I. The characteristics and customs of the Qingming Festival.

1. Sacrifice and sweep the tomb.

In the Qingming festival coincides with the time of rituals to sweep the tomb, which is a more solemn festival, but at the same time, it is also a time for everyone to get close to the nature, very suitable for trekking and enjoying the fun of spring joyful festival.

According to the old custom, when sweeping the graves, people should bring wine, food, fruit, paper money and other items to the cemetery, offer the food to the loved ones in front of their graves, then burn the paper money, cultivate new soil for the graves, and fold a few tender green willow branches and stick them in the graves, and then bow down to worship, and then eat the wine and food or pack up the offerings to go back home. Tomb-sweeping may be simpler nowadays, as long as you send flowers, after all, earth burials are rare.

2, trekking.

The Qingming Festival is the most suitable for trekking, this time of the year, spring is bright, grass and trees spit green, is the best time to spring tour, trekking is also called spring tour, the ancient called explore spring, search for spring and so on. Qingming Festival ancestor worship activities are often carried out in the countryside, people combine ancestor sweeping and excursions trekking, memorial ancestors, trekking is a good for physical and mental health activities, so you can choose to trek with your family at this time of the year.

3, eat green dumplings.

There is a custom to eat green dumplings during the Qingming Festival. In fact, the so-called green dumplings are made from a kind of wild plant called "Pulp Wheatgrass" which is pounded and squeezed to produce the juice, and then the juice is used to mix with the dried water-milled pure glutinous rice flour, and then the dumplings are started to be made. The filling of the dumplings is made of fine sweetened bean paste, and a small piece of sweetened lard is added to the filling.

After the dumplings are made, they are steamed in a cage, and when they come out of the cage, the cooked vegetable oil is brushed evenly over the surface of the dumplings with a brush, and this is the end of the process. Green dumplings oil green as jade, glutinous tough and soft, fragrant, eat sweet but not greasy, fat but not fat. Green dumplings are also Jiangnan people used to worship ancestors must be food, because of this, green dumplings this food may be more popular in the Jiangnan area, is part of their folk food customs.

Two, the origin of the Qingming Festival.

The Qingming Festival is one of the twenty-four seasons, but also the product of farming civilization, it comes with a lot of are linked, has a relatively long historical origin. Qingming season, the air is clear and bright, all things are apparent, hence the name. Huainanzi Tianwenxun (淮南子-天文训): "Fifteen days after the vernal equinox, when the bucket points to B, the wind of Qingming arrives." The other "Hundred Questions on the Time of the Year" explains it this way: "Everything grows at this time, all clean and clear. Therefore, it is called Qingming."

Ching Ming has both natural and humanistic connotations, and is both a natural festival point and a traditional festival. The Qingming Festival is rich in customs and traditions, and the two main ritual themes of the festival are sweeping tombs and sacrificing to ancestors, and trekking in the green countryside. This festival is of divisional significance, and the weather is slowly warming up from this time of year, making it a more comforting festival.