In addition to sweeping tombs on the ancient "Qingming Festival", what other customs did the ancients have to do

The following article comes from the history school, the author is a monk of Qingliang Mountain

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"During the Qingming Festival, it rained a lot, and the pedestrians on the road wanted to break their souls. Xiao Du's popular "Qingming" quatrain is powerful, outlining the style of the Qingming Dynasty in the late Tang Dynasty, which gives people a sense of poignant. It seems that since ancient times, the Qingming Festival is a festival with cold and mournful background music, which is always related to sacrifice and nostalgia. How did the Qingming Festival come about? How did the ancients celebrate the Qingming Festival?

1. The origin of the Qingming Festival

"The major events of the country are in the worship and Rong", the Chinese people have attached great importance to ancestor worship activities since the pre-Qin era, which is also the cultural source of the Qingming Festival. However, during the Qin and Han dynasties, there was no official ancestor worship festival on the mainland, let alone the Qingming Festival. In fact, the "Qingming" of the two Han Dynasty is just an ordinary solar term, the early Western Han Dynasty "Huainanzi" recorded the Qingming solar term: "fifteen days after the spring equinox, the bucket finger B, then the Qingming wind arrives", and the Eastern Han Dynasty Cui Yu's "Four Peoples Moon Order" is recorded "Qingming Festival, order silkworm concubines to govern the silkworm room", which is completely treated as an agricultural season.

The Qingming Festival really reached the peak of the festival and became a grand festival after the merger of the two ancient festivals of Shangsi and Hanshi.

Shangsi Festival is a very important festival in ancient times, as early as the Spring and Autumn Period has appeared, "March on the Si, Qin, Wei two waters, summon the soul to continue, Bing Lan grass, purify the ominous". On this day, the ancestors would come to the water's edge to worship, bathe and pluck the wedge (with a witchcraft ritual to ward off evil spirits), and young men and women frolicked and chose their mates at this time. Taxi and woman, Fang Bingxi. The woman said that the scholar said that she was both and looked at the outside, and she was happy and happy. Weishi and the woman, Yi Qi scorned each other and gave them peonies". When Confucius disciple Zeng Hui said that he would also "bathe in Yi, the wind danced, and sang and returned" as a happy thing.

During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the Shangsi Festival was officially set on the third day of March every year, when the rich and idle scholars often went to the waterside to play a high-end game - Qushui Liuzhen, and it was the Shangsi Festival of the ninth year of Yonghe in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Wang Xizhi wrote the famous "Orchid Pavilion Preface". The Tang Dynasty Shangsi Festival is one of the most important festivals in the country, and Tang Dezong called it the "Three Orders Festival" together with Chongyang and Zhonghe (February 1), which shows the importance attached to the Shangsi Festival. Every time he went to the palace, the emperor would feast his ministers in Qujiang, compose a meeting of the flowing water, and reward the civil and military officials with money and goods. The folk Shangsi Festival is even more colorful, men and women rush to come to the waterside to drink and feast, make friends on the spot, prosperous very, "colorful and green, turn on the embankment, fresh cars and horses, shoulder to shoulder to hit the hub", Du Fu's Yang's outing is also in Shangsi "March 3 weather is new, Chang'an waterside Duoli".

The Cold Food Festival is in the third month of the lunar calendar, and it is connected to the upper and lower Qingming. According to legend, the Cold Food Festival is because Jin Wengong wanted to force the hero Jie Zi to push out the mountain to be an official, set fire to the mountain, and mistakenly burned Jie Zitui's mother and son to death, so he set it up. Legends are just legends after all. The cold food festival actually originated from the custom of "changing fire" in ancient times: in ancient times, the productive forces were backward, and people worshiped the god of fire, believing that the disaster-related disasters related to fire were due to the old fire that had been burning for a long time, and it was necessary to extinguish the old fire regularly. When the old and new fires alternate, they can only eat cold food, so it is called the "Cold Food Festival".

As early as the Western Zhou Dynasty, the government ordered the petty officials in charge of making fires to ban fires on the streets with wooden duos, "in mid-spring, the fire is forbidden in the country with wooden duos." The Han Dynasty cold food festival was not popular, mostly in the north of the epidemic length of time is not the same in different places, Shanxi Taiyuan area even as long as a month, so that "the old and young unbearable, the age of the dead", until the Eastern Han Dynasty Zhou Ju served as the governor of the state to ban this bad habit.

The Tang people attached great importance to the Cold Food Festival, and the imperial court ordered the cold food to be banned for three days, and it was not until the Qingming Festival three days later that the fire was reopened. It was also in the early Tang Dynasty that tomb sweeping and sacrificing during the Cold Food Festival became a custom, and burning paper money also became a common behavior.

However, the romantic Tang people by nature often set up a banquet in the cemetery immediately after the sad sacrifice, crying into a dog in the last second and eating into a pig in the next second, the government has a headache about this, and strictly prohibits the Tang people from jumping on the grave "The cold food is the tomb for the Yan Le, seeing the appointment of officials and not taking the previous qualifications, the palace for three years, the white man will be beaten (beaten)", but it did not play a role. The lower beam is not right, the upper beam must be crooked, the emperor who ordered to prohibit the cemetery banquet is actually the highest, set up a cold food banquet in the cold food festival palace to invite important ministers, carnival from morning to night, and give the national civil servants a seven-day holiday, the people cancel the curfew, and the people can play all night.

In the Tang Dynasty, the three festivals of Shangsi, cold food, and Qingming were connected, and they gradually merged with "teenagers traveling day by day, without Qingming and Shangsi." In the Song Dynasty, the physicists preached "saving the principles of heaven and destroying people's desires", and the Shangsi Festival with the color of primitive wild combination collapsed; the cold food festival to eat cold food and sweep the tomb, not as popular as the Qingming Festival, the two were gradually merged by the Qingming Festival, and the Qingming Festival became one of the most important traditional festivals.

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Qingming Festival gradually became what it looks like today: "On the Qingming Day in March, men and women sweep the tombs, carry the dignity of the tree, hang the ingots behind the sedan chair and horse, and the road is full of cangs. Those who worship, those who are drunk, those who weep, those who weed and add soil to the tomb, burn ingots, and put paper money on the grave. If there is no paper money in hope, it will be a lonely grave. Cry, don't return, go to the fragrant tree, choose the garden, sit in the row and get drunk."

Second, the customs of the Qingming Festival

The customs of the ancient Qingming Festival also absorbed some of the customs of the two festivals of Shangsi and Hanshi, which are quite distinctive.

(1) Tomb sweeping

Tomb sweeping and ancestor worship is the most important activity of the Qingming Festival, which is absorbed from the Cold Food Festival. The Qingming sacrifice is the link between the ancestors and the people, and it is the remembrance and sorrow of the ancestors, which has become an important part of Chinese civilization.

(2) Qingming eggs

Chinese people often eat boiled eggs for children on the Qingming Festival, which comes from the Shangsi Festival. In ancient times, the ancients observed the phenomenon of oviparity of birds, resulting in egg reproductive worship, and in the Book of Songs, there is a poem of the emperor's concubine Jian Di swallowing bird eggs and giving birth to the merchant ancestor deed, "The Divine Destiny Xuanniao, descending to give birth to a merchant, the house is full of earth and mangmang". During the Qin and Han dynasties, the ancients often floated eggs in the water to pray for children during the Shangsi Festival, and sometimes put dates into the water, and the homonym "Zaozi" gradually evolved into the custom of eating Qingming eggs.

(3) Planting willow branches

The ancients believed that the willow tree could scare ghosts, called it "ghost horror wood", and had strong vitality, but the family was vigorous, and willow branches were often inserted during the Qingming Festival. Tang Zhongzong gave the ministers a fine willow circle to avoid ghosts, "fortunate pear orchard and Weishui uprooted, then give the willow circle to clear the furrow", to the Song Dynasty to insert willow branches more and more popular, become a common folk custom "Qingming Festival in March, two days before the festival is called the cold food, the Beijing people from the winter solstice after the count to one hundred and five days, is this day, the family with wicker inserted in the door, the name is Mingyan".

(4) Qiu Qiu Qiu

Swings were introduced from the northern minority areas, and became popular in the palace during the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and became a favorite activity for women during the Qingming Festival in the Tang and Song dynasties, and even sometimes called the Qingming Festival "Swing Festival" in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In the Qingming Dynasty, everything recovers, and the woman who is trapped in the boudoir swings on the swing, which can relieve the boredom and take the opportunity to look into the distance, becoming a momentary prosperity, Lu You once wrote, "There are 100,000 families in Liangzhou in the cold, and the swing is still luxurious." ”

(5) Kite flying

Kites were first used to scout the enemy in war, and later people hoped to carry them with their high flying

Walking away from sorrow has gradually become a popular entertainment activity for the public. During the Qingming season, kite flying is also quite popular.

There are still many activities of the Qingming Festival, such as juju, fighting grass, planting trees, tug-of-war, cockfighting, etc., most of which are suitable for spring, suitable for all ages, and have been handed down to this day as a classic entertainment method, so I will not repeat them here.

In the twilight of spring, during the Qingming season, you might as well put down the mundane affairs in your hands, take advantage of the long holiday to go out of the house, sweep for the ancestors, accompany the family, recharge yourself, and extend the love for spring in our blood.

(This article only represents the author's point of view and does not represent the position of this number)