Good news on the coronavirus front! China has emerged from a country-wide quarantine. Students are going back to school and businesses and factories are opening up again. Even Wuhan, the center of the COVID-19 outbreak, has started to reopen, with a selection of people being green-lit to travel domestically. This has come just in time: the Qingming Festival is on April 4th this year.
After missing this year's Lunar New Year due to travel restrictions, Chinese people are looking forward to observing the Qingming holiday with their families. Tourism is expected to rise as people are feeling more comfortable to travel, equipped with masks of course!
The Qingming Festival, also called "Tomb Sweeping Day," is a week centered around April 4th or 5th. On Qingming Festival, Chinese families visit the gravesite of a deceased loved one. They clean the tombstone, leaving flowers and food, burning incense, and saying prayers for the ancestors no longer with them.
However, many other countries are still under lock-down. The Malaysian government has urged people to stay home to celebrate the festival. In America, many states–including California and New York, with the largest Chinese-American populations in the country–are under mandatory stay-at-home orders. If you cannot get out for this Qingming Festival, here are three ways you can observe the holiday from your house.
[zombify_post]
0 Comments