On Qingming (Pure Brightness): Around the fifth or sixth of April is the time for Chinese people to pay respects to a dead person at the tomb. Since tombs are mostly in suburbs, urbanites usually go and the whole family brings wine and various oblations. Some people who have not been able to go to the graveyard would offer sacrifices to their ancestors at home.After the sacrificial rites, all clansmen gather together and drink
During the Dragon Boat Festival (fifth day of the fifth lunar month): On the day, every family hangs calamus and mugwort to ward off evil spirits and everybody drinks the realgar wine at midday. The wine specially prepared for this occasion, is a mixture of the yellow rice wine and realgar. On the day, people alsd do a general deaning.
On Zhongyuan Festival (15th of the seventh lunar month): On the day in ancient times, people would make a lot of little lamps with clam shells and place them in rivers after being lit. These lamps would float along the rivers reflecting their light in the water and creating a beautiful scene Some villages also put up platforms by the riverside and invited opera troupes to give performances. Usually, performances lasted for three days and everyday of the three days during the daytime, there was a feast with wine.
On Winter Solstice仅he 22nd or 23rd of December): Among the people in Shaoxing on the day there is the custom to send winter
clothing to the dead. After a memorial ceremony, relatives and friends gather to drink wine, remembering the dead and marking relationships among the living.
