with it, mainly Tomb-Sweeping Day and Mid-Autumn Festival (commonly known as "July 30th").

There have always been many opinions about the formation of Tomb-Sweeping Day and Mid-Autumn Festival. It is generally believed that Tomb-Sweeping Day is a fusion of three ancient festivals with similar dates-Shangsi, Cold Food and Qingming. The "July 30" Ghost Festival is related to the Taoist Mid-Autumn Festival and the Buddhist Orchid Festival. In fact, in theory, the two ghost festivals, Tomb-Sweeping Day and Zhongyuan Festival, originated from China's ancient thought of Yin-Yang and Five Elements (the five elements refer to gold, water, wood, fire and earth). According to the theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements, ghosts belong to Yin. Yin Qi is mainly water vapor, such as "Huainan Tian Zi Xun" cloud: "Cold accumulated in yin is water". From the five elements, the north in azimuth, the winter in season, the nonyl on the ten-day trunk, the Haihe son on the twelve branches, and the cold in the five qi all belong to water.