QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA
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linguistic terms and customary conduct. Ta qing may not only have been an expression of periphery, it may also have been a ritual activity of visiting non-agricultural, non-productive land: 'the people tread on the green on the outlying wastelands'.94 It is a visit to the yin ancestors in their graves and the yin ancestors are, by virtue of the location of their graves, part of nature.
11. Worship to the Family Spirits.
One piece of information tells us that in Yingshan people made gong & offerings to the jiashen, 'the family spirits'.95 This may be an offering in the ancestor hall but jiashen might also mean something like 'household gods'. The latter interpretation is the more likely. However, if jiashen should mean 'dead forefather' it must then be an offering in the ancestor hall. The term shen indicates this, and furthermore, the grave offerings are described after this entry, so the gong and the jiao to the graves must be different. According to my previous preliminary analysis of the Chinese calendar system as a system of ancestor worship, Qingming should definitely not be a day for worship to the tablets in the hall. Curiously enough, it may be that this gong is linked to the willow twigs. The chronicler says:
this day people collect willow twigs and make offerings to the family spirits. Some insert [willow] in the hair at the temples.
So it may be that this note should be interpreted in such a way that the use of willow was a gong offering to the jiashen, probably the protective godlings of the household.
12. A Hypothesis.
What bearing have these data on my earlier studies in the calendar system of ritual events in traditional Chinese society? Arguing from materials from the middle Yangzi valley I have maintained that the Qingming festival is a symbolic statement on the sowing of rice, and I have pointed to some similarities between the spring practices and the customs of Chongyang in the autumn. In both cases we deal with ritual gatherings of people away from built-up areas in natural surroundings. The main difference is that at Qingming activities were focussed on the ancestral graves, at Chongyang on mountain tops. I proposed that Qingming had affinity with yin ancestors, graves, earth and underground. Chongyang,