Tomb-Sweeping Day
Qingming Festival

We tell them how we are doing and how they still live on in us - it's called Tomb-Sweeping Day.

Tomb-Sweeping Day, one of the most important festivals, is determined by the solar calendar and falls around April 4 or 5.

The film opens with Shaochang leading his three children to the cemetery for Tomb-Sweeping Day.

Tomb-Sweeping Day.

Comfortably glowing in the welcoming bosom of the family, I found myself reflecting on Tomb-Sweeping Day.

The next Tomb-Sweeping Day, Shaochang runs into Minhua at the cemetery.

Chinese traditionally pay respects to their ancestors on Tomb-Sweeping Day, which this year falls on Saturday.

Well, of course, being filmmakers, we asked if we could come back to film Tomb-Sweeping Day and Baoxin immediately said yes.

The launch of the new website is timed to coincide with Tomb-Sweeping Day -- an ancient tradition that falls on April 4 when families remember the dead.

Traditional festivals such as Tomb-Sweeping Day, the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival are leading contenders to become new official holidays.

Wednesday was Tomb-Sweeping Day, or Qingming, in Chinese culture, and Taiwan and Hong Kong make it a holiday to let people visit the graves of ancestors.

Ma's spokesman said the president wanted to pay his respects to the Yellow Emperor on National Tomb-Sweeping Day in person to stress the importance of the Chinese ancestor-worshipping tradition.

The new holidays are Tomb-Sweeping Day in April, the Dragon Boat Festival in June and the Mid-Autumn Festival in September.

China this year has reinstated the traditional Qingming Tomb-Sweeping Day as a holiday, along with the Dragon Boat Festival in June and Mid-Autumn Festival in September.

Other annual festivals include Ancestors Day (Tomb-Sweeping Day), the Dragon Boat Festival, the Ghost Festival, and the Mid-Autumn Festival (Moon Festival).

In many rural areas of China these days, tombs are once more decorated with flowers and other decorations on Tomb-Sweeping Day, even though the Communist Party still bans most burials in favor of cremations.

People gather to pay their respects at the gravestones of deceased friends and relatives two days before Tomb-Sweeping Day at Sanshan cemetery on April 3, 2011 in Fuzhou, Fujian Province of China.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese are getting ready for Tomb-Sweeping Day on Friday, as state media fret that the poor can no longer afford funerals while tombs for the rich cost more than houses.

Taiwanese firms making the new-style paper gifts report booming business ahead of Monday's Ching Ming or Tomb-Sweeping Day, when millions in Chinese communities in Asia and beyond pay respects to their ancestors and dead relatives.

The Qingming or Ching Ming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English, is a traditional Chinese festival on the first day of the fifth solar term of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar.

Today was Tomb-Sweeping Day, a festival held every April 5 and associated with political protests because of violent demonstrations held in the square on April 5, 1976, to oppose the Gang of Four, which was then in power.

The holiday would be held the same day as the Qingming Festival.

It was later moved to coincide with the Qingming Festival.

The Qingming Festival, also known as tomb sweeping day, is coming up next month.

It lasts for three days including the day before, on and after Qingming Festival (清明節）.

Held annually in the month of the Qingming Festival.

Families would visit their ancestor's resting place, especially during the Qingming Festival.

Caozaiguo is usually made in Qingming Festival as a celebratory food item.

It sees more activity during the Qingming Festival due to the presence of its cemeteries dating from the early 19th century.

Every year on the Qingming Festival, there will be a Boat festival.

The Qingming Festival is an opportunity for celebrants to remember and honour their ancestors at grave sites.

The vegetables are harvested, trimmed before the Qingming Festival, and sun-dried until limp.

According to the ancient custom, grave site veneration is only feasible ten days before and after the Qingming Festival.

The best teas are picked in the early Spring before China's Qingming Festival.

April 5 - Qingming Festival.

Qingming Festival is when Chinese people visit the columbarium, graves or burial grounds to pray to their ancestors.

Legend states that on Qingming Festival, the ruler of the underworld allows the spirits of the dead to return to earth.

The painting by the artist Zhang Zeduan shows a typical Qingming Festival scene.

The city of that time is thought to be depicted on the famous painting Along the River During Qingming Festival.

Tidying the graves (Qingming Festival or "tomb sweeping")

At certain dates, food may be set out as a sacrifice to the spirits of the deceased or the gods, such as during the Qingming Festival.

In China, some people carry willow branches with them on the day of their Tomb Sweeping or Qingming Festival.

Qingming Festival (a much older Mc Dull is seen at the grave of his mother and grand mother)

Pictures of Babaoshan during Qingming Festival with short biographies of several of the people interred there.

(See, for example, Qingming Festival and Ghost Festival.)

Early in the century, Zhang Zeduan paints Along the River During the Qingming Festival.