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Qingming Festival (Tomb Sweeping Day)
The Day of Pure Brightness — honoring ancestors and caring for their graves.
April 4
Why It Matters
Qingming is one of the 24 solar terms of the Chinese calendar and a major festival for ancestor veneration. It falls 15 days after the spring equinox, when families gather to tend graves, offer food and incense, and honor those who have passed.
How It Is Observed
Visiting and cleaning ancestral graves, burning paper offerings (joss paper), making food offerings, flying kites (traditionally to release misfortune), planting trees, family gatherings outdoors.
Sacred Text
“There is something mystically formed, born before heaven and Earth. In the silence and the void, standing alone and unchanging, ever present and in motion — perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things.”
— Tao Te Ching, Chapter 25 ↗