Flowery and Various Festivals in Ancient China
1 min readChinese traditional festivals have experi-enced a historical process of appearing, develop-ing, continuing and transforming. In pre-Qin peri-od some festivals had formed their originalmodality. And in Western and Eastern Han dy-nasties a festival system came into being. In Wei, Jin and the Southern & Northern dynasties, the dates of some festivals were set, and the festival system became abundant with Cold Food Festi-val (Hanshi), Duanwu, Qixi, Chongyang, Bathing Buddha Festival, Zhongyuan Festival (15th of theseventh lunar month during which sacrifices are offered to the dead), etc. Other more importanttraditional festivals like Yuanxiao, Qingming, Zhongqiu festivals finalized their pattern of cele-bration in Sui, Tang, Northern and Southern Song dynasties. And in Ming and Qing dynasties, the festival culture continued to develop and brought about more abundant rituals and customs.
New festivals came into being continuously and some old festivals gradually faded in history.Now we do not have Shangsi Festival（the 3rd day of the third lunar calendar month when people would go for an outing by the water），Hanshi Festival anymore.The functions of festivals have been changed from primitive worshipping and driving away ghosts and evils to entertaining and felicitating people as well as memorizing departed ancestors and maintaining human relationships.
