There aren’t many public holidays in Taiwan, and one of them is what so-called Tomb Sweeping Day or Qingming Festival (Qingming Jie); in Indonesia is known as Cheng Beng. This year Qingming Festival falls today, April 4. The history of Qingming Festival can be traced back to more than 2,500 years ago.
Some universities take this time for a spring break, just like my university, adding two days (Monday and Tuesday) as designated holidays, thus making a long break since Saturday (March 31) till Wednesday (April 4). Most students come back to their hometown to get together with their family, pay honor to their ancestors. Since Monday, rise in traffic in national highways has been observed, as reported by Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
Families will go to their ancestors’ grave, cleaning the grave, and then put some offerings for the dead. The offerings are several kinds of food, fruits (such as oranges), and also “ghost money”. The family members will gather around the tomb and pray together, burning the “ghost money” and also some smoking incense. Then some yellow papers will be placed in the tombs as a symbol of new roof.
There aren’t many “real tombs”, outdoor ones (just like mausoleums) in Taiwan because of land scarcity and modernizations. If the deceased members of a family are not buried, they are cremated and their ashes are kept in a housing place, or sometimes a temple. If this is the case, then the family will visit the temple and do almost the same things except the cleaning part: give some offerings, burn incense and “ghost money”.
