's
The Civilized Duke of Jin Recovering His State (1140) to drive out Jie Zhitui (illustration from the
Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms). The first part of this legend appears to be historical. In the earliest accounts, however, Jie is more prideful than sad and is not killed in a fire. The 4th-century-BC
commentary on
Confucius's
Spring and Autumn Annals traditionally credited to
Zuo Qiuming includes a
Thucydidean passage where Jie argues with his mother about their future. Jie credits
Heaven with having restored Chong'er to his rightful place and is disgusted by the credit-seeking and job-hunting behavior of his fellows, whom he considers worse than thieves. He also finds his lord unworthy for failing to reward him despite his failure to present himself at court. His mother asks him to at least go before the duke, but Jie admits his bitter criticism of the other lords makes that impossibly embarrassing. His mother accepts his decision to withdraw to a
hermitage and goes with him. Ji Chong'er belatedly remembers his obligations to Jie and looks for him. When this proves vain, he accepts the situation and sets aside the produce of the fields of "Mëenshang" to endow sacrifices in Jie's honor, "a memento... of my neglect and a mark of distinction for the good man". The Cold Food Festival is first mentioned in
Huan Tan's
New Discussions, composed around the beginning of the 1st century. It records that the commoners of
Taiyuan Commandery avoided using fire in preparing their food for five days around
midwinter, upholding this taboo even when they are gravely ill. This was done in Jie Zhitui's honor. A biography in the
Book of the Later Han relates how the magistrate for
Bingzhou (i.e., Taiyuan) found people rich and poor observing a "dragon taboo" against lighting a fire during the month of Jie's death in midwinter, lest they anger his spirit. Many of the old and young died every year because of the hardship this brought. The magistrate Zhou Ju wrote an oration around AD130 praising Jie but admonishing the people for a tradition that harmed so many that it could not have been what the
sage intended. He then had the oration displayed at Jie's temple and distributed among the poor. This did not end the Cold Food Festival, but the biography notes that local superstitions did improve "to a certain extent". The improvement is not explained but, at some point over the next century, it moved from the middle of winter to late spring, 105 days after the
dongzhi solar term. Since it also spread from Taiyuan to the surrounding commanderies of
Shangdang,
Xihe, and
Yanmen and was still causing some hardship,
Cao Cao attempted to outlaw the Cold Food Festival in AD206. The heads of offending families were liable for 6 months'
hard labor, their local official was liable for one month himself, and their magistrate was to lose one month's salary. Cao Cao's effort was a failure, with observance of the Cold Food Festival on
Qingming and for up to a month around it being reported by the mid-3rd century.
Shi Le, the
Jie emperor of the
Later Zhao in the early 4th century, again tried to forbid it. The next year a massive
hailstorm devastated crops and forests throughout Shanxi. On the advice of his ministers, he again approved the festival in the region around Taiyuan. The
Northern Wei similarly banned the festival in 478 and 496, but were also compelled to approve its observance around . These prohibitions failed to such an extent that, by the time of
Jia Sixie's
Qimin Yaoshu, a day-long Cold Food Festival had spread across most of China, moved to the day before the
Qingming solar term. The Cold Food Festival grew to a three-day period and began to incorporate
ancestral veneration under the
Tang and remained more important than celebrations of the
Qingming solar term as late as the
Song. The present
Tomb-Sweeping Festival on Qingming grew by incorporating the Cold Food observances along with the separate holiday of
Shangsi. This prohibition was related to the ancient Chinese use of different kinds of firewood according to the seasons, particularly after the development of
Chinese astrology that considered the
heliacal rising of
Antares to be an occasion for great risk of
conflagration and
wildfire. Du was followed in his conjecture by others, including
Li Fu. The
Sinologist J.J.M. de Groot argued for its origin as a celebration of the sun's "victory" at the
vernal equinox, based on a
comparative anthropological analysis drawing on
Ovid,
Macrobius,
Lucian, and
Epiphanius of Salamis.
James Frazer and his followers similarly considered it either a "sun-charm" or "purification" from its similarities to other "fire-festivals".
Claude Lévi-Strauss based his analysis of the festival as a kind of Chinese
Lent upon a mistranslation of the relevant passage in the
Rites of Zhou by
Frazer.
Eberhard connected it with his idea of a prehistoric spring-based calendar and made the Cold Food Festival a remnant of its original New Year. The unanimous connection of the festival to Jie Zhitui in the early sources and the dependence of these later theories on the Cold Food Festival's occurrence in late spring—when it in fact began as a mid-winter observance—suggests that none of them are likely accurate. One contemporary record of ritual fire-avoidance coming from a separate source in southeastern China concerned the late-2nd-centuryBC "kings" of "
Yue" Mi (,
Yuè Míwáng) and ,
Yuè Yáowáng). These were actually princes of the old Yue royal family fighting over the southern successor state of
Minyue. This southern equivalent to the Cold Food Festival a generally unlucky day to some
Taoists. ==Observance==