Short comment: The new form of sacrifice sweeping, "civilized fashion" or "deviating from the ancient precepts"?
China News Service, Beijing, April 5 Title: New Forms of Sacrifice sweeping, "civilized fashion" or "deviating from ancient precepts"?
Author Han Yu
It is also the Qingming Festival, reminiscing about the past. Over the past few years, the advocacy of changing customs and customs and the repeated hidden dangers of the epidemic have made new forms of sacrifice and sweeping frequently emerged: whenever all parts of China advocate civilized sacrifice sweeping, cloud sacrifices and substitute sacrifices have become more and more widely used; funeral reform has also been deeply implemented, and tree burials, flower burials and other methods have been continuously promoted. Is this trend "civilized style" or "deviating from ancient precepts"? Or you can return to the cultural roots of the Qingming Festival and the historical context of the Chinese funeral system.
Data chart: On April 5, qingming festival, Lanzhou funeral home and its five cemeteries suspended on-site sacrifice sweeping, guided residents to make online sacrifices, and provided "substitute sacrifice sweeping" services. Courtesy of Lanzhou Funeral Home
The connection between Qingming and sacrifice is generated by historical evolution. The word "Qingming" first appeared as a seasonal marker in the Huainanzi Astronomical Training, "fifteen days after the spring equinox, dou zhi B, for qingming", and has nothing to do with mourning and sacrifice. The Old Book of Tang records that early folk sacrifices were irregular, and Tang Xuanzong legislated that the time for going to the tomb was the Cold Food Festival. The Qingming Festival has truly become a festival of ancestor worship, which is already the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty carried out the reform of the integration of festivals and customs, merged the cold food and Qingming with similar time, and integrated the ancient folk customs such as the Shangwei Festival "Qiyu", which formed the basic structure of the cultural meaning and social customs of the Qingming Festival, which is well known today.
Closely related to the cultural evolution of the Qingming Festival is the development of the funeral system. The traditional Chinese mainstream burial style is earth burial, but archaeological evidence shows that cremation was also carried out in the Neolithic period, and it was also popular in the Pre-Qin period among the Qi and Qiang people, and later banned by the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties for violating Confucian funeral rites. For the sake of land-saving ecology, cremation has been widely promoted under the modern cemetery system and is now the mainstream. There are also many changes in the inheritance of the rituals. Gu Yanwu said in the "Rizhilu" that "Qin Xing Xirong, the ceremony of the Zongmiao Temple is unknown, and the special sleeping hall is on the side of the tomb", regarding the sacrifice of the Zongmiao Temple as orthodox, and regards the rise of the tomb sacrifice as the decline of the ancient ceremony after the "barbarian invasion". In the view of scribes, sacrifice should pay attention to the spirit of the ancestors, followed by the remains, and the tomb sacrifice is upside down. However, no matter how much criticism the tomb sacrifice is criticized, it is repeatedly forbidden in the folk, because the common people build tombs on the wasteland hills, rain washed away, wild beasts trample, weeds, may destroy the ancestral cemetery, and the tomb sacrifice can allow them to find and protect in time - this is also the root of "tomb sweeping". Therefore, the "cold food tomb sacrifice" stipulated by the Tang Dynasty not only standardized the time of sacrifice, but also changed with the trend and recognized the legitimacy of the "tomb sacrifice".
Infographic: Citizens sweeping graves in a cemetery. China News Service reporter Yang Bo photographed
The folk proverb says that "Qingming is like a year", and it is said that "man is born of his ancestors, so he is worthy of God". Chinese's attitude towards funeral sacrifice is serious and solemn, no matter what the form, burial or cremation or even tree burial flower burial, clan cemetery to family tomb to modern cemetery and even online altar, temple sacrifice or tomb incense or flower sacrifice and even online sacrifice, the root nature of cautious end, long-distance pursuit, retribution, and reverence has never changed. Specific forms of change may be criticized or even resisted for a while, but reasonable changes from time to time will always become the mainstream and form a new historical precipitation. This is how the customs are passed down and renewed from generation to generation.
Infographic: Citizens light up their hearts as deceased loved ones. Photo by Feng Zhen
Looking around the world, festivals commemorating the deceased take many forms. For example, the Catholic All Soul's Day in the United States, people pray for the sublimation of the souls of the dead; such as the Russian "Radonica Festival" (Радоница), which does not allow weeping in front of the graves of loved ones, but should be happy for the deceased to rest in another world; and the Mexican "Day of the Dead" (El Día de los Muertos), which is famous for films such as "Dream Quest", inherits the unique culture of the Aztec civilization. They believe that the undead will return home at this time of the year, and the living will let the undead feel the joy and happiness of the festival, so they will be blessed and blessed, so the grand carnival celebration has become a festival fashion. These are all people who are grateful when they think of their ancestors, "depressed in the middle and leaked out", so there is sorrow and joy, or song or crying.
Qingming Festival culture has its own uniqueness. Han Qide, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, once said that Chinese did not form a religious belief, but formed a common national belief of "respecting heaven and the ancestors." "There is no Christian paradise, there is no Buddhist cycle of life, there is a fact that the body is genetically extended and the cultural genes are persistent, and eternal life is obtained in this continuum." Grateful to the ancestors and responsible for future generations, the individual receives a heavy affirmation of the meaning of life in such a broad and eternal connection; the community of people of this faith is strongly supported and continued. Cold food or Qingming, burial or flower burial, incense or flower offering, what does not change is the form, and what is consistent is the cultural core. (End)