April 5 this year is Qingming Day. Every year, the Qingming Festival is also generally around April 5. As a traditional festival, it is strange that Qingming has an almost unchanged Western calendar date when the months in the summer calendar are not fixed.
In fact, although the summer calendar is commonly known as the lunar calendar, it is not a real lunar calendar, but a lunisolar calendar: the lunar calendar refers to the calendar made entirely by observing the moon, and the solar calendar refers to the calendar made entirely by observing the sun. The summer calendar sets the month according to the moon, and the solar terms and year according to the sun, which belongs to the lunisolar calendar. Therefore, including Qingming, all solar terms can correspond to the Western calendar date relatively fixed.
Among the 24 solar terms, the summer solstice and winter solstice were determined earlier, and they have been valued from ancient times to the present. The other two dozen solar terms, such as rain, sting, valley rain, etc., are quite non-existent, basically only guiding the agricultural season, and are not celebrated as festivals - Qingming, sandwiched among them, is an exception, which despises the crowd in the solar terms, and can even be compared with major festivals such as the Dragon Boat Festival, Zhongyuan Festival, and Mid-Autumn Festival.
Qingming is so special not because of how powerful the solar term itself is: the lucidation of the calendar only means that the solar ecliptic longitude reaches 15°, a pure marking point. The reason why it is called Qingming comes from the Han Dynasty's "Huainanzi Tianwen Xun": "Forty-five days from the winter solstice, the wind arrives; The wind to the forty-fifth day, the wind to the Ming Shu; Ming Shu Wind to the forty-fifth day, Qingming Wind to ". After the winter solstice, there will be 45 days of winter wind, and then 45 days of Mingshu wind, and then the wind that blows in 45 days is called Qingming wind, which actually refers to the southeast wind of spring air. According to this calculation, the period of 90 to 135 days after the winter solstice is a clear wind. The average interval between every two solar terms is 15.2 days, and the seventh solar term after the winter solstice should be 106.4 days away from the winter solstice, which falls into this range, hence the name Qingming.
The 24 solar terms system was finalized in the Western Han Dynasty, but Qingming at this time was still just an ordinary solar term, without any celebration. All the festival content of the later Qingming dynasty was "stolen" from other festivals - the lost owner is the Hanshi Festival and the Shangxi Festival, both of which can be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty:
The Cold Food Festival originated from the fire ban and fire change in the Zhou Dynasty, and the ancients used flintwood for fire, and replaced different wood in different seasons. The ancient book "Book of Zhou, Yueling Order" recorded: "Take the fire of elm willows in spring, the fire of jujube apricots in summer, the fire of mulberry in summer, the fire of quercus in autumn, and the fire of locust sandalwood in winter." And the "Zhou Li Qiu Lawsuit Kou Si Zhi" also recorded: "Si Wei clan, palm with husband to take the open flame in Japan... The great things of all nations are burned together with candles and courts. In the middle of spring, he was banned in the middle school with Muduo repairing fire. In other words, the Si Wei clan was responsible for making fire from flintwood and providing the fire to the tomb candles and court burns at the state ceremony. In the middle of spring, he will knock on the wooden duo in the middle of the country to announce the fire ban.
There is no date for changing fire in Zhou Dynasty documents, and probably by the Han Dynasty, the combination of spring and summer fire change and mid-spring fire ban produced the first cold food. The name "cold food" also comes from this: you can't cook hot food, naturally you can only eat cold food. The motivation for the combination of the two is easy to understand: extinguishing the fire during the fire ban, and then replacing the fire with new flintwood, gives people a feeling of renewal. However, after mid-spring is late spring, and after the end of late spring is early summer. If the fire is extinguished at the end of mid-spring, it will take a full month until the beginning of summer. Wouldn't it take a month not to make a fire for cooking and boiling water for bathing?
So at the end of the Han Dynasty, Cao Cao couldn't bear it anymore, and issued the "Ming Punishment Order" canceling the cold food: "Wen Taiyuan, Shangdang, Xihe, Yanmen, one hundred and fifty days after the winter solstice, all fire and cold food, Yun for Jie Zitui." Zixu Shenjiang, the Wu people have not been deprived of water, as for Zitui alone as cold food, isn't it biased? And in the cold land of the north, the old and young are weak, and they will be in trouble. It is decreed that no one shall eat cold. If the offender commits the crime, the parents will be sentenced to half a year, and the chief official will be sentenced to 100 days, and the commander will take one month's money. ”
After a festival, you will be punished with a half-year prison, which is really too harsh. It also mentions the date of the Han Dynasty's cold eclipse, 105 days after the winter solstice, which is exactly a day or two before the Qingming Festival, which lasts from the end of mid-spring to the beginning of summer. At the same time, the ban also said that the cold food came from Jie Zitui, a loyal minister of the Spring and Autumn Jin Kingdom. Legend has it that he was burned to death on this day, and the Jin people felt that they did not light a fire for a month to commemorate him. Cao Cao also complained in his mouth: Wu Zixu died in the water, and I haven't seen anyone who hasn't touched the water for a month, you guys are too partial, right?
In fact, the commemoration of Jie Zitui is just a folklore, and the Eastern Zhou historical material Jiezi Tui is obviously a reclusive old age, and he was not burned to death, so there is no fire ban to commemorate him. However, Cao Cao's ban was not enforced for long, and after Cao Wei was replaced by Sima Jin, probably out of the same favor as the national name, cold food was revived again and promoted throughout the country.
According to the Jing Chu Dynasty, written during this period, the Hanshi Festival of the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties was quite grand: spring plates (a variety of lettuce platters, similar to today's salads) were eaten to make maltose, almond cheese and barley sweet porridge. It is also necessary to carve patterns and painted patterns on the eggs, and at the same time, the people will hold sports meetings: tug-of-war, swinging, and kicking are the three major sports necessary to celebrate cold food.
But compared with the Han Dynasty, the date of cold food in the Jin Dynasty has been shortened to three days, which just covers the Qingming immediately behind. In the Tang Dynasty, the Cold Food Festival became a legal holiday, and for 4 days, the name was simply changed to "Cold Food Qingming Festival" - Qingming was finally promoted from a solar term to a festival. When he arrived at Tang Suzong, he was not too addicted, and the cold food Qingming holiday was increased from 4 days to 7 days, and Qingming Festival became the Golden Week in the true sense for the first time.
And the result of such an operation is that the Qingming Festival holiday not only includes cold food, but also often includes Shangxi - Shangcheng Festival comes from the "Mid-Spring Meeting" of the Zhou Dynasty, originally Valentine's Day and Spring Festival, the Son of Heaven sacrifices to the god of love, and the princely states want to open the royal garden to the young men and women of the people to date. The Han Dynasty moved it to the beginning of March in the late spring, and added many customs such as stepping on the blue, qushui, warding off evil spirits, praying for blessings, and summoning spirits. The Tang Dynasty cold food Qingming Festival was played for seven days, basically from the end of mid-spring to the beginning of late spring, resulting in the customs of the Shangxi Festival also mixed into the Qingming Festival:
For example, Qingming tomb sweeping is believed to come from the Shangxi Taiqing Spirit; There is also the Shangxi festival delicacy "Dragon Tongue Dumpling", which is made with koji grass or artemisia annua, rice flour and honey to make rice crackers - this snack can still be seen throughout southern China, but it is called Qingtuan or Qingming kueh.
The two ancient festivals are linked together, but in the end, the victory is the small solar term Qingming sandwiched between them. This may be due to the prohibition of fire during the Cold Food Festival, and the rise of tomb sweeping and burning paper in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and the contradiction between the two made the cold food defeat - before the Tang Dynasty, Chinese did not have the habit of burning paper, but would bury paper money and other paper artifacts directly in the ground or press on the grave to show sacrifice. However, on the other hand, although the Tang Dynasty has long ceased to drill wood for fire, but switched to flint and fire sickle, but on the day of Qingming, it will deliberately repeat the fire change in the Zhou Rite: "Chang'an Qingming still eats the inner garden official Xiaoer, drills fire in front of the hall, the first to get the fire, enter, give three horses of silk, a golden bowl, all gathered outside the door to watch." "The children competed in front of the main hall to drill wood for fire, and whoever drilled the fire first could be rewarded with three golden bowls of silk from the emperor, a veritable golden rice bowl.
In the Song Dynasty, the cold food Qingming was still put for seven days, and the Shangcheng Festival was almost completely digested. During the Qingming Festival, people in the Song Dynasty celebrated the Spring Festival, which was to sweep tombs while taking a spring trip, bringing wine and small dishes, and sitting on the ground when encountering a good scenery and starting to feast. "Tokyo Yumekalu" describes the scene as follows: "Shino is like the city, often under the fragrant trees, or between the gardens, listing cups and plates and encouraging each other. At the same time, the Song Dynasty also restored the ancient rites of the Zhou Dynasty, opened the royal garden during the Qingming Dynasty, and set up a color shed to perform a hundred plays for the people to play and watch. Even if the emperor comes in person, tourists do not need to avoid it, but "and the imperial horse pool, then the number of tourists doubles".
The Song Dynasty died under Mongol conquest, and the Yuan Dynasty abolished almost all traditional holidays. After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, although many festivals were restored, the Qingming Festival did not get a holiday. However, the Ming royal family and upper echelons took the lead in restoring various Qingming customs, especially respecting Qingming ancestor worship, making the style of tomb sweeping more solemn.
After the Manchus entered the customs, the Qingming Festival was weakened from the court again, but the ancestor worship was still preserved. Moreover, the various customs of the Song and Ming celebrations of cold food and Qingming are still passed down among the people. After the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China government re-established Qingming as a national holiday in 1935. By 2008, Qingming Festival had reverted to a legal holiday, with one day off. In 2009, it was changed to three days off – and the good news is that this year's Qingming Festival is finally no longer closed.
• (This article is only the author's personal views and does not represent the position of this newspaper)
Nanhai Mo
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