Stories of Qing Ming Festival
清明節的故事
Gisela Jia
and CCBG Teachers
Easter, Passover. Many cultures have a holiday to celebrate the arrival of Spring. Chinese also have one. However, it's not called the Spring Festival, because that name has been given to the Chinese New Year, which falls on a period from late January to February.
Why? Isn't that winter? It turns out, more than 2,000 years ago, Chinese divided the season of Spring into three periods: Meng, Zhong, Ji. These mean Early, Mid, and Late Spring. Meng falls on lunar calendar January, Zhong on February, and Ji on March. As the lunar calendar is roughly one month behind our regular calendar, Ji, late Spring, occurs in April of the regular calendar.
Ancient Chinese didn't just call it Spring when the grasses turned green and flowers blossomed. They sensed the Spring when the grass roots and flower buds under the snow were waking up to regrow. When we see a flower popping up on a branch in early April, shouldn't we count its earlier stages as part of the "new life", even though we may not have seen those with our eyes directly? Clearly, ancient Chinese were observant, thoughtful, and also practical enough to mark their ideas in a calendar for their descendants.
So, the Spring Festival also called Lunar New Year is to celebrate early Spring. Qing Ming Festival is to celebrate the beginning of the month-long late Spring. Around Song dynasty (960-1279), Qing Ming absorbed two other then already 1000-year old festivals, Cold Food Festival (Han Shi Jie), and Shang Si Jie, with dates around Qing Ming Festival.
Then, in 1935, the official date of Qing Ming Festival was fixed on April 5th (Lunar calendar early March) by the government of the Republic of China.
What do Chinese do on the Qing Ming day?
Chinese have decided to get in touch with things very important to them: thinking about family members who passed away; touching the green grasses and viewing trees and flowers.
Why and how do they do these things? CCBG teachers have gone through a large section of videos, selected and organized them as below. Each video is just a few minutes long. By going through them in this sequence, you're going to become knowledgeable in this important Chinese festival.
Video 1: A brief intro of Qing Ming activities
(1 minute 21 seconds; Mandarin; English subtitle)
Video 2: A tale of how the tradition of memorizing passed away family members started
(8 minutes; Mandarin; Chinese subtitle)
It is a poignant tale of how Liu Bang, the founding emperor of West Han Dynasty （202 B.C. - 8 A.D.) started the tradition. The tale made this famous emperor more human. In reality, even before him, Chinese already had rituals to memorize family members who passed away.
Video 3 - How ancient Chinese celebrated Cold Food Festival
(4 minutes; Chinese subtitle)
In this video, you can see how a lady prepares food for her outdoor picnic on Han Shi Jie (Cold Food Festival) which was combined with Qing Ming Festival.
Video 4 - Green Rice Balls (Qing Tuan)
(5 minutes; Mandarin)
This is an in-depth demonstration of Green Rice Balls, one of the most popular food for Qing Ming.
Quotation from the video script: “這就是生活的味道。有苦，有澀，也有甜。” (Life for sure is bitter and sweet.)
Ancient Chinese ate cold food like Green Rice Balls to observe the Cold Food Festival tradition. They did not use fire on the Cold Food Festival. One explanation of this tradition comes from the story of Jie Zi Tui. He was a loyal follower of a prince in exile for 19 years. However, when the prince finally became a powerful king, Jie Zi Tui refused to become an appointed official. He hid himself deep in the mountains. The king decided to set fire on three sides of the mountain to force him to escape out of the 4th side. But instead, Jie Zi Tui chose to die in the fire. The distraught king declared the Cold Food festival to pause using fire to pay respect to Jie Zi Tui.
Video 5: Celebrating Shang Si Festival in Paris
(1 minute 42 seconds; Mandarin)
On the day of Shang Si Festival, ancient Chinese would go to the rivers to bathe themselves, and go outdoors to enjoy nature. Once Shang Si Festival became combined with Qing Ming Festival, these activities then became Qing Ming activities. This video recorded a 2020 event in Paris when local Chinese and French were celebrating Shang Si Festival.
Video 6: Teacher Amy looks for Green Rice Balls in Flushing
(8 minutes; Mandarin)
Last but not least, in search of Green Rice Balls (Qing Tuan) made and sold in NYC, teacher Amy went on a hunt in Flushing and got some very useful clues for us.
In the spirit of Qing Ming Festival, CCBG teachers join our families in remembering our loved ones and in embracing the Spring of 2022!
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