The Pure Bright Festival (清明节)

QingMing festival (清明节) is a traditional Chinese festival and also a part of religious and spiritual practices which is celebrated among ethnic minorities all over China, including Han Chinese and many ethnic minorities.  In Chinese culture this holiday signifies the reverence of one’s ancestors.

This festival is usually observed on April 4th, 5th or 6th each year. This year it occurred on 5th April. Although it has been celebrated for over 2500 years but in 2008 this day had been declared a public holiday in China. The highlighted significance of the festival is mainly about remembering/worshipping ancestors and cleaning/sweeping of their respective graves.

The literal meaning of QingMing(清明) in Chinese means “clearness/brightness”, from which it generally means Pure Bright Festival in English. On this day the Chinese families look after their ancestors graves, clean them and as the people think that their offerings may come in useful in their ancestors afterlife , they offer various forms of gifts, food i.e drinks, eatables, chopsticks, paper accessories etc and whatever they find significant for the purpose. Typically burning of Joss paper/Joss sticks, paper ingots, paper money is observed which highlights burning of money in this culture.

In 2006, the festival was listed as one of the first National Intangible Cultural Heritage events.