The Qingming Festival, a Chinese tradition more than 2,500 years old, brought together families, brightly costumed lion dancers and wind-whipped kites at Crown Hill’s Pavilion of Reflection on Tuesday evening to honor ancestors and welcome spring.
A holiday much like Memorial Day or El Dia de los Muertos, Qingming is widely observed throughout Asia on the 15th day after the spring equinox, usually April 5. It is also known as Hansik in Korea.
It is translated here as Clear Bright Festival, Ancestors Day or Grave Sweeping Day.
Rituals include the practical, such as cleaning the headstone, weeding the grave and decorating with fresh flowers. Traditions also are magical and spiritual, such as offering incense, money and food to the spirits of the deceased — and picnicking with them. It is said to bring good luck to eat the food offered to the ancestors.
It has its roots in ancestor worship, the only religion native to China, according to the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project.
Buddhism was imported. Confucianism and Taosim are more properly considered philosophies than religions, the project’s web site states.
On Qingming, some families set off firecrackers to scare off evil spirits, or have colorful “lions” chase them away and bring good fortune. At Crown Hill, the phantasmagoric dancing lions of the Shaolin Hung Mei Kung Fu Association were in charge of that.
“It’s the first-ever festival here,” said Kevin Wolfe, general manager of Olinger Crown Hill Mortuary, Cemetery and Arboretum.
“We opened an Asian burial garden three years ago. We’re reaching out to different cultures in the community.”
Hang T. Do, a Vietnamese woman, said her family always tends the family graves on this day.
“We do it as individuals,” Do said. “It is very nice to have it this way,” as a communitywide observance.
The Olinger Crown Hill event, a partnership of the cemetery and the Denver Asian Chamber of Commerce, included flying kites and demonstrations of origami, the Japanese art of poetically folded paper.
Festival organizers collected donations for victims of Japan’s tsunami and earthquake.
“In the age of technology it sometimes seems humans can do anything,” said event speaker Dr. Allen Huang, of the Global Higher Education Consulting Corp.
“(Natural disaster) is one of the things we are powerless to choose against. Time is one of the things we cannot control. We are walking down the road to death the minute we are born.”
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
