How is life in Tomb-Sweeping Day?

The festival in Tomb-Sweeping Day is at the turn of mid-spring and late spring, and Tomb-Sweeping Day is actually a time for ancestor worship and outing, so Tomb-Sweeping Day is a good day for grave-sweeping.

As one of the traditional festivals, sweeping graves is the most representative custom in Tomb-Sweeping Day. Grave-sweeping refers to offering sacrifices to ancestors in a cemetery to express filial piety and yearning for ancestors, which belongs to a cultural tradition of honoring ancestors and pursuing the future with caution.

Influenced by traditional cultural psychology, China people have a strong sense of family, pay special attention to family and ancestors, and have a strong sense of ancestor worship and ancestor return. Grave-sweeping is a special way to remember ancestors, so in fact, Tomb-Sweeping Day has the custom of sweeping graves to worship ancestors all over the country.

During the Qingming Festival, the spring is bright and the vegetation is lush, which is also a good time for people to travel in the spring. Therefore, Tomb-Sweeping Day is also called Youth Day. Tomb-Sweeping Day not only pays attention to the prohibition of fire to sweep graves, but also has a series of customs and sports activities, such as outing, swinging, cuju, playing polo and inserting willows.

Customs in various parts of Tomb-Sweeping Day

Guangdong 1

In Guangdong, sweeping graves in Tomb-Sweeping Day is called sweeping mountains, worshiping mountains and worshiping the Qing Dynasty. During the Qingming Festival, the images of spring and tranquility appeared in Guangdong. Grave-sweeping and outing are the main custom themes of Cantonese festivals. Because of convenience, the whole family, old and young, also walked in Shan Ye and the countryside after worshipping the mountain.

2. Hong Kong and Macau

The Qingming custom in Hong Kong and Macao is roughly the same as that in Guangdong. During their stay in Tomb-Sweeping Day, Hong Kong people usually pay homage to their ancestors' graves, burn incense and incense, remove weeds, and offer fruit, fragrant wine, flowers, roast pigs or boiled chickens. Although most cemeteries in Hong Kong are connected by public transport, the traffic in Tomb-Sweeping Day was still congested that day. In order to avoid crowding, people used to worship at the wrong peak, but they didn't necessarily follow the tradition of sweeping graves to worship their ancestors in Tomb-Sweeping Day.

3. Zhejiang

In Zhejiang, customs vary from place to place. Some places offer sacrifices to sweep graves on Qingming Festival, and some places must sweep graves on Qingming Festival. Generally speaking, local people worship Tai Gong a few days earlier, first to worship Tai Gong and then to worship their ancestors.

When sweeping Tomb-Sweeping Day, we should first "add soil" or "add soil" to the ancestral grave, that is, take soil with a dustpan and add it to the top of the ancestral grave. Sacrifices are set, candles are lit first, then incense is lit, incense is distributed according to the number of people, and the high-ranking priests pray, and then everyone bows down together. Finally, pack up the sacrifices and leave. All the graves have been visited, and all the sacrifices are made in the same procedure.