Written on the third Hanshi Festival after Su Shi (1037-1101) was banished to Huangzhou, the Hanshi Observance is one of best calligraphic works in semi-cursive style.

 

Both the Cold Food (Hanshi) Festival and the Qingming Festival originate from ancient custom of renewing fire in spring. As the story of selflessness embodied by Jie Zitui spread, these two festivals gradually became festivals held in his memory.

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This year, the Hanshi Festival falls on April 4. Ancient Chinese customs forbade the use of fire and all families would eat cold food during this festival. This festival is believed to honor Jie Zitui in the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BCE).

Preferring death to being rewarded for doing what he thought to be right, Jie was a man without self-interest. The story goes that in honor of Jie’s selflessness, Duke Wen forbade the use of fire every year on these several days.

However, there are reasons to doubt the commonly held assumption that the story of Jie Zitui was the origin of the custom of forbidding the use of fire and eating cold food on certain days of the year. The custom had appeared before Jie’s time. With the origins of this custom forgotten, ancient Chinese later used Jie’s story as its origin story. Historian Li Zongdong (1895-1974) and Qiu Xigui (1935- ) had convincing arguments about the true origins of the Cold Food Festival.

There was a custom called “renewing fire” in ancient China. Building a fire was not an easy skill in remote antiquity. Families tended to keep fires burning as long as possible. However, ancient Chinese thought that a fire that burned too long would easily bring disease. Hence, the fire would be extinguished once a year to make a new one.

Generally, there are two ways of making new fires. One is to drill into wood. The elm and willow woods were commonly used to make new fires in spring. Hence, new fire made in spring was also called “yu huo” meaning “elm fire.”

Another way is to make new fire with copper concave mirrors under the sun. Ancient Chinese thought that fire gathered from the sun was the purest. The Rites of Zhou recorded a government position named “sixuanshi,” referring to the people who were in charge of making and renewing fires.

The process of renewing fires was to extinguish the old fire and make new ones. Because the fire was generally renewed once a year, ancient Chinese also used it to number the years. The Analects said “(In a year) The old crops have already vanished, the new crops have come up, the whirling drills have made new fires.” Renewing a fire referred to a year. For example, Su Shi (1037-1101) once wrote “The fire has been renewed three times since we left the capital; We’ve trodden all the way from rise to fall.” As we can see here, renewing the fire three times meant three years.

People ate cold foods during the transitional period in renewing the fire. However, the elderly and the weak would easily get sick eating cold food. Therefore, the custom of eating cold foods was banned several times in history.

Previously, the Qingming Festival was on the third day after the Cold Food Festival, and after calendar reform during the Qing Dynasty it is now exactly the day after it. As one of the 24 solar terms in Chinese lunar calendar, Qingming was not a festival until the Tang Dynasty. Qingming means “clear and bright.” The cold air of the winter begins to recede and flowers begin to blossom. Everything revives and refreshes. 

On Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb-sweeping Day, Chinese people pay tribute to and honor their ancestors at grave sites. Maintaining and sweeping the tombs, which are usually located outside the city, also provided people with opportunities for an outing in spring.

Going for an outing and admiring the beautiful flowers as well as social gathering and drinking with friends in spring were typical activities in the Tang Dynasty. In one of his poems, Wang Wei described the scenes that he saw at the eastern area outside Chang’an on the Cold Food Festival. By the river, there were only several houses. Young people from the aristocratic families inside Chang’an City played ancient Chinese football cuju and played on swings by the river.    

Impoverished as he was, Du Fu (712-770) also went for outings in the spring. However, because he could not afford luxurious activities as the wealthy people did, Du sometimes just drank and enjoyed the beautiful flowers with several friends during these two festivals.

On one Cold Food Festival in the late years of his life when he roved across the nation, Du Fu wrote a poem in a drifting boat, with the line “Festive morning I make myself drink a little and the food still cold; Lean on the armrest, downcast, wearing a pheasant cap. Boat on the spring waters, like sitting on top of the sky; Blossoms of my old age, seen as though through mist. A playful butterfly, graceful, threads through the silent curtains; Nimble gulls one by one swoop over rapid shallows. Clouds white, mountains green, ten thousand miles away; I gaze straight north, grieving—Chang’an there!” For a dizzy old man like him, admiring flowers at this time of year was like appreciating flowers through the mist. Given the chaotic political situation that saddened the poets, how could he enjoy the spring?

The boys exercised their bodies by playing cuju while the girls would play on swings during the Hanshi and Qingming Festivals. Wang Wei wrote “Frequently leaping over the flying birds were the cuju balls; Competingly were the swings ridden higher than the willow treetops.”

Silently and gently riding swings in the spring breeze was considered a typical female sport. Poets wrote quite a lot about this. A famous song-ci poetry by Su Shi goes “Without the wall there’s a path within there’s a swing. A passer-by; Hears the fair maiden’s laughter in the garden ring. As the ringing laughter dies away by and by; For the enchantress the enchanted can only sigh.”

 

(edited by CHEN ALONG)