2017.04.05

Today is Wednesday.

Yesterday is Chinese Tomb-Sweeping Day, which is also called Qingming Festival or Ta Qing Festival (which means visiting the spring ). It's one of the 24 Solar Terms. It's about April 5th or 4th every year. It's the only Chinese traditional festival that can be remembered by Gregorian Calender. The other Chinese traditional festivals, including the Spring Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Chinese Valentine Day, the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Double Ninth Festival, are related to Chinese Calendar. I had been confused for a long time. Why is it different from the others? The reason is so simple, that the Solar Terms are related to the sun, but the Chinese Calendar is related to the moon.

The Tomb-Sweeping Festival is one of the most important festivals in China, a day of worship and sweeping the ancestor's tomb. Chinese people always go to their ancestor's tombs and offer some foods and drinks as sacrifices. And some people burn some stuffs made by paper for their ancestors. I have never done that, because I think it's not meaningful. I don't believe there are any souls or ghosts exist after people's death. The dead people only could exist in the living people's memory.