Tomb-sweeping at Qingming
The prefectural gazetteer gives Qingming three words and no more: “tomb offerings”. As short as it can be — and the custom has not broken since.
1. What the gazetteer records
At Qingming, offerings at the tombs. … In the middle month of spring the ancestors are offered to. In the wards and villages there is much theatre. As the saying goes: lanterns in the first month, plays in the second.
From Gujin tushu jicheng, Chaozhou prefecture section, quoting the prefectural gazetteer (customs chapter of the Qianlong Chaozhou fuzhi). Punctuation added here.
2. Old record and present practice
The gazetteer lists “the ancestors offered to in the middle month of spring” and “offerings at the tombs at Qingming” as two separate entries: the first is the spring sacrifice, held in the ancestral hall; the second is at the grave. Chaoshan still keeps them apart — the hall sacrifice and the climb to the tombs, each on its own day, never merged into one.
The practice of “hanging paper” (pressing paper money onto the grave) is not in the gazetteer; it comes later.
3. Differences between counties
The gazetteer covers the prefectural city and its neighbourhood only. The dates, offerings and rites of the seven counties differ, and have to be checked county by county against local gazetteers and field records before being added here. The gazetteer records no further than this.
4. Calendar anchor
The solar terms, lunar phases and lunar dates referred to in this section can be checked on the corresponding pages at Kuang Chujia’s research site on historical astronomy and calendars. That the timing of a custom is never cut loose from the calendar is a standing rule on this site.
Sources
Gujin tushu jicheng, Chaozhou prefecture section, quoting the prefectural gazetteer; the Qianlong Chaozhou fuzhi (compiled by Zhou Shuoxun, completed in the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong), customs chapter. Accessed 18 October 2026.
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Last revised: 3 November 2026