The Significance of Steamed Swallows in Tomb-Sweeping Day

The moral of steamed swallows in Tomb-Sweeping Day is: When spring comes, a hundred flowers blossom. Everything is animistic, whose house the swallow lives in represents happiness and auspiciousness.

Tomb-Sweeping Day is one of the twenty-four solar terms, which falls on April 4th or 5th of the Gregorian calendar every year, that is, from winter to108th. At this time, the sun reached the longitude 15 degrees. Among the 24 solar terms, only Tomb-Sweeping Day is a solar term, which is a traditional festival in China. Tomb-Sweeping Day, also known as Tomb Sweeping Festival, Ghost Festival and Ghost Festival, is called Sanming Festival together with the Mid-Autumn Festival on July 15 and the Next Yuan Festival on July 10/5, which is related to offering sacrifices to ghosts and gods. Worshiping ancestors and sweeping graves is the most important festival.

The traditional Tomb-Sweeping Day in China began in the Zhou Dynasty and has a history of more than 2,500 years. Tomb-Sweeping Day is first of all a very important solar term. As soon as Tomb-Sweeping Day arrives, the temperature rises, which is a good season for spring ploughing and planting. Therefore, there is a saying that "melons and beans are planted before and after Qingming". Agricultural proverb "Planting trees is not as clear as Qingming".

Later, as the days of Qingming and cold food approached, cold food was the day when people banned fire to sweep graves. Gradually, cold food and Qingming became one, and cold food became another name of Qingming and became a custom of Qingming. Tomb-Sweeping Day, don't move fireworks, just eat cold food.

In 2008, Tomb-Sweeping Day was established as a national statutory holiday. On May 20th, 2006, this folk festival was approved by the State Council to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. Tomb-Sweeping Day is an important traditional folk festival in China, and it is one of the eight important festivals: Shangyuan, Qingming, Long Summer, Dragon Boat Festival, Central Plains, Mid-Autumn Festival, Winter Solstice and New Year's Eve.