This article is forwarded from The Hoi An Archive
Text/Chen Guishan
Qingming is one of the 24 solar terms, which is both a chronological symbol and a traditional festival, which is about April 5 (or the day before and after) of the Gregorian calendar every year. The earliest written record of Qingming is in the Huainanzi Astronomical Training: "Fifteen days after the spring equinox, dou zhi B is Qingming." "Hundred Questions of the Age" said: "All things grow at this time, all are clean and clear, so it is called qingming." It can be seen that the name of "Qingming" is related to the fact that it was at the turn of mid-spring and late spring, and everything was "clean and clear". In recent times, as far as the whole country is concerned, the festivals of cold food, Qingming and Shangwei have been roughly merged into one, becoming a festival of ancestor worship and youth travel, and passed down in the name of Qingming Festival.
Qingming Festival is a folk tradition of tracing the origins of the festival, the main activity is to sweep the tomb and worship the ancestors. It is generally believed that tomb sweeping originated in the Qin Dynasty (or pre-Qin), but the early tomb sweeping was not necessarily in the Qingming season, most of which were swept during the cold food festival one or two days before the Qingming Festival. Later, the cold food tomb sweeping was gradually changed to Qingming, as recorded in wu Zimu's "Record of Dream Liang" in the Song Dynasty: Every year on the Day of the Qingming Dynasty, "officials and scholars go out of the suburban provinces to pay tribute to the times." The festival of cold food has gradually been forgotten by people.
In the Ming Dynasty Liu Wei and Yu Yizheng's "Imperial Capital Scenery and Material Strategy", there is a more detailed record of the custom of sweeping tombs in the Qingming Dynasty: "On the Qingming Day of March, men and women sweep the tombs, bear the honor of the tree, hang ingots behind the palanquins, and the Cantonese are full of Daoye." Worshippers, mourners, weeping people, and those who weed and cultivate soil for the tomb burned the ingots and placed paper money on the grave. If there is no paper money in hope, it is a lonely grave. Crying, not returning, tending to the fragrant tree, choosing a garden, and sitting drunk. "The tomb sweeping process of modern Quanzhou people is basically the same as that of Liu and Yu Ershi.
Quanzhou proverb: "Qingming does not go home and has no tomb (or no ancestor)." Under normal circumstances, people who go out will go home for the festival, and overseas Chinese will send money home before the arrival of the three festivals of Qingming and July and Chinese New Year's Eve in their hometown to prepare for the expenses required for the festival. At noon on the same day, each family should prepare a sumptuous five-flavor feast bowl to honor the ancestral gods in the hall, as well as the lord of the house and the foundation lord. During the sacrifice, incense is burned, candles are burned, gold paper is burned, firecrackers are set off, and the dishes are removed after the ceremony is completed, and the family has lunch together. The main recipe for the meal is "Run Cake Dish", to pour various dishes together into the pot and mix and heat, then spread out the crust, sprinkle with ghee seaweed and peanuts on the bottom, put on the dish, roll up the sweet sauce or hot sauce, some are fried before eating.
Run cake dish Image: Once regenerated Fish double double
Other places in southern Fujian also have the custom of eating run cake, but not called run cake but called "pancake", about the origin of this custom, folklore is like this: in the past, there was a Wen Zhuangyuan, surnamed Cai, named Mo Yi, although the appearance is not proud (one hand, lame foot, blind, crooked mouth), but the talent is smart, full of articles, 16-year-old Zhongjinshi, 19 years old Zhongzhuangyuan, named Seven Provinces Experience, Three Provinces Patrol, so the daily affairs are busy, even three meals a day have forgotten to eat. Cai Moyi's wife was very wise and came up with a clever plan, hanging her husband's hand with a rope to the corner of his mouth, and giving him a rolled pancake so that he could easily eat. It is said that this is the source of the crepes eaten in later generations, although it has nothing to do with the festival, but because it is very delicious and has a unique flavor, it is used by people as a festival food and used to worship the ancestors.
The seasonal food of the Qingming Festival of Quanzhou people is "Qingming Dumpling". Before the festival, grind glutinous rice, scoop sorghum, and rice as flour, mix water and knead it into a dumpling skin, and then knead it with mung beans, bowl beans, dried sweet potatoes, fried wheat fragrant beating and sugar to form a dumpling filling, and make a half-moon or hemispherical shape, and the "Qingming dumplings" with vegetable leaves or bamboo leaves and guava leaves are laid down. Among them, there is a more special one called "foot eye", its shape and size like a small oak ball, and like a foot order, hence the name. The preparation method is to roll wheat as flour, mixed with rock sugar, and some also put some mung bean filling, made into balls, steamed in the pot and eaten quite deliciously. It is commonly said that Qingming eats this food, which can increase foot strength. Eating "Run cake dish" and "Qingming dumplings" during the Qingming Festival is considered to be the legacy of the ancient cold food diet customs.
Qingming Rong Photo: Zhang Huiling
Worshiping ancestors at noon is collectively known as "doing festivals". There is a distinction between worshipping private ancestors and worshipping public ancestors, and worshiping private ancestors is carried out in their own halls as mentioned earlier, such as the newly deceased house, and they must cry loudly during the sacrifice, which is unbearable to hear. If it belongs to a large ancestral family, it is also necessary to worship the ancestors in the ancestral hall or family temple, called the "Spring Festival", and the sacrifice is prepared by the family in the duty of the clan, and the "spring steaming" ceremony is performed in the order of the teeth. On that day, the gate of the ancestral temple is opened, and all the descendants of the clan who marry their wives can enter the ancestral temple to enjoy a feast. And the parents and villagers also took advantage of this time to discuss the important matters of the ancestral temple.
The 10 days before and after the Qingming Festival are the date of tomb visitation. If the tomb is visited on the day of the Qingming Festival, after eating the runcake dish at noon, the family, except for the old and sick and the infants, all go out, hoes, carry a dustpan, and bring The Qingming dumplings, hair cakes, incense candle paper money, gold paper firecrackers and brushes, vermilion paint and red paint, and march to the graveyard of relatives, called "walking the mountain" or "stepping on the green". After arriving at the cemetery, first inspect the grave ring to check whether the tomb building has collapsed and whether the grave tree and rock are damaged. Then the family began to work, the adult first used a hoe to hoe the weeds around the cemetery, and cleaned up the tomb and waterway (commonly known as the "Descendant Road"), cultivated soil and planted trees, if there was a collapse, but also to build a barrier to sort out, the inscription on the tombstone and the mountain boundary stele should be painted red, and then put on the fruit, burn incense and light candles.
Qingming Ancestor Worship Photo: Cangyang
And children like to use small stones to press white, red, green, blue, yellow and other colors of paper money on the tomb and around, called "paper money", these colorful paper money, from a distance, like the blooming mountain flowers in spring, so that the usual desolate grave mountain, suddenly add a piece of business. After the paper money was sacrificed, the children and grandchildren knelt before the tomb to pray for filial piety and pray for the spirit of their relatives in heaven to ensure the safety and happiness of their families in the future.
When sweeping the tomb, the women in the deep Shanghai area of the Jinjiang River also have a strange custom of crying tombs. Deep Shanghai is a peninsula, the graves are concentrated on the seashore, and the women of each family cry bitterly after the sacrifice, and their tones are swirling, and the voice is sad, and the voice is sad, and the expression is sincere and tear-inducing. Its scene is very similar to the tang Dynasty cold food festival weeping sacrifice burning paper money described in the poem "Cold Food Wild Hope Yin" by the great poet Bai Juyi: "Outside the Guo Gate of the Hill Ruins, who cries at the cold food?" The wind blows paper money in the wilderness, and the ancient tombs are full of spring grass and green. Tang pear blossoms reflect poplar trees, all life and death elsewhere. The lonely fountain wept and did not hear, and Xiao Xiao twilight rain people returned. "After the sacrifice of paper money, kneeling and weeping at the tomb, that is, burning gold paper and setting off firecrackers, the tomb sweeping ends here, if it belongs to the ancestral family, those who participate in the tomb sweeping can also be assigned "Ding Bao", and the annual "Ding Bao" is offered by the newly festive family.
It is customary to relocate burials, repair graves, inspect remains, change "imperial gold" (clay pots containing bones) 10 days before and after the Qingming Festival, and move the soil at will. Overseas Chinese who went out in the early years, if they died in a foreign country, would account to their descendants and bury their bones or ashes on the land of their hometown, hoping that their souls would return to their hometowns, thus deriving special folk customs such as sending tomb soil, sending ashes and water souls.
The Qingming Festival in the Shijing area of Nan'an was changed to the Shangwei Festival (commonly known as the "March Festival") on the third day of the third month of the lunar calendar. According to legend, it was because Zheng Chenggong (Shijingren) rebelled against the Qing Dynasty and restored the Ming Dynasty, and the word "Qing" was avoided being placed above the word "Ming". Anxi people celebrate the Qingming Festival, and all the doors are planted with barley ears and banyan leaves, taking the meaning of evergreen abundance. However, according to the old Fang Zhi, the ancient custom was to "plant willows at the door". Qingming Festival planting willows and wearing willow customs, the north is more common, it is said to commemorate the ancestor of the "religious people's crops" - Shennong clan, later developed into a year and hope for longevity, the folk have "Qingming does not wear willows, red face into Haoshou" said, farmers to the day of the willow planting climate to occupy water and drought, such as rain main water. Its meaning is similar to that of the barley ears and the branches of the banyan leaves.
During the Qingming Festival, in addition to the festival sweeping the green, there are activities such as afforestation and kite flying. After the founding of New China, a new trend of commemorating martyrs and paying homage to martyrs' cemeteries appeared in society.
Source 丨 Chen Guibing," Quanzhou Folk Customs, January 2001