The Cold Food or Hanshi Festival is a traditional Chinese holiday which developed from the local commemoration of the death of the Jin nobleman Jie Zitui in the 7thcenturyBC under the Zhou dynasty, into an occasion across East Asia for the commemoration and veneration of ancestors by the 7th-century Tang dynasty. Its name derives from the tradition of avoiding the lighting of any kind of fire, even for the preparation of food. This practice originally occurred at midwinter for as long as a month, but the hardship this involved led to repeated attempts to ban its observance out of concern for its practitioners. By the end of the Three Kingdoms Period (3rd century), it was limited to three days in the spring around the Qingming solar term. Under the Tang, ancestral observance was limited to the single day which is now the Tomb-Sweeping Festival. The Tomb-Sweeping Festival is an official holiday in several countries, and the Cold Food Festival which stretches either side of it continues to see some observance in China, South Korea, and Vietnam.
Legend
The usual story for the origin of the Cold Food and Tomb-Sweeping Festivals concerns the 7th-century-BC Jin nobleman Jie Zhitui, a model of self-sacrificing loyalty.
During the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese history, the Zhou Kingdom began to break up into its constituent parts and their lords gained more and more freedom from central control. One of these states was Jin, around modern Shanxi. As was common among wealthy Chinese at the time, its duke had many wives. One of them, Li Ji, was of lower status and came from the Rong tribes who lived to China's west, but successfully schemed to become a full wife and to establish her son as the duke's successor. Her older stepson Ji Chong'er was framed for revolting against the duke in 655BC, forcing the prince to flee for his life to his mother's family among the Di tribes north of China. Only 15 of his men followed him into exile. These included Jie Zhitui, who entertained the prince with his poems and music. He was so considerate of his lord that once, when their supplies were stolen while traveling through Wey, he used meat from his own thigh to make soup to relieve the prince's hunger.
In 636BC, the duke of Qin finally invaded Jin on Chong'er's behalf and installed him as its duke. (Posthumously, he became known as the "Wen" or "Civilized Duke" of Jin.) In 635BC, the new duke was generous to those who had helped him in adversity but overlooked Jie, who sadly withdrew into poor obscurity in the forests near . The duke sent repeated envoys to lure Jie back to court, but he felt no ambition for political power. Too loyal to directly criticize his master but too principled to accept a place in a corrupt administration, he opted to simply remain in seclusion. Annoyed, the duke ordered a forest fire to be started around three sides of the mountain to smoke Jie and his mother out of hiding. Instead of coming out, they were burnt alive. Jie's charred corpse was found still standing, embracing or tightly bound to a tree. In his remorse, the duke renamed the mountain Mt.Jie, established the town still known as Jiexiu ("Jie's Rest"), and inaugurated the Cold Food Festival as a memorial period for Jie.
In addition to the festival, the story also occasioned the Chinese proverb that, "while some can burn off an entire mountain, others are kept from even lighting up to eat their rice".