Pay tribute to the dead at their graves.
According to the custom, when sweeping graves, people should bring food, wine, fruit, paper money and other items to the cemetery, offer food to the graves of their loved ones, then burn the paper money, cultivate new soil for the graves, break some green branches and insert them on the graves, then kowtow and worship, and finally finish eating and drinking and go home.
oblation
Steamed bread, sugar cane and sesame seed cake are all necessary sacrifices for traditional Cantonese grave-sweeping. In the steaming process, steamed buns and steamed cakes will "grow up" from small dough, indicating that the family is growing. Sugarcane is one of the four traditional sacrifices in Tomb-Sweeping Day, which generally has a head and a tail, meaning that the family business is prosperous. All adults and children who participate in the "clearance" will eat a crisp and clear sugar cane, which means happiness and sweetness.
Mud-planing bamboo shoots
During Tomb-Sweeping Day, wild bamboo shoots were fresh. If some Guangzhou people go back to their hometowns to worship their ancestors, they are bound to see bamboo shoots flourishing in the fields. The body shape of mud-ploughed bamboo shoots is short and pithy, and with the shell of bamboo shoots, the diameter is as big as a small handleless wine cup. People in rural areas use it to surround their vegetable fields, which is why they have this name.
Eat wormwood
Qingming has contained "cold food" culture since ancient times. Although the Cold Food Festival is gradually drifting away, the essence remains in the Qingming food customs of people everywhere, such as Guangzhou and Qingyuan, where eating moxa sticks is more popular.
roast suckling pig
Tomb-Sweeping Day's custom of eating roast suckling pigs has a long history in Guangzhou. Every time I go to Tomb-Sweeping Day, roast suckling pig is the highlight of ancestor worship for many Cantonese people. After ancestors sacrificed suckling pigs, relatives got together for a big meal.
Before Tomb-Sweeping Day, hotels and restaurants all over Guangdong used roast suckling pig as the signboard of Tomb-Sweeping Day's sacrifice. A brown suckling pig is the most attractive sacrifice at the ancestor worship ceremony. In Wansongyuan Market in Haizhu District of Guangzhou, whenever Tomb-Sweeping Day, there will be long barbecue stalls in the market. Neighbors will buy barbecues or roast pigs to prepare the family to visit the mountains.
Chuanliuzhi
There is a saying that the custom of inserting willows is to commemorate Shennong, the ancestor of farming, who taught the people to cultivate crops. In some places, people put willow branches under the eaves to forecast the weather. During the Huang Chao period of the Tang Dynasty, it was stipulated that "Liu Dai is the number in the Qingming Festival". After the failure of the uprising, the custom of Liu gradually disappeared, but the atmosphere of inserting Liu prevailed.
There is also a saying that inserting willows in front of the house can "ward off evil spirits". Most of the people who can continue the custom of inserting willows now are the elderly. Although some of them have wavered, they still adhere to traditional customs.