“It is raining at the time of the Qingming Festival, the pedestrians on the road want to break their souls, I ask where the tavern is, the shepherd boy points to the village of apricot blossoms.” This poem by Du Mu of the Tang Dynasty is known to most Chinese people. It reflects the Qingming Festival, and in just a few lines, the weather, human feelings, and country life are all explained.
The Qingming Festival is the most important festival for the Chinese people and one of the most important festivals in Chinese culture. The people pay tribute to the spirits of their loved ones in various ways. This has been a traditional ritual of the Chinese people for thousands of years, and it has not changed from generation to generation.
This year, the Qingming Festival falls on April 4, but the Chinese Communist Party has officially launched a campaign to ban paper burning.
In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has become increasingly strict in its control of the people, and has begun to intervene to change folk traditions. The specific approach is still the same: issuing documents, media campaign, brainwashing people, and then administrative measures to follow up, monitoring and suppression. This makes Chinese people feel as if they are back to the “four old” years of the Cultural Revolution.
The authorities in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, this year used the “change of customs” as a reason to carry out a special rectification operation of the so-called plutonium paper and coins, so that people have “no place to buy and no paper to burn” for traditional rituals, in an attempt to ban a folk custom that has been passed down for thousands of years, triggering public condemnation.
According to local party media reports, Harbin city authorities held a meeting in March, requiring the Qingming Festival in 2021, the production and processing of paper and coins of enterprises to strictly punish, investigate and deal with all kinds of market, funeral supplies stores, agricultural (food) stores and other wholesale and retail operation of paper and coins and other ritual supplies.
The vice mayor of Harbin, Jiang Chuanhai, called for a ban on the burning of paper and coins and other ritual supplies, saying that “there is nowhere to buy paper and coins, no paper to burn”. The official also advocated “civilized sacrifice”, but did not specify what is “civilized sacrifice”.
In fact, as early as New Year’s Eve, Harbin authorities have mobilized city management, public security in the city launched a special rectification action of placenta coins. According to reports, 3,230 kilograms of paper and coins were seized and 7,460 cases of burning of paper and coins were discouraged.
In March 2018, the city government also issued the “Harbin City, according to the law to control the production and operation of burning paper and coins work program”, which is “to consolidate the results of the creation of a national civilized city, remove the old rules and customs, advocate new social style. The so-called “National Civilized City” title issued by the Central Civilization Office of the Communist Party of China in 2017 and 2020, the selection criteria include “construction achievements” such as social atmosphere.
The “National Civilized City” has been elected once every three years since 2005. In recent years, mainland provinces and cities have been competing for the title of “National Civilized City”, which is considered a political achievement.
Beijing has also made moves.
On March 8, 2021, the General Office of the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the Communist Party of China issued a notice on the work of the Qingming Festival in 2021, stating that it is necessary to “do a good job in the management of mass sacrificial sweeping during the Qingming period. The four requirements of the Notice are summarized as follows.
Although the Chinese Communist Party claims to be effective in controlling the epidemic, it is still wary of another outbreak. The Notice states, “The risk of a rebound of the new epidemic cannot be ignored, and the proper management of the Qingming period is a matter of social stability.”
The notice also said, “guide the masses to choose a civilized low-carbon sacrificial way, resist vulgar sacrificial supplies and superstitious behavior.” The Chinese Communist Party says “guide” on the one hand, and “resist” on the other, wearing the so-called “low-carbon” and “civilized” The Chinese Communist Party says “guide” on one hand and “resist” on the other, putting on the so-called “low-carbon” and “civilized” high hat, and then outlawing folk forms of sacrifice.
The notice calls for “improving the management standard of the sweeping service”. The so-called improve management standards, in other words, control, not according to the rules of the party to sweep the loved ones of the P people behavior suppressed.
The “strengthening of organizational security capacity”, to put it plainly, the Chinese Communist Party wants to mobilize the state machinery to ensure that the “new broken four old” campaign to replace the folk tradition of sweeping.
In fact, in recent years, many provinces and cities on the mainland have banned the burning of paper for mourning.
Sun Li, deputy director of the Beijing People’s Congress Legislative Affairs Committee, explained that the “Civilization Regulations” ultimately state that “no burning or scattering of funeral offerings on roads, in residential areas and other public areas”, which does not appear to be a complete ban, but how is “public areas” defined?
Sichuan Xichang authorities last year, under the pretext of civilized sacrifice, a clear notice on November 1 every year to June 30 of the next year to prohibit the burning of paper on graves; Mianyang also issued regulations before last year’s Mid-Year Festival, prohibiting sacrificial burning of paper and even candles.
In response to the Harbin authorities’ strong interference in the folklore of burning paper at Qingming, a Beijing-based rights lawyer interviewed by the Epoch Times said: “I haven’t been back to Beijing for more than a year, so I don’t understand the situation in Beijing, but I feel that burning meditation paper and coins before 2020 is not a serious problem in Beijing. The northeast folk ritual burning of paper and coins may be serious, but this is mainly a historical tradition and customary phenomenon, and is an agricultural era and agricultural social customs, which is not illegal and not explicitly prohibited by law, and therefore not suitable for public security to intervene.
The paper money, also known as paper money, yinji money, is an important ritual for ancestors in East Asian countries, this folklore has existed for thousands of years, is also a manifestation of traditional Chinese culture.
Because the Harbin municipal government to rectify the action of the plutonium paper and coins, to combat a wide range of people involved in the New Year ancestor worship, Qingming tomb sweeping and many other traditional customs, so it was strongly condemned by civil opinion.
Some netizens said: burned for thousands of years, how can not?
“This is not superstition, is the memorial of the ancestors, if the plutonium is superstition, then the temple, the Taoist temple incense is also superstition? And how?” “Maybe they don’t have a father and mother!”
This netizen is really wrong. All senior Communist Party officials have parents, but their parents are different from the parents of ordinary people. Now that mainland China is engaged in real estate, the price of houses for the living has skyrocketed, and so has the price of cemeteries for the dead, which is even higher than the price of houses for the living. The so-called cemeteries in many places have cadre areas, the best part of feng shui, occupied by officials or their parents. When ordinary people die, they can usually only store their ashes in a box inside the cemetery. Theirs is the equivalent of a villa, and the common people’s is the equivalent of a city building where ordinary people live.
So in mainland China, people are still divided into three, six, and nine classes after death. In many rural areas of the mainland, people used to be buried in the ground after death, so to speak. After the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, cremation was encouraged, and people in the cities were cremated when they died, but it was not mandatory in rural areas. But in recent years, it has become mandatory. Xu Guang, former deputy secretary of the provincial party committee in Henan, was one of the most aggressive, leveling a total of 3 million graves during his tenure as secretary of the Zhoukou municipal party committee. As a result, by 2019, he was investigated by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and fell from his horse.
When the Chinese describe a bad one, they will say he beat the blind, scolded the deaf, dug the extinct graves and kicked the widow’s door. What does that mean? The blind man, the other party can not fight back; scold the deaf, he can not hear, will not scold back; digging the extinct family grave, that is, no one has no offspring, so no one to pursue you; kicking the widow’s door also means the same thing, there is no man in the house, no one to come out and fight you to the death.
But according to Chinese folklore, these are all retribution, is to create a big bad karma.
So the local people in Henan said, Xu Guang is to get retribution. In fact, most of the Zhoukou city officials who dug graves with him got into trouble.
I think there will be retribution for not allowing people to burn incense and paper on Qingming Festival this year.
There are those who believe in retribution and those who do not. The top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party believe in it, but they usually don’t let the people believe in it. Just like they believe in the United States, they send their wives and children to the United States and save their money in the United States, but they don’t let the people believe in the United States and criticize the United States in the media every day. It’s the same thing.
It is never nonsense to say that the top echelons of the Chinese Communist Party believe in karma and feng shui and gossip. The government built a building, must be built like a coffin, said to promote officials to get rich, the door orientation is also particularly careful, must be sitting in the north facing south, etc., these people see more reports. For example, Mao Zedong believed, before he entered Beijing, met an old Taoist in the West Mountain, asked the world’s major events, the old Taoist only said “eight, three, four, one” four numbers and did not speak. The first of these is the “eight, three, four, one,” and the second is the “eight, three, four, one”. This 41 years, from the time he arrived in Yan’an, precisely to obtain the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party began to count.
There is another story, related to Xi Jinping’s family, which is also very popular in mainland China.
The most famous monk of Chinese Zen Buddhism, Master Huineng, was a native of the Tang Dynasty and the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism. He was a native of Guangdong, where he later continued to speak about Buddhism, and finally died at the Nanhua Temple in Shaoguan, Guangdong. Huineng’s flesh did not decay after his death, and everyone took it as a miracle, and later put gold leaf on him, which became a treasure of Shaoguan Nanhua Temple.
During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards rushed into Nanhua Temple to break the Four Olds, and the first target was Huineng’s golden body, which was smashed and smashed. A monk gathered up the remains of Huineng and buried them secretly. It is said that many of the Red Guards who did it later had accidents, and one of them even saw Huineng in his dream, and he ended up becoming a monk at Nanhua Temple himself.
In 1979, this monk again saw Master Huineng in his dream and asked him to restore the golden statue. He wrote to the CPPCC and the United Front Work Department of Shaoguan and Guangdong Province. At that time, officials at all levels were still predominantly Cultural Revolutionists and were all Communists, and had no interest or time to bother with such matters. Later the matter was made known to Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, who had just been rehabilitated from his job and was the secretary of the provincial party committee in Guangdong. He instructed that the golden body must be rebuilt. The leaders of Shaoguan City also found various reasons to push back, but Xi Zhongxun’s attitude was so strong that the following had to do as they were told.
At this time, the monk who buried the remains of Huineng’s golden body, only then the burial site was made public. So later the authorities paid for the restoration of Nanhua Temple, and then make a golden body statue, put the remains of Huineng into it, and put it back on the Lotus Terrace for people to worship.
The Red Guard monk later had a dream in which Master Huineng said that Xi Zhongxun would have great fortune. Later, Xi Zhongxun was promoted to Beijing, but was not ambitious. The people say that this blessing, it turns out, fell on Xi Jinping.
Xi Jinping himself actually believes in gods, Buddhism and ghosts, which we will have the opportunity to talk about later.
In traditional Chinese culture, the most important ritual to be passed on is to sacrifice to the ancestors. Because Chinese Confucian culture is based on “loyalty, filial piety, benevolence and righteousness” as the core, filial piety is to worship the ancestors and be grateful. Qingming Festival is actually a form of embodiment.
Since the establishment of the Communist Party, they have considered this traditional culture and religion as something that hinders them, as backward and superstitious, and therefore had to be eradicated. The Communist Manifesto makes this particularly clear. So for the 70 years that the CCP has ruled the mainland, no matter what the top leaders think, as a political party, the CCP has never ceased to eradicate traditional culture. Whether Mao Zedong or Xi Jinping, there is no exception to this, which is determined by the ideology of the Communist Party and Communism. But the cycle of heavenly justice and retribution will be repaid in the end.
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