Things You Need To Know About Tomb Sweeping Day
The Chinese community nationwide visited graves and burial grounds of their loved ones in conjunction with the Qingming or Ching Ming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day. This year, it falls on April 5.
The origin of the sacred festival is a classic urban legend that involves cannibalism and an accidental murder.
It is about Jie Zitui, who rather graphically cut his own flesh to feed a starving prince named Chong'er. After Chong'er became King Jinwen Gong, he remembered that he forgot to reward Jiezi Tui. When he went to Jie Zitui's house, he found it empty; Jie had gone to Mian Mountain (绵山) to hide with his mother. Jinwen Gong set a fire around the mountain to smoke Jie Zitui out, but the official never appeared. After the fire burned out, Jinwen Gong found Jie and his mother’s corpses near a willow tree. In the tree hole, Jinwen Gong found a letter from Jie urging him to be a good king.
Nevertheless, the festival has become a classic celebration for Chinese people worldwide.
Of course, the main activity of Qingming is tomb sweeping. Young and old pray before the ancestors, sweep their tombs and offer food, tea, wine, chopsticks, joss paper or libations to the ancestors. Families often have a picnic of the offerings at the tomb. If the cemetery regulations allow it, they will burn paper money and incense before the tombstone.
But some young Chinese e-merchants have been making money by offering substitute relatives or friends to sweep tombs ahead of the Ching Ming Festival.
For a 15-minute remembrance ritual, the highest fee was 800 yuan (US$116).
Qingming is also known as Taqing Festival. Tàqīng (踏青) means spring outing, an event usually that would usually involve enjoying April's perfect spring air.
Chinese people also like to fly kites during Qingming Festival. That's because people in ancient times believed that on Qingming, the gates of hell were open, which meant that they could send their greetings to the departed by kite. These days people cut their kites loose when flying them in hopes that it will bring them good luck in the new year.
There are special dishes that are only eaten on this day too. For example, the Tujia ethnic group eat pig heads and the Miao minority makes a type of pastry called Qingming Ba with mugwort and sticky rice. People in the South of China eat qingtuan, a dumpling made out of glutinous rice and barley grass (which is why they are so deliciously green), but people in the North don’t have the same tradition.
These green dumplings are made of glutinous rice mixed with Chinese mugwort leaves and are usually filled with sweet red bean paste. Edible when they are young and fresh, mugwort leaves are burned to repel mosquitos, used to treat minor swelling and are even said to ward off evil.
Before modern medicine, boiled mugwort leaves were regarded a great disinfectant, and washing your feet in warm mugwort-leaf water was also believed to bring a good night's sleep. In traditional Chinese medicine, the leaves are prescribed to repel "cold" and "damp" inside the body - just what you want on a spring day.
Home recipe:
1.Soak the red beans in cold water overnight, then boil them until soft. Grind them to make fine dry paste. If the paste is too moist, stir-fry with a little vegetable oil. Mix with the sugar and set aside.
2.Wash the mugwort leaves and cut them into small pieces; grind the leaves.
3. Add glutinous rice flour to the ground leaves. Knead the mixture thoroughly together with warm water until the dough loses its stickiness; add a spoonful of oil into the dough for color.
4. Divide the dough into blocks of the same size.
5. Stuff each block of dough with the red bean paste, make them into small balls or jiaozi-shaped dumplings if you like.
6. Steam the dumplings for 15 minutes, and serve.
Enjoy the qingtuan and share them to your friends.
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