People across China marked the Qingming Festival on Friday by preparing and enjoying traditional snacks made from seasonal ingredients, reflecting the cultural significance of this time-honored tradition.
The Qingming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, is traditionally a time for honoring ancestors. This year, the holiday runs from April 4 to 6.
Qingming baba, a seasonal delicacy from Sinan County in southwest China's Guizhou Province, is a traditional snack enjoyed during the Qingming Festival. Made by blending green extracts from Qingming grass with glutinous rice flour, the mixture is shaped into rice balls and filled with various ingredients, often including local wild vegetables. Once steamed, Qingming baba becomes soft, chewy, and delightfully aromatic.
"The rice balls have various fillings, such as Chinese toon with eggs, houttuynia with cured meat, tofu with cured meat, peanuts with sesame, red beans, and salted vegetables with minced meat. These are common local ingredient combinations. We want to offer a completely new taste experience for our customers," said Fang Li, manager of an agritainment in Sinan.
In northwest China's Qinghai Province, Qingming sweet snacks made with wormwood extracts are a festive favorite. The crushed wormwood imparts a vibrant green color and a distinctive fragrance to the treats, which are often filled with highland barley, taro paste, or bean paste. Meanwhile, Qinghai locals have put a creative twist on their traditional flower buns, preserving classic floral patterns while introducing imaginative shapes, including flower baskets and ice cream cones.
China celebrates Qingming Festival with seasonal delicacies, time-honored customs
China's three-day Qingming Festival holiday, which ended on Sunday, sparked a nationwide travel upsurge, with domestic and cross-border trips and consumer spending all seeing steady growth, official data showed on Monday.
According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, a total of 126 million domestic trips were made during the holiday, up 6.3 percent from last year. Travel-related spending reached 57.55 billion yuan (around 8 billion U.S. dollars), marking a 6.7 percent year-on-year increase.
The dynamism showed across the transport sector as well. The Ministry of Transport estimated that interregional passenger flows across China hit a record high of 790 million during the break. On average, there were about 264 million passenger trips daily, up 7.1 percent from 2024.
Cross-border travel also registered a notable jump. The National Immigration Administration reported that border control authorities processed over 6.21 million inbound and outbound trips over three days. The average daily number of exits and entries through ports across China exceeded two million, reflecting a 19.7 percent increase from a year earlier.
Traditionally a time for tomb sweeping and paying tribute to ancestors, the Qingming Festival holiday has also become a catalyst for travel and tourism spending in recent years.
Short-haul getaways and local excursions continued to dominate travel choices this year. There's a growing demand for rural escapes and outdoor activities, with self-drive trips, cycling, and hiking among the most popular options.
Historic neighborhoods, commercial districts, and countryside destinations bustled with visitors thanks to their integrated dining, lodging, and shopping offerings.
One major highlight was the rise of the "flower-viewing economy." Online travel platforms reported a 220 percent surge in searches for floral attractions as spring blossoms became a magnet for holidaymakers.
Qingming Festival holiday sees travel boom, tourism spending surge
