* During this Qingming Festival in China, traditional rituals meet green practices. Some cemeteries are offering fresh flowers to avoid the burning of paper offerings, allowing people to honor their loved ones in an eco-friendly way.
* Students in several regions of China are enjoying a spring break combined with the Qingming Festival. For many parents, the extended holiday offers an opportunity to spend more time with their children, with family trips among the top plans during this period.
HEFEI/GUANGZHOU, April 5 (Xinhua) -- With its dual role as a solar term and a festival, Qingming, which has a history of over 2,500 years, draws tens of millions of people to honor their ancestors through tomb-sweeping rituals, both in person and online.
This year's Qingming Festival, which falls on Sunday, brings some new changes to the traditional celebration. With the rise of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), diverse approaches have emerged to make farewells and mourning more personal and heartfelt.
Additionally, the introduction of the first-ever spring break for primary and secondary school students in some parts of China has extended the three-day Qingming holiday into a six-day vacation, creating new ways to spend the holiday while carrying forward tradition.
TECH-DRIVEN GOODBYES
At the start of this year, Wang Wei and his students were already busy at the Academy of Fine Arts, Anhui Normal University in east China's Anhui Province, portraying what martyrs looked like before their passing.
Over the past few years, the team has painted portraits of more than 600 martyrs, which have become an important way for their families to express feelings of longing.
"We are busiest around the Qingming Festival every year. In the past two years, with the assistance of AI, our efficiency has been greatly improved," Wang said.
According to Wang, the portraits could previously only be painstakingly hand-drawn based on the appearance and memories of the martyrs' close relatives, with the team making all drawings and adjustments manually.
"But now, AI has empowered us to make adjustments more quickly and conveniently," he said.
Moreover, AI helps create dynamic images and short videos, providing additional ways to convey emotions and memories of the martyrs' families.
Zhong Xindi, daughter of a Red Army martyr named Zhong Yanzhu, holds a portrait of his father in Ruijin City, east China's Jiangxi Province, April 1, 2026. (Xinhua/Zhou Mi)
In addition to the use of AI, digitalization and social media are also changing the way Chinese people pay tribute to their ancestors, express mourning during the festival, and perceive death.
In early March, an app called "e-tomb" was launched on the App Store, drawing widespread attention on Xiaohongshu, a major Chinese lifestyle social media platform. The app allows relatives and friends to carry out digital memorial services for the deceased, including setting virtual tombstones, sending flowers and attaching messages of remembrance.
"I initially developed this app to make my thoughts traceable, hoping to create a small corner to store my memories of my deceased puppy," said Maggie, adding that she hopes it can help people approach death with less heaviness.
"The deceased have family members and friends, each with their own stories. Their descriptions will constitute a fuller picture, allowing people to appreciate the ordinary yet meaningful lives of each person," she added.
According to Maggie, digital ancestral veneration is more environmentally friendly than traditional methods and overcomes the limitations of time and space.
"One user said that he rarely returned home while working away all year, so he placed virtual food that his grandmother liked on the e-tombstone and shared his daily life with her through messages to express his grief," she said.
"The Chinese people's tribute to their ancestors and the cultural spirit of respecting the deceased and remembering the past have not weakened; instead, they have found new ways to be passed down and continued in the digital age," said Liu Mubin, associate professor with the School of Sociology and Political Science at Anhui University.
DIGITAL INHERITANCE
While digital tools have created more ways to commemorate the deceased, the digital age has also sparked discussions about digital inheritance.
On March 21, the China Will Registration Center of the China Ageing Development Foundation released a white paper highlighting a case in which a 22-year-old man surnamed Feng handled his will, clearly leaving all his salary savings to his sister. He also deliberately included the game account he had used for seven years in the scope of the will.
According to a white paper released by the center in 2025, from 2017 to 2023, the number of wills made by young and middle-aged people increased 24-fold, while those made by the post-90s generation rose 11.2-fold. Digital property has become an important component of the wills created by young people.
Such changes reflect the evolving understanding of digital inheritance in society, showing that it is not merely cold code and data but vivid fragments of a person's life.
Students visit a mock space capsule at an aerospace science education center during the spring break in Sheyang County of Yancheng, east China's Jiangsu Province, April 1, 2026. (Photo by Peng Ling/Xinhua)
Since September last year, Chinese social media platforms, including WeChat, have announced that they will no longer reclaim accounts that have been inactive for a long time, nor will they delete content on WeChat Moments. Many netizens and experts have praised the move.
"Regarding issues such as the transfer and inheritance of the deceased's social media accounts, as well as the access and deletion of personal information by close relatives, it is necessary for legal and ethical experts, platforms and relevant departments to conduct in-depth discussions and formulate contract arrangements and legal norms that are thoughtful, lawful and practical," said Xu Ke, head of digital economy and legal innovation research center, University of International Business and Economics.
China is advancing the legislative work on virtual property and digital inheritance. Over the past five years, Chinese courts have concluded 1,743 cases involving infringement of virtual property, with the number of cases increasing at an average annual rate of 69.9 percent.
SPRING BREAK
This year, the government work report for the first time called for introducing spring and autumn holidays for primary and secondary school students in localities where conditions permit, thus elevating this policy from local trials to a national guideline.
Students in several regions of China are enjoying a spring break combined with the Qingming Festival. For many parents, the extended holiday offers an opportunity to spend more time with their children, with family trips among the top plans during this period.
Yixian County in Anhui has witnessed an increasing number of tourists coming for family vacations and study tours.
"The number of room bookings this year has increased significantly compared with the same period last year," said Zhan Ni, manager of a B&B in the county.
"The peak period for family trips was mostly during winter and summer vacations, but this year's spring break has had a very obvious driving effect for family trips," Zhan said.
Students pick tea leaves at a tea garden during the spring break in Huangshan City, east China's Anhui Province, April 1, 2026. (Photo by Shi Yalei/Xinhua)
According to data from Umetrip, a mobile platform for real-time flight information, as of March 16, the number of domestic flight ticket reservations for the Qingming holiday has exceeded 1.12 million, with a year-on-year growth of approximately 23 percent.
Going for a spring outing has been a traditional custom of the Qingming Festival. For young people, outdoor hiking has become a popular choice during this holiday.
Xia Fengqi, who works in Shenzhen in south China's Guangdong Province, does not plan to travel to major cities during the holiday. Instead, she and her friends are looking for a mountain villa around Shenzhen to enjoy a barbecue.
"The advantage of going on a nearby spring outing is clear. The distance is short, there are fewer crowds, and it offers flexibility. There's no need to plan too many things in advance," she said.
Going on a spring outing and spending time with family during the holiday are a continuation and development of traditional festival customs, according to Liu Mubin.
"A festival can be carried down for thousands of years because it can constantly absorb new elements of the times and transform the core values into a lifestyle that people can feel and participate in. This is precisely the key to keeping the culture alive," he said.
(Video reporters: Bai Bin, Wang Ruiping, Yang Shenshen, Yu Junxiang, Zhang Panjiang, Lin Kai, Sun Min; Video editors: Zheng Xin, Zhu Cong, Hong Liang) ■
人社部：整治虚假职业技能培训 人社部近日发布通知，要求规范培训机构办学，严禁以招生费等名义直接或变相买卖符合补贴条件的生源，以联合办学、培训合作等名义违规转包政府补贴的培训项目，与参训人员串通提供虚假信息 区域协调发展，关乎统筹一域和全局、前沿和后方、发展和安全。2014年，京津冀协同发展上升为国家战略。十年来，在习近平总书记亲自谋划、亲自部署、亲自推动下，京津冀协同发展不断迈上新台阶。2024 新华社记者熊轩昂春风送暖，阳光和煦。2月21日上午，昆明市2024年“春风行动”暨“春暖农民工”服务行动专场招聘会在南坝人力资源市场举行。记者在现场走访观察到：参加招聘会的企业涉及领域广，涵盖智能制 新华社记者董瑞丰“基层群众愿不愿意在‘家门口’接受基本医疗服务，关键在于县域医共体牵头医院有没有硬核实力。”去年3月，全国政协委员成岳冲提交了一份提案，深入分析我国县域医共体建设存 追加补贴 美国打响全球半导体“军备竞赛” 当地时间2月21日，美国芯片巨头英特尔在加州圣荷西举办首次晶圆代工活动。美国商务部长吉娜・雷蒙多在活动上表示，如果美国想在半导体领域“引领世界”，就要进一步加 “十四五”前三年江西省单位工业增加值能耗预计下降约8% 中新网南昌2月22日电 (朱莹)22日，江西贯彻实施《江西省人民代表大会关于全力打造国家生态文明建设高地的决定》(以下简称《决定》)座谈会在南昌召开。记 。本文链接：Xinhua Headlines: Digital memorials and spring break reshape China's Qingming Festivalhttp://www.sushuapos.com/show-5-96774-0.html
声明：本网站为非营利性网站，本网页内容由互联网博主自发贡献，不代表本站观点，本站不承担任何法律责任。天上不会到馅饼，请大家谨防诈骗！若有侵权等问题请及时与本网联系，我们将在第一时间删除处理。
上一篇： 交通运输部：清明假期3天高速免收通行费