China Naming Network - Almanac query - When is the Cold Food Festival?

When is the Cold Food Festival?

The Cold Food Festival is the day before Tomb-Sweeping Day, which is April 3rd every year.

The Cold Food Festival, which lasted for more than two thousand years, was once called the largest folk festival in China. Cold Food Festival is the only traditional festival of Han nationality named after food customs. Tomb-Sweeping Day, also known as outing festival, outing festival, March festival, ancestor worship festival, etc. It was celebrated at the turn of mid-spring and late spring.

From the Spring and Autumn Period to the present, the Cold Food Festival has a history of more than 2,600 years. The story took place in Shanxi, China, and was set as the day before Tomb-Sweeping Day. On this day, the custom of eating cold food, offering sacrifices and having an outing has been handed down and accepted by the whole country. With the passage of time, the Cold Food Festival has quietly merged into Tomb-Sweeping Day, and the people represented by the Cold Food Festival have praised loyalty, honesty and political clarity for thousands of years.

In Yuan Zaju, modern Peking Opera, Jin Opera, modern Jin Opera and novels of Ming Dynasty, there are many special songs and chapters of Jietui and Cold Food Festival. Since the Eastern Han Dynasty, legends, stories and inscriptions on mesons have also become important historical materials for the study of folk literature and epigraphy in Sanjin.

Among the poems of past dynasties, the poems dedicated to the Cold Food Festival have never stopped, from Qu Yuan in the Warring States, Sun Chu in the Western Jin Dynasty to modern times. There are nearly 300 poems in the whole Tang Dynasty, and more than 100 poems and Yuan songs in the Song Dynasty, involving historical celebrities such as Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty and Zhang Shuo, and representatives of various factions such as Du Fu, Bai Juyi and Eight Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties, which have become important materials for studying the development history of Chinese poetry.