The Pure Brightness Festival, also known as Qingming Festival, is a Chinese celebration on April 5th to honor ancestors. People tend to graves and offer food, drink, and paper items. It’s a time for spring celebration, picnics, kite flying, and courting. The festival was established in the 8th century to limit ancestor worship. It originated from the Cold Food Festival and is significant in China’s tea culture.
The Pure Brightness Festival is also known as the Qingming Festival and is a traditional Chinese festival that takes place on the 104th day after the winter solstice. This means that it usually falls on April 5th. It is a celebration of spring and a time to care for the resting places of deceased ancestors.
This festival is also known as Grave Sweeping Day, Spring Remembrance and All Souls Day. It is a day for tending graves and for bringing offerings to ancestors. People go to graves to pray and give thanks to the dead and to give them gifts of food, drink, wands, and various paper paraphernalia signifying things they may find useful in the afterlife.
Some people also believe that the spirits of the dead travel during the Pure Light Festival, and thus carry around willow branches to ward off disgruntled or evil spirits. Generally, however, the air is one of jubilation and celebration rather than fear.
The festival also serves as a welcome to spring, and many of the activities that take place are built around sun salutations and fresh life. Families go out for picnics together, plowing season traditionally begins, and the outdoors are generally enjoyed. It’s also a time when young couples start courting, in the air of spring. Perhaps one of the most iconic activities people do during the day is flying big kites. These kites can take the form of characters from Chinese opera, myth, or simply be large animal shapes. The skies in some areas are filled with kites, as families fly them on their picnics
The Pure Luster Festival was established in the early 8th century by Emperor Xuanzong. It was instituted in response to complaints by many that wealthier families had created a plethora of festivals to worship their ancestors’ graves, spending copious amounts of wealth, and creating a virtually continuous culture of worship. So Xuanzong created the holiday and decreed it to be the only day people could formally pay their respects at the graves of their deceased ancestors.
The Festival of Pure Brightness grew out of an earlier festival often called the Cold Food Festival. This party was formed when Jie Zitui was killed in a fire set by his lord to try to force him out of hiding. Grieved, the man put the day aside and declared that no fire could be used on that day. In the 18th century the two holidays were merged, but eventually the holiday lost most of the elements that connected it to the Cold Food Festival, which faded away in much of China.
The Festival of Pure Brightness is also an important date in China’s tea culture. The most expensive and prized green teas are those that have been harvested before the Pure Light Festival, called mingqing or pre-qingming teas, and are known to be lighter and more delicate than those harvested afterward.
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