Ching Ming (Clear and Bright) Festival

One particular festival is followed with reverence in eastern provinces. In death, as in life, Chinese people celebrate or commiserate with special foods. The Ching Ming Festival falls in early April and is a day when families visit graveyards to pay respects to their ancestors, offer food to the God of the Earth and spend a day picnicking on the site. There is great veneration in these festivities, for Taoism embraces ancestor worship and filial piety extends to the afterlife.