The origin and story of Tomb-Sweeping Day?

Tomb-Sweeping Day, also known as the outing festival, is at the turn of mid-spring and late spring, that is, the first 108 day from winter to the future. It is a traditional festival in China, and it is also one of the most important festivals to worship ancestors and sweep graves. The traditional Tomb-Sweeping Day of the Han nationality in China began in the Zhou Dynasty and has a history of more than 2,500 years.

Tomb-Sweeping Day falls on April 5th or 6th in the national calendar, because it falls on the 5th15th day after the equinox in 24 solar terms, so it is not fixed on April 5th, nor is it determined by the lunar calendar. Tomb-Sweeping Day, also known as the National Tomb-Sweeping Day, was a national holiday designated by the government in 24 years of the Republic of China. China has a long history of offering sacrifices to ancestors. As early as ancient times, emperors and generals offered sacrifices to ancestral temples, and in the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius offered sacrifices to tombs, all of which were unique to nobles. After the Qin and Han Dynasties, the aristocratic system came to an end, and it was a custom for ordinary people to offer sacrifices to ancestral graves.

Legend:

At the end of Qin Dynasty, Liu Bang finally defeated the overlord and won the world. Liu bang returned to China dressed in gold and wanted to go to his parents' grave to worship, but because of years of war, the grave was covered with weeds and his parents' grave could not be found.

Liu bang is very sad. Although his subordinates also helped him search all the tombstones, he didn't find his parents' graves until dusk. Finally, Liu Bang took the paper out of his sleeve, tore it into many small pieces, held it tightly in his hand, and prayed to God: "My parents are alive in the sky, so I will throw these papers into the air. If the paper falls in one place and the wind cannot move, it is my parents' grave. "

Say that finish, Liu Bang threw the paper into the air, and sure enough, a piece of paper landed on a grave that could not be blown no matter how the wind blew. Liu bang ran over and looked at the vague tombstone carefully, and sure enough he saw his parents' names engraved on it. Later, folks like Liu Bang, Tomb-Sweeping Day went to the ancestral graves every year, and pressed a few pieces of paper on the graves with small clods to show his grave-sweeping.