Qingming Festival 2025: Tomb Sweeping Day

Tomb Sweeping (扫墓)

Families visit ancestors' graves to clean and maintain them — removing weeds, wiping tombstones, and tidying the area. Fresh flowers, food offerings, and incense are placed at the grave. Paper money and paper goods may be burned as offerings for the deceased. This act of care expresses filial piety — deep respect for parents and ancestors.

Food Offerings and Ancestor Worship

Traditional foods are brought as offerings: whole roasted pig, fruit, rice, wine, and dishes the deceased enjoyed in life. After the ceremony, families share a picnic meal near the gravesite — symbolically eating together with departed ancestors.

Spring Outings (踏青, Taqing)

Qingming falls at the height of spring in China, and taqing — 'stepping on the green' — is a parallel tradition of enjoying the spring scenery. Families fly kites, walk in parks, and admire blossoming landscapes. Traditionally, kites were cut loose to symbolise the release of misfortune.

Qingming Foods

Qingtuan — green sticky rice balls made with mugwort or barley grass juice, filled with sweet red bean paste — are the signature food, particularly in the Yangtze Delta. Their jade-green colour and earthy fragrance are distinctively associated with the season.

What foods are offered at the grave on Qingming?

Food offerings at the grave are an expression of filial piety and the belief that ancestors continue to need sustenance in the afterlife. Typical offerings include whole roasted suckling pig or roasted duck, fruit (especially oranges, apples, and bananas), rice, wine or baijiu (Chinese liquor), and favourite dishes the deceased enjoyed in life. Steamed buns and dim sum items are common in Cantonese tradition. After the ceremony, the food is typically taken home and eaten by the family — a symbolic act of sharing a meal together with departed ancestors. Incense and paper offerings (paper money, paper goods representing luxury items) are burned to send them to the deceased.

Is Qingming Festival a public holiday in China?

Yes — Qingming is a statutory public holiday in mainland China, typically granting a 3-day weekend (the day itself plus surrounding days). It is also a public holiday in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. As a solar term, Qingming falls on April 4 in leap years and April 5 in other years — making it one of the few Chinese observances with an almost fixed Gregorian date. The holiday weekend is one of the busiest travel periods in China, as millions of people travel to their hometowns or ancestral areas to sweep graves and participate in family ceremonies.