Saturday, April 4, 2009
清明節- Qingming Festival (Tomb Sweeping Day)
104 days after the winter solstices marks Tomb Sweeping Day in China which falls either April 4th or 5th (depending on Leap Year). Traditionally this is a day to visit the graves of your ancestors to pay homage to them. People would leave gifts like favorite foods or paper gifts and recently burning paper money to remember the dead. An article online at China View addresses how the celebration of this event is changing.
Celebrations of the festival can cause traffic issues as people flock to cemeteries. The government and others have encouraged people to celebrate "cyberly" by leaving virtual memorials on websites as opposed to visiting the cemetery. As China's younger generation has fully adopted the internet there was an influx of people using the internet to memorialize their dead ancestors. People were able to leave picture messages of traditional tributes like food or flowers in a blog like format. They could light a virtual candle to honor their dead.
This is just another example how China, lead by its youth, is becoming increasingly hi-tech and progressive even in how they handle very traditional events like Tomb Sweeping Day.
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