Qingming Festival 2027 is on Monday

About Qingming Festival

Unlike most Chinese festivals, Qingming is set by the sun rather than the moon. Its name, meaning "clear and bright," belongs to one of the 24 solar terms of the traditional Chinese calendar: the one that begins when the sun reaches 15 degrees of celestial longitude, which puts it on April 4 or 5 in current years. In 2016 UNESCO inscribed the Twenty-Four Solar Terms, China's ancient way of tracking the year by the sun's motion, on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The heart of the day is tomb sweeping. Families travel to ancestral graves to pull weeds, wipe headstones and set out food, tea or wine, flowers and incense, and many burn paper offerings. Qingming absorbed customs from the older Cold Food Festival (Hanshi), traditionally tied to Jie Zitui, a loyal courtier of the state of Jin who, in legend, died in a forest fire set to draw him out of hiding.

Qingming is also a celebration of spring. People take outings known as taqing, or "treading on the green," and fly kites, a custom once believed to carry bad luck away when the string was cut. Mainland China made Qingming a public holiday in 2008, and it is also a holiday in Hong Kong and Macau, where it is called Ching Ming, and in Taiwan. The date shown is mainland China's; Hong Kong's holiday falls on the same day.

Sources: UNESCO: The Twenty-Four Solar Terms, Hong Kong Labour Department: Statutory holidays for 2027. How we check dates.

How to mark Qingming Festival

• Visit and tidy the graves of relatives, or a family memorial at a columbarium.
• Write down a few family stories or update a family tree while older relatives can help.
• Take a spring walk in a park or the countryside, the traditional taqing outing.
• Fly a kite with children and explain the old custom behind it.
• If you cannot travel, light a candle at home and share photos of ancestors with family.

Qingming Festival dates