Qingming (Ching Ming) festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English (sometimes also called Chinese Memorial Day or Ancestors’ Day), is a traditional Chinese festival. It falls on the first day of the fifth solar term of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar. This makes it the 15th day after the Spring Equinox in a given year. In 2023, this festival falls on Wednesday, April 5.

During Qingming, Chinese families visit the tombs of their ancestors to clean the gravesites, make offerings, and pay their respects. Our ancestors are our bloodline and can protect us in spirit. Receiving the protections of our ancestors will bless us with good health and fortune, and accumulate merits for our future generations.

Offerings would typically include traditional food dishes and the burning of joss sticks and joss paper. The holiday recognizes the traditional reverence of one’s ancestors in Chinese culture.

Kṣitigarbha, or Earth Store Bodhisattva, is known for his vow to take responsibility for the instruction of all beings in the six worlds between the death of Gautama Buddha and the rise of Maitreya, as well as his vow not to achieve Buddhahood until all hells are emptied. He is, therefore, often regarded as the bodhisattva of hell-beings, as well as the guardian of children and patron deity of deceased children and aborted fetuses in some cultures.

Joss paper, also known as ghost or spirit money, is papercrafts or sheets of paper made into burnt offerings common in Chinese ancestral worship (such as the veneration of deceased family members and relatives on holidays and special occasions). Joss paper, as well as other papier-mâché items, are also burned or buried in various Asian funerals, “to ensure that the spirit of the deceased has lots of good things in the afterlife.”