The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) using the Tomb-Sweeping Festival with a public ceremony to honor the Yellow Emperor (黃帝) is a “united front” activity, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday.
The ceremony was held by China’s United Front Work Department in Shaanxi Province yesterday, and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) acting chairperson Lin Jung-tzer (林政則) was invited to present a flower basket.
The Yellow Emperor is said to be the first ancestor of the Chinese nation and the founder of Chinese civilization.
Photo: Screen grab from a livestream
The custom of worshiping ancestors on Tomb Sweeping Day, also known as the Qingming Festival, has a long history and has nothing to do with the myth of the Yellow Emperor, the MAC said.
However, the CCP has been holding a public memorial ceremony on that day, politicizing the holiday, it said.
This year, Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Vice Chairperson Losang Jamcan (洛桑江村), National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Vice Chairperson Yang Zhen (楊震), Shaanxi Provincial Committee Secretary Zhao Yide (趙一德) and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) were among those who presented flower baskets.
The ceremony was broadcast live and began with 34 drumbeats, representing China’s 34 provinces and administrative regions, including one for Taiwan.
It also introduced the Siyuan Tomb (思源陵) at the Huangdi Mausoleum, as a symbol of the “common ancestry and shared heritage” of people across the Taiwan Strait.
Shaanxi Governor Zhao Gang (趙剛) said that “Hong Kong and Macau share a national destiny, their splendid flowers blooming in eternal beauty, and across the surging waves of the [Taiwan] Strait, history forever records the recovery of the beautiful island [Taiwan], with hearts yearning for return, the great trend of unification allows no separatism.”
The live broadcast by Shaanxi TV had “Taiwanese host,” Ding Beibei (丁蓓蓓).
Ding, who had worked for a television station in Taiwan, said: “The original aspiration of tracing our common origins, shared by everyone on both sides of the Strait, is essentially the same, because this is a cultural memory commonly cherished by both sides.”
Chinese media reported that a symposium on the continuity of cultural lineage and the road to rejuvenation was held on Saturday at the Hall of the Ancestor of the Chinese Nation in Shaanxi’s Huangling County, and that the attendees included Zhang and Lin.
Zhang said both sides of the Taiwan Strait share the “Yellow Emperor culture” and believe in a common ancestral lineage, adding that ancestral root-seeking activities could serve as an opportunity to advance the process of the “peaceful unification of the motherland.”
Lin was reported as saying that both sides of the Taiwan Strait share the culture of the Yellow Emperor, and that as a core element of the shared spiritual and physical homeland of the Chinese nation, the Yellow Emperor culture provides cultural confidence and spiritual momentum for national rejuvenation.
In Taipei, Taiwan Society chairman Weng Ming-jang (翁銘章), an associate professor at National University of Kaohsiung’s Department of Applied Economics, said the CCP’s Yellow Emperor memorial ceremony is a united front activity.
It attempted to link the Tomb Sweeping Day’s custom of ancestral worship to the Chinese Yellow Emperor, but the CCP does not engage in the custom of worshipping gods or spirits, so the ceremony is a united front activity specifically catering to Taiwanese customs, he said.
Inviting Taiwanese political figures, including the former KMT acting chairperson, to participate is also part of the CCP’s united front playbook, he added.
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