Worshipping Ancestors

( chinadaily.com.cn )

Updated: 2014-04-04

With the arrival of the Qingming Festival, it is customary for Chinese people from various ethnic groups, at home and even abroad, to travel whatever distance it takes to return to their hometowns for ancestral worship, representing the world’s most significant cultural practice of “root-seeking”. The procedure begins with the rituals of making offerings, performing kowtows, and burning incense and joss paper for their ancestors. Then follows some cleaning and reorganizing, such as weeding the grave and adding soil to the burial mound.