Around 5,000 Chinese people from home and overseas met yesterday morning at the Yellow Emperor's Mausoleum to pay respect to the ancestor of the Chinese nation.

 

April 5, the date of the tomb-sweeping or Qingming Festival, is the traditional day for Chinese to pay homage to their ancestors and late relatives by sweeping their graves. Every year a grand ceremony at the mausoleum in Huangling, Shaanxi Province, honors the Yellow Emperor, the legendary ancestor of the nation.

 

Yesterday's ceremony was held in front of the newly completed sacrificial offering hall, which is built of granite in traditional Chinese style, and vividly reflects the historic culture and civilization of the country.  

 

And two traditional sacrificial vessels, a huge bronze bell and a large drum both more than three meters tall, were used in the ceremony for the first time.

 

Chen Deming, governor of Shaanxi Province, said at the ceremony that realizing the reunification of the motherland is the best way to cherish the Yellow Emperor's memory, and building a peaceful and prosperous nation is a hope shared by all Chinese in the world.

 

The Yellow Emperor, a great tribal chief toward the end of primitive times in China, is honored as the ancestor who greatly helped bring Chinese civilization into being.

 

The inventions of the cart, the boat, the bow and arrow and Chinese medicine, among other things, are credited to him. One of his imperial historians is believed to have created Chinese pictography.

 

These achievements were indispensable to the later success of China as one of the world's four great ancient civilizations.

 

The public memorial ceremony, held annually on the Qingming Festival, started as long ago as the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) and the sacrificial offering activity became a national rite from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) until present times.

 

To ensure the mausoleum is protected and looked after a fund was established in Beijing in 1992 to raise money from all over the world to cover the costs of renovation project. 

 

Donations totaling 130 million yuan (US$15.7 million) have been raised from central and local governments and from companies and individuals both at home and abroad.

 

On Tuesday donations totaling a further of 9.25 million yuan (US$1.14 million) had been received for the renovation project, said Sun Tianyi, the fund's director.

 

(China Daily April 6, 2006)