Qing Ming Festival or Tomb Sweeping Day

This festival falls on the 5th of April every year and can be observed either ten days before or after the date.  Many people prefer to visit the graves of their relatives before the actual day so as to avoid the crowds and massive traffic snarls leading to the cemeteries.

The family will be armed with implements to clear away the overgrown grass and to repaint the faded characters on the tombstones.  It’s either red paint or gold paint. So another name for this festival is the Tomb Sweeping  Day.

Food is offered and Joss paper or  hell money is burnt together with other elaborate paper offerings such as the latest electronic gadgets  like smart phones, ipads, effigies of maids, chauffer, cars and other things that would make life easier in the other world.

Family members pray for good health and wealth and for the departed loved ones to protect them from evil and harm.

It is also a time for family gatherings as they meet at the tombs of their loved ones and make their offerings and pray together.  Should some family members go ahead and perform their prayers on an earlier day, they will incur the displeasure of the rest of the family because they are said to have taken away the good luck, leaving nothing for those who came later.

However, not all families go to the graveyard.  Some visit the columbarums where the urns containing the ashes of their loved ones are kept and they  pray there together with their offerings neatly laid out.

Others pray at home where the ancestral tablets are kept.  Food offerings are laid out and prayers are performed, after which  joss paper together with other paraphernalia are then burnt.

 

The Christians do not offer any food or burn joss paper  but will lay flowers after cleaning the tombs.