What are the customs of Qingming Festival? These are the customs of Qingming Festival.

Qingming Festival, also known as the outing festival, has a history of more than 2,500 years. Do you know what the customs of Qingming Festival are? Next, let’s take a look at the traditional activities of Qingming Festival.

What are the customs of Qingming Festival?

Tomb sweeping and ancestor worship

Qingming Festival is a traditional Chinese festival, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice. The participants of the Qingming Festival are all citizens, from the emperor and ministers to the common people, all of whom worship the souls of their ancestors on this festival. Since the Tang Dynasty, the imperial court has given officials holidays so that they can return home to visit graves. Therefore, China has inherited the traditional custom until now. During the Qingming Festival, people are prohibited from using fire and pay tribute to their ancestors.

Flying a kite

Flying kites was a traditional entertainment activity for ancient people during the Qingming Festival. People flew kites not only during the day but also at night. When flying kites at night, strings of colorful lanterns are hung on the guy lines, which are called "magic lanterns". The ancients had their own way of flying kites, in order to let go of bad luck and ward off disasters and difficulties. The ancients would write all the disasters and diseases they feared on kites, and then wait until the kite was high in the air and immediately cut the kite string to let it go with the wind, thus taking away the bad luck. This is what the ancients meant by “breaking the kite to get rid of the bad luck” during the Qingming Festival.

Outing Festival

Starting from around the Tang Dynasty, Qingming Festival absorbed another earlier festival - Shangsi Festival. The main customs of Shangsi Festival are outing and purification (bathing in the river to pray for blessings and ward off disasters). The great Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei's poem "Young men divide their days into groups to travel, without having to celebrate both Qingming and Shangsi Festival" vividly describes the outings of people around Qingming Festival at that time. Therefore, Qingming Festival is also called the outing festival.

Cuju

Since fire and cold food are prohibited during the Qingming Festival, in order to prevent the weak from succumbing to the cold and getting hurt, the ancients advocated physical activities during the Qingming Festival. Cuju was also one of the favorite games of ancient people during the Qingming Festival. Ju is a leather ball made of leather and stuffed with hair inside. Cuju is kicking the ball with the feet. According to legend, it was invented by Huangdi and its original purpose was to train warriors. It was most popular in the Tang Dynasty. In the "Qi Qiu Fu" by Zhong Wuyan of the Tang Dynasty, it is written: "The square is clear in spring, the scenery is beautiful during the Cold Food Festival, the players are competing and running, and the noise is bustling." It describes the new look of everything, the Qingming Festival, which is a good time to play football.