Qingmingjie
The name of Qing Ming (清明) indicates in fact one the twenty-four periods jie IQ (節氣) of the agricultural calendar Chinese, which recovers about the first two weeks of April. Its name, in French purity (of the air) and light indicates the climatic characteristics of the period. It was formerly the time when the peasants prepared and checked the hardware requirement with the agricultural activities and sericultural to come.
Origins of the festival
Qingmingjie (清明節), the Festival of Qing Ming , is one day indicated in China like national day of cleaning of the tombs since 1935. Bank holiday with Taiwan, its date is fixed there at April 4th. Nowadays, Qingmingjie is thus tiny room to one day devoted to the maintenance of the tombs, a little like the All Saints' day in France, but they were in the one longer period beginning gathering the ritual ones and activities of different origins.
At the base of the modern festival one finds two activities pertaining to worship very old:
Shangsi (上巳) was a festival attested in the country of Zheng (current Henan) at the beginning of the Christian era. In the beginning, the ritual ones aiming driving out the bad influences and at alleviating the wandering hearts and the demons took place at the edge of water, but at the time Song it had become a simple day of activities in the open air. It is primarily this aspect of exit in the countryside (where the tombs are located) which remains in the current festival of Qing Ming, with the use of branches of Saule for their apotropaïques virtues.
Hanshi (寒食), the to eat cold , is a habit attested as of the time of the Han Occidentaux in the district of Taiyuan to the Shanxi. It took seat at the origin in winter, and one observed there in the honor of Jiezitui (介子推), character of antiquity Minister for the duke Wen of Jin, prohibition to light no fire for one period which can go from five days to one month. Besides observed in a severe way, this habit seemed to be prejudicial with the health of young people and oldest, according to the testimony of a work of the time, the Hou Hanshu .
CAD CAD, founder of one of the three kingdoms, would have moved this ritual during the time of Qing Ming. Hanshi transmitted to the current festival the habit not to light fire during at least a day (very little observed nowadays) and to prepare special mets being able to be consumed cold.
The type generally mentioned in the old texts was a kind of pulp, but today one will think rather of the runbing (潤餅), kinds of Crêpe S rolled which are at the origin of the rollers of spring chunjuan (nonfried in their version first). The roller of spring would be in the beginning a clever method used by those which could not deposit a complete food offering on the tombs, due to poverty or shortness of provisions (wars etc…). They were satisfied to deposit a little food on cold pancakes which could then be rolled and consumed.
Another interesting habit, lost at the beginning of the XXe century: in the south-west of the China, one decorated or engraved egg shells at the time of Qing Ming.
Visit tombs
The habit of the visit to the family tombs, saomu (掃墓), become the essential activity of the day of Qing Ming, seems to be fixed under the Tang.
Several factors would have converged in favor of its existence:
It would perpetuate the very old tradition of worship to the wandering hearts of Shangsi and the practice to visit the tombs associated with the worship with Jiezitui with the period with Hanshi . Moreover, the attribution of many days off starting from the Tang would have given to all, including those which lived far from their area of origin, an exceptional possibility to visit the ancestral tombs.
Nevertheless, some Chinese chose other periods for the visit of their tombs, because of local or family habits, or quite simply for reasons of convenience. Thus, the many bank holidays granted under the Tang not being preserved, one can see Hakka S, ethnos group Chinese whose men were often going to work with far, to make profitable the longer period of leave of the Chinese New year and to clean their tombs at the time of the Fête of the lanterns.
Caption of Qingmingjie
The popular legend which recapitulates the direction of the festival is that of Jiezitui (介子推), a civil servant of the lord of Jin at the time of the Printemps and the Falls '', presented like a model of integrity and filial devotion. It would have followed in its exile the heir to the throne driven out by a treacherous minister, going until him to offer a piece of its flesh as food whereas it died of hunger. But once returned in possession of his title, the new sovereign Jin Wengong forgot his benefactor completely. The day when the memory returned to him, mû by the remorse it decided to make it seek and learned that poverty had pushed it to go to live in the forest with his/her old mother. As it was not found, somebody had the contestable idea to put fire at the forest to make it leave; the result was that it burned there sharp with his mother. The duke of Jin ordered whereas a worship is returned to him and that one abstains from lighting fire at the time of the birthday his death. The following year, reconsidering in pilgrimage the spot, the duke discovered a growth of Saule at the place where Jiezitui had died. He card-indexed it in his hairstyle, and the following years each one took the practice to hang a branch of willow to its door in remembering the hero.
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