2027 Qingming Festival

Qingming Festival, the tomb-sweeping day, falls on April 4 or 5 depending on the year, since it is tied to the qingming solar term rather than the lunar calendar. Families travel to ancestral graves to clear weeds, repaint inscriptions, lay out food and wine and burn joss paper as offerings, a custom dating back more than 2,000 years and once combined with the Cold Food Festival. The mild spring weather also makes it a day for outings: people fly kites, sometimes cutting the string to release bad luck, and in eastern China they eat qingtuan, green glutinous rice dumplings coloured with mugwort. It has been an official public holiday in mainland China since 2008, usually giving a three-day break, and cemeteries and the roads to them are packed, so many families visit on the surrounding weekend instead. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan also observe it as a holiday. This countdown ticks to midnight Beijing time on Qingming.