The Revival of the Tomb Sweeping Festival (Qingmingjie) in the People\u27s Republic of China : Grave-based Ancestor Worship and the Cultural Policies of the Chinese Communist Party.

This article discusses the recent revival of the Tomb Sweeping Festival (Qingmingjie) as a national holiday in the People\u27s Republic of China. While the Tomb Sweeping Festival, an important occasion in Chinese ancestor worship, has experienced a steady popular tevival since the reform petiod, the fact that it became a national holiday in 2008 seems to also mark a changed attitude of the Chinese state towards traditional culture. This article analyzes the ideas that constitute the background of the institution of the Tomb Sweeping Festival as an official holiday by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The article shows that the concept of the "harmonious society" (hexie shehut) propagated by General Secretaty Eu Jintao forms the direct background to the current reevaluation of traditional culture by the Chinese state. Traditional culture is perceived to be able to provide shared values and a common culture that can counter the negative social effects of the introduction of a market economic system. The official Tomb Sweeping Festival combines domestic ancestor worship with reverence for revolutionary martyrs and the mythical founders of the Chinese people, the Yellow Emperor and the Red Emperor, creating a ritual community that integrates the domestic with the national. While traditional culture is increasingly integrated into the cultural policies of the CCP, this does not mean that cultural practices such as ancestor worship are actively acknowledged by the Chinese state in their traditional form. To the contrary, the officially sanctioned Tomb Sweeping Festival is founded on the transformation of traditional practices of ancestor worship. A secular form of commemoration, in particular modeled on commemorative practices for revolutionary martyrs, is to function as the template for ancestor worship. Practices such as the burning ofpaper offerings for ancestors (shaozhl), which are based on the idea of a reciprocal relationship between the living and the dead, are to be replaced by practices that do not posit the ancestors as active entities and propagate a secular worldview. The officially sanctioned Tomb Sweeping Festival thus forms part of ongoing attempts by the state to bind traditional culture closer to party interests while simultaneously seeking to transform traditional culture according to the CCP\u27s secular worldview