left: Easter eggs/ right: food for worship ancester on QingMing Day
I’ve learned the meaning and celebration of Easter from my English textbook several years ago, but now I m going to have my first Easter here in London, which strikes me a more vivid image in real life: 7 days of library closure for Easter break with tens of thousands kinds of chocolate eggs and bunnies in stores. I grabbed one of those colorful eggs and felt myself was ready for the holiday somehow.
After shopping, I came back and called my family in Taiwan, told them I will have a long Easter holidays here. Then they asked me, ‘will you come back for the QingMing Festival?’
'When is the QingMing Festival?’ I m curious cause the date changed every year based on the Chinese Lunar Calendar. ‘It’s going to be this weekend. Your brother will come back for it this time.’ Then my parents started to count how many relatives will come back for it as usual.
The QingMing Festival (清明節), which also called ‘tomb sweeping day’, is one of the important Chinese traditional festival. It’s an opportunity for celebrants to remember and honor our ancestors at grave sites. Young and old pray in front of the ancestors, sweep the tombs and offer certain food, such as spring roll and boiling egg, to show our respect.
Interestingly, I found both Easter and QingMing Festival are moveable feasts. Then I googled and found that QingMing is normally on the 15th days from the Spring Equinox whereas Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox. Furthermore, I even found ancient Chinese not only eat but also paint the eggs while they worship their ancestor.
So, the first common thing is the similar date based on Spring Equinox. Of course people might argue about ‘Easter controversies’—not all people celebrate Easter because of different religions in Western areas. However, either West or East might agree it is joyful to celebrate Spring’s coming. To go a step further, Spring is the time of growth and prosperity which would be best represented by eggs, which have been the symbol of new life, renewal, new beginnings and fertility. It is not surprisingly that people seem eating eggs as a tradition in celebrating Spring across the West and East culture.
To me, one of the bad thing is the high price of plane ticket either in leaving out of London or coming back to Taiwan during the holidays. The good thing? Probably I can eat Easter egg and Spring roll at the same time of this year!
