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Tombsweepers take to the roads

A paper car is burned in an ancestral worship ritual at the public graveyard on Yangmingshan yesterday to mark the Qingming Festival or Tomb Sweeping Day. PHOTO: CNA

The first day of the three-day Tomb Sweeping Festival (清明節) yesterday brought traffic congestion on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (National Freeway No. 1) and the Formosa Freeway (National Freeway No.3).

The Tomb Sweeping Festival is dedicated to sweeping the graves of and paying respect and remembrance to one’s ancestors. It is believed that the festival came about in the Tang Dynasty in around 732AD, when Emperor Tang Xuanzong (唐玄宗) sought to end year-round ancestor-worshipping rituals among the affluent, so he mandated that such rites could only be performed on the day of “Qingming.”

“Qingming” means “clear and bright” in Mandarin.

Set on the 104th day after the winter solstice, the festival usually falls on April 4th or April 5th, depending on the lunar calendar.

Yesterday morning on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway, sections between Taoyuan International Airport and Chungli (中壢), between Yangmei (楊梅) and Hukou (湖口) and between Taichung and Changhua were congested, the Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau said. Sections between Fengyuan (豐原) and Puyan (埔鹽) interchanges on National Freeway No. 1 were also slow, the bureau said.

On the Formosa Freeway, congestion was observed between Tucheng (土城) and Longtan (龍潭), and between Kuanhsi (關西) and Hsinchu interchanges.

The average speed in many sections was below 40kph, while in some sections it was less than 20kph, the bureau said.

The bureau tallied a traffic flow of 460,000 cars between 12am and 6am yesterday when tolls were suspended, which was 3.3 times more than the rate during usual weekends.

In addition to sweeping graves, worshippers offer food and paper money to the dead. It is believed that burning paper money and other paper-made offerings allows them to travel to heaven where the deceased reside.

The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has called on Taiwanese to refrain from burning incense and paper money.

“While many people are under the misconception that the more paper money they burn, the more it demonstrates their sincerity and respect for their ancestors, most do not realize the harm that such incineration could cause,” the EPA’s Air Quality Protection and Noise Control director-general Hsiao Hui-chuan (蕭慧娟) said.

“Lighting fire crackers and burning paper money not only creates air pollution, they pose threats of accidental fires,” she said.

In the process of burning, pollutant particles such as benzene and toluene are produced, causing harm to human health, particularly in the respiratory systems, Hsiao said, adding that, “in particular, benzene is a carcinogen that accumulates in the body and poses long term health threats.”

Besides health risks, the pervasive burning of paper money throughout the nation drastically increases the risk of accidental fires during the festival, she said.

For people who wish to perform Tomb Sweeping rituals, Hsiao suggested praying with their hands or using shorter incense sticks.

In addition, collective incinerations where people burn their paper money in full-size incinerators had been well received in some cities in recent years.

This alternative provides the public an additional way to observe the tradition while still complying with environmental trends, she said.
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