1. The pinyin for Qingming Festival is qīngmíngjié.
2. Interpretation: a traditional festival of the Han and other ethnic groups in China. It is held around April 5 on the Gregorian calendar every year. On this day, there are folk activities such as visiting graves and sweeping tombs, planting willows, trekking in the green, and spring excursions.
3, the origin of the festival:
(1) Qingming Festival is an important traditional folk festival in China, is one of the important eight festivals (on the first yuan, Qingming, summer, Dragon Boat Festival, the middle of the year, the mid-autumn, the winter solstice and New Year's Eve). Generally in the calendar on April 5, but its festival period is very long, there are ten days ago after eight days and ten days ago after ten days after two kinds of statements, which nearly twenty days are Qingming Festival.
(2) Cold Food Festival customs, there are on the grave, the effect of swimming, fighting chicken, swinging, playing the carpet, pulling hooks (tug of war) and so on. Among them, the custom of going to the grave is very old. There must be a tomb sacrifice, and later, because of the integration of the custom of invoking the soul and renewing the spirit on March, it was gradually set in the cold food on the sacrifice. The Tang Book" records the cloud: Kaiyuan twenty years Royal Decree, cold food on the tomb, "Rites of the scripture" no text. In recent times, it has been passed down, soaked in custom, and it is appropriate to allow the same worship and sweeping rituals on the tomb. Song Zhuang Jiyu "Chicken Ribs" Volume 1: cold food on the mound, also does not set incense. Paper money is hung on the grave tree. Those who go to the countryside, all climbed the hill to look at the sacrifice. Split silk in the air, so-called break money. And the capital of the four sides of the cause of worship sweep, then set up wine writing (zhuan, meals), with the family spring tour.
(3) "Jing Chu chronicle": (cold food) cockfighting, skeleton chicken (eggs), cockfighting. Can be seen in the southern dynasty when there are fighting chickens and fighting eggs of the play. Cockfighting today, fighting eggs are mostly countryside children hit each other with eggs as a game. In ancient times, used as a collision fighting eggs are dyed, carved (lou, carving), very beautiful. Painting eggs. The custom of skeletonizing eggs originated from the carving of eggs recorded in "Guanzi". Undoubtedly, it was developed from the ancient sorcery of eating eggs for fertility, and became the festival custom of cold food. Today, there is also the custom of eating eggs at Qingming (such as the aforementioned Zifu). Cold food to play Qiu Gan, according to the "Arts and Letters Classes Gathering" in the record, the northern mountain Rong in the cold food day to play swing. But I'm afraid this is just a legend. Liu Xiang's "Farewell Records" records that the playing of autumn swings is in springtime, not necessarily in the cold eclipse. And beat the carpet, wang jian "palace lyrics": cold eclipse palace people step beat the carpet. The play of pulling hooks and playing carpet is not necessarily held in the cold eclipse.
(4) Since the Qingming festival is held on the third day of the cold eclipse, later generations gradually moved the custom of cold eclipse to Qingming with the migration of time. After the Song Dynasty, the custom of sweeping graves was moved to Qingming. The custom of spring excursions and swinging on swings were also held only during Qingming. The Qingming Festival was then elevated from a mere agricultural festival to a major festival, and the influence of the Cold Food Festival disappeared. However, there are a number of variations of the food customs of the cold food have been inherited and preserved in the Qingming Festival.