Information about Tomb-Sweeping Day.

Tomb-Sweeping Day, also known as the outing festival, is at the turn of mid-spring and late spring. Tomb-Sweeping Day is a traditional festival in China, and it is also one of the most important sacrificial festivals. It is a day to sweep graves and worship ancestors. Tomb-Sweeping Day is a traditional festival of the Chinese nation, which started in the Zhou Dynasty and has a history of more than 2,500 years. Through the historical development and evolution, Tomb-Sweeping Day has extremely rich connotations, and different customs have been formed in different places, with sweeping graves to worship ancestors and hiking as the basic themes.

Tomb-Sweeping Day is one of the important "eight festivals a year" in China. Generally, it is around April 5 of the Gregorian calendar, and the festival is very long. There are two sayings: 8 days before 10 and 10 days before 10, and these 20 days belong to Tomb-Sweeping Day. Tomb-Sweeping Day originally meant grave-sweeping day, and the government of the Republic of China designated 15 days after the vernal equinox in 935 as a national holiday, also known as the national grave-sweeping day.

Tomb-Sweeping Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Spring Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival are also called the four traditional festivals in China. On May 20th, 2006, with the approval of the State Council, Tomb-Sweeping Day announced by the Ministry of Culture of China was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.

Tomb-Sweeping Day is a sacrificial festival in China. "Sacrifice" is a festival to mourn ancestors, as opposed to festivals to worship gods and land gods. The participants in Tomb-Sweeping Day are all the people, from princes and ministers to ordinary people, to pay homage to the dead souls of their ancestors on this festival. Since the Tang Dynasty, the imperial court has given officials a holiday and asked them to go to their hometown to visit their graves.

According to the Song Dynasty's Dream of Liang Lu, every time in Tomb-Sweeping Day, "officials go out to the tombs of the suburbs to show respect for the time." The number of grave sweepers is not limited to men and women, and they often go out with their families. In this way, grave-sweeping activities around Tomb-Sweeping Day often become the personal participation of the whole society. Within a few days, the country people came and went, and the scale was extremely prosperous.

Extended data:

The origin of Tomb-Sweeping Day:

"Huainanzi Astronomical Training" records: "On the fifteenth day after the vernal equinox, when the handle of the Big Dipper points to the second place, the wind will clear up." The "Qingming" solar term got its name. Qingming is one of the twenty-four solar terms in China, which was determined by the ancients according to the astronomical phenomena and the cycle of the four seasons. On the occasion of Tomb-Sweeping Day's warm spring, outing in the suburbs is the solar term theme of the ancients; With the development of history, it has become a clear custom to sweep graves to worship ancestors while hiking in the suburbs.

Ancestor worship and outing are two major themes of Tomb-Sweeping Day customs. These two traditional customs and habits have been passed down in China for thousands of years without interruption.

References:

Baidu Encyclopedia-Tomb-Sweeping Day