̶H̶a̶p̶p̶y̶ ̶Tomb Sweeping festival! Er, wait a second. It’s not a very merry occasion anyways. While it’s nice to get off work, 清明节 Qingming Jie, also known as Tomb Sweeping Festival, is actually a pretty solemn occasion. Families are supposed to return to their burial grounds of their ancestors to pay respect and tidy up their final resting grounds.
The festival has ancient orgins in the Cold Food Festival dating to the classic Spring and Autumn period in the 7th century B.C.
Seeing as how most expats don’t have ancestral tombs in the area, unless you count that bottle of Tsingtao that exploded in the fridge after being forgot about at your last party…
R.I.P., sweet one. Another one lost too soon.
…the best way to partake in the festival is chowing down on yummy Qingtuan.
Qingtuan is a type of dumpling made from sticky rice mixed with Chinese mugwort or barley grass.
The types of grass used to make them are only edible during the early spring, just in time for the Qingming Festival. The grass is smashed up and ground into a juice and then mixed with the sticky rice to get that verdant green colour. The mixture is rolled up into a rice ball and then traditionally stuffed with red or black bean paste.
Some regions craft other types of stuffing, including sesame; minced meat with dried bamboo shoots; dried shrimp with shiitake mushrooms and radish; salted egg yolk; and deep-fried shallots. We even saw one stuffed with durian fruit shared on WeChat moments. We will not be trying that one.
While the best ones are (obviously) lovingly made by hand or gotten as a reward for battling the crowds in hours-long lines…
…you can score them from street vendors, pastry shops, as a gift from work, and (of course) from the backbones of modern society: Family Mart, Alldays, Quik, Buddys, and 7-11.
If you don’t even feel like leaving your house, get your order in on Taobao and let that kuadi bro climb the stairs to your 5th floor walkup.
Well, what are you waiting for? Go out and grab a taste of ancient culture today!