Talk:Qingming Festival

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Qingming Festival is within the scope of WikiProject Taiwan, a project to improve all Taiwan-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other Taiwan-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale.
This article is part of WikiProject China, a project to improve all China-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other China-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. (add comments)
More information about this article...
Vietnam Portal

This article is part of WikiProject Vietnam, an attempt to create a comprehensive, neutral, and accurate representation of Vietnam on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page.
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
WikiProject Buddhism This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Buddhism, an attempt to promote better coordination, content distribution, and cross-referencing between pages dealing with Buddhism. Please participate by editing the article Qingming Festival, or visit the project page for more details on the projects.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

Article Grading:
The article has not been rated for quality and/or importance yet. Please rate the article and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

I moved this page because of all the choices listed, "Tomb Sweeping Day" is most common via google search. It's better to use English, especially when English is most common. --Jiang 00:44, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

When I created this page, I thought a lot about precisely what to name it. Yes, it's better to use English when there's a clear translation, but the problem is that Qing Ming Jie is translated into any of a number of translations, and most of these translations are not even accurate and do not reflect the actual name of the holiday. Yes, when there's a clear translation, like in the case of the Lantern Festival, when the holiday is never called anything else in English, use the English name, but when the most common English name is (1) not a correct translation and (2) not really dominant (in the sense that Tomb Sweeping Day might be a plurality but not a majority), I would argue that it's better to keep it at "Qing Ming Jie." It's similar to why the "Qi Qiao Jie" article is where it is. --Lowellian 01:04, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

Google gives us the following hits:

  • Qing Ming Jie - 218
  • All Souls Day - 25700 (inclueds non Chinese links), not an option due to confusion
  • Clear Brightness Festival - 47
  • Festival for Tending Graves - 10 (only wikipedia links)
  • Grave Sweeping Day - 174
  • Tomb Sweeping Day - 1870

So clearly, the translations are for the last two, and they make a majority if you disregard the first two options. Faulty translations are part of the phenomenon and can be explained in the article itself. If we are to keep "Qing Ming Jie", is this the appropriate spacing? Is there no space between qing and ming? --Jiang 05:49, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

First, Qingming is the correct spacing as per regular Hanyu Pinyin rules. Second, "Tomb Sweeping Day" is only used in Taiwan. In Hong Kong, for example the official English name is "Ching Ming Festival". Finally, if you search for "Qingming Festival" on Google, you get 27500 hits. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner and it is the existing title.--Lapin rossignol (talk) 22:41, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vietnamese customs

The Vietnamese also observe this holiday, known as "Thanh Minh". Some of the most memorable lines from the most significant Vietnamese work of literature, Truyện Kiều, refers to the sceneries during this holiday:

Thanh minh trong tiết tháng ba,
Lễ là tảo mộ, hội là Đạp Thanh.
Gần xa nô nức yến anh,
Chị em sắm sửa bộ hành chơi xuân.
Dập dìu tài tử, giai nhân,
Ngựa xe như nước áo quần như nêm.
Nguyễn Du

DHN 01:33, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External link

I think the following link is appropriate for this article, but it was removed by the Bot. Could anyone take a look to see if it's ok to add this link?

[edit] The 2008 reinstate

This holiday was NOT officially celebrated in the People's republic of China. You cannot claim it was official cause a few people celebrate it in privacy. Is like claiming marijuana is legal cause you smoke it in your own home. If you can get some access to mainland tv stations, they are practically teaching people how to celebrate it for the first time. Benjwong (talk) 04:15, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

What I said was "The Qingming Festival has been traditionally celebrated in the People's Republic of China, but it (along with Dragon Boat Festival (端午节) and Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节)) did not become an official holiday until 2008."
What you said is "Prior to 2008, the holiday was not official in the People's Republic of China since the Communist Party of China classified it as superstition. It was officially celebrated as a public holiday for the first time on April 4, 2008."
My point is that the Qingming Festival has always been traditionally and PUBLICLY celebrated in China (see Xinhuanet.com 中国传统节日介绍——清明节). There is a difference between "celebrated" and an "official observed holiday" (when all businesses close their doors).
You first said "This is one thing the government openly admits even on mainland news." After I showed the link to the official media, you said "That reference does not cover the other holidays". Then I showed you another link to official media about the other two traditional holidays [1]. Now you said "You cannot claim it was official ...". Well I said "... did not become an official holiday ..." But it has been publicly celebrated all the time. There were many things Communist China classified as superstition, and were not publicly celebrated. But Qingming Festival was not one of them. If you had been living in China long enough, you should know that. Do you have a link to official media about "the holiday was not official ... SINCE ... as superstition"? I showed you the link to official media about "has been traditionally celebrated in China'. Pintogiants (talk) 18:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
The statement "The Qingming Festival has been traditionally celebrated in the People's Republic of China" is completely deceptive. All the recent expensive government sponsored Qing ming festival displays in the PRC are practically a cover up. I can name you some places in Hong Kong that really celebrate Halloween. Yet you don't see HK claiming Halloween as anything official on the holiday list. PRC's Qing ming celebration before 2008 was about the same as HK's Halloween celebration. Benjwong (talk) 21:11, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok. Now you are saying to say "The Qingming Festival has been traditionally celebrated" in China is a deception. Well, that's your personal opinion without citations or references (We are writing an encyclopedia here). FYI, the citation I used was on the web in 2003 (that's pretty early in China's web history). You may not like what the official media said many years ago. But I, along with millions people in China, had been PUBLICLY tomb-sweeping every year for over 20 years until I left there 20 years ago. I know my family members in China still tomb-sweep every year today. Pintogiants (talk) 22:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I can counter by claiming to know mainland citizens who have never heard of this holiday until April 2008. But my personal view (like yours) does not matter. What matters is that the government have neglected it. And if you go by references, my sources said superstition had something to do with it. Your xinhua source just showed it was once an important holiday in China, not even the PRChina. Benjwong (talk) 02:10, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
You "know mainland citizens who have never heard of this holiday until April 2008"? I have no doubt about that. China has 1.3b people with all different kinds of backgrounds. Babies, minorities (especially in some remote areas) who observe other traditional holidays. But I venture to say 95% of Chinese in mainland China know there is a 清明节. You said "Xinhua source did not say anything about it in the PRC". I think you have contributed a lot to wikipedia before. So it's hard to believe that actually you said that. Please read the very first sentence "清明节是中国最重要的传统节日之一。它不仅是人们祭奠祖先、缅怀先人的节日，也是中华民族认祖归宗的纽带，更是一个远足踏青、亲近自然、催护新生的春季仪式...清明节是中国重要的传统民俗节日之一，２００６年被列入第一批国家级非物质文化遗产名录。" Do you actually think 中国 does not include PRC? Also look at this picture and other pictures on Qingming Festival on ChinaTravelGuide.com. You are not gonna tell me that they were made up, are you? Pintogiants (talk) 18:39, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I would accept Xinhua as an acceptable source for many things. But this one is completely two sided. Is like me pointing you to an article to show you Halloween is important in Hong Kong in 2007. So what? The history is the same, and should be reported as such on wiki. Qingming was never official in the mainland territory, just as Halloween still isn't official in HK. If you told me the dragon boat festival is ignored in mainland, that is probably more understandable as not everyone lives next to a lake anyways. Benjwong (talk) 15:57, 13 April 2008 (UTC)