Customs
Can you do Qingming or Chung Yeung early or late?
The day lands on a Wednesday and you cannot get the time off. Or you are in Toronto, and by the time you remembered, Hong Kong’s day was already over. This is not a page about making up for a mistake. Most of the records we found allow a wide window, especially for older graves.
Compiled by Shen Po Son · Who we are
Usually, yes. Most of the records we found allow a wide window, but not all: some customs set a deadline for new graves, or ask for the day itself in the first few years. For older graves, the recorded windows run from a few days to the end of the year: three days either side of Qingming for Chaoshan (Teochew) families, half a month for Hokkien families in Taiwan, and year-end in a Hakka saying (all recorded on Chinese Wikipedia).
Who is this for?
If you are searching for this, you have usually already decided to do it. What is in the way is the calendar.
The day falls midweek. Your leave is used up. The children have school. Three people’s shifts have to line up. Or you are simply not in Hong Kong.
So this page is not going to tell you what happens if you are late. The idea of “making up for it” assumes you did something wrong. For most families, on the records we could trace, you did not. The stricter customs we found are mostly about new graves.
What follows is how much room the tradition itself leaves. It is not a list of mitigating circumstances.
How early or late can you go?
First, the two days in question, for anyone who grew up with the words but not the background.
- Qingming (清明, “clear and bright”) is the spring grave-sweeping day. It is a solar term, not a lunar date, so it lands between about 4 and 6 April.
- Chung Yeung (重陽, the Double Ninth) is the ninth day of the ninth lunar month. It is also a public holiday in Hong Kong, which Chinese Wikipedia notes makes it a convenient day for grave visits. Why Hong Kong families go twice a year has its own article.
There is no single, nationwide answer to “when should we go”, because there was never one nationwide way of doing it. Different places keep very different windows, and each one is written down.
Recorded time windows for grave visits, by region
| Whose custom | Time window |
|---|---|
| Chaoshan (Teochew) | Called 過春紙, the Chaoshan term for the spring grave visit; usually within three days either side of Qingming |
| Hokkien (Minnan) families in Taiwan | No fixed day, because the whole clan has to gather. Anywhere within half a month either side of Qingming, or of “little Qingming” (上巳, the 3rd day of the 3rd lunar month), counts as normal |
| Hakka families in eastern Guangdong and Taiwan | From the day after the Lantern Festival (the 15th day of the first lunar month), peaking at Qingming |
| A Hakka saying | 新地不過社,舊地掛到年底下: new graves before the spring she day, older graves any time up to the end of the year |
| The calendar as a whole | Chinese New Year, Qingming, the Ghost Festival and Chung Yeung are listed as the four main days for honouring ancestors; the equinoxes, Mid-Autumn, the winter solstice and the Winter Clothes Festival (寒衣, the 1st day of the 10th lunar month, when paper clothing is burned) may all have been grave-sweeping days in the past |
Sources: Chinese Wikipedia, 〈清明節〉 (Chaoshan) and 〈掃墓〉 (all other rows), both checked 26 September 2026. Our translations.
Read down that table and one thing stands out: every one of these is recorded, every one is tradition, and they do not agree with each other.
The Hakka saying is the one worth pausing on. For new graves it does set a deadline: before the spring she day. For older graves it allows until the end of the year. New and old graves run on different timetables.
The spring she (社) day, a day for the local earth god, falls roughly one to three weeks before Qingming by the common reckoning. How it is counted, and where it lands in 2027, is in the article on the first Qingming after a death.
Whatever your family has always done may well be somewhere in that table already. And if it is not, that is fine too: the customs vary so much that none of them is the “official” version.
Is there a “three days before, four after” rule?
Search in Chinese for how early you can go and you will soon meet four-character formulas: 前三後四 (“three days before, four after”) or 前七後八 (“seven before, eight after”). They are usually stated as if they were law.
In English, the usual version is “ten days before or after”. One widely read travel page gives ten days either side as the general custom and attributes “three days before to four days after” to Zhejiang. When we checked it on 26 September 2026, it cited no source for either and showed no date.
前三後四 has more than one local record. The 2012 Hangzhou interview describes a three-days-before, four-days-after window for older graves. Qiaokou District’s account of local Qingming customs also records a window around Qingming called 前三後四. These are local accounts, not a deadline for every Hong Kong family. We still have no reliable source for 前七後八.
Source: 錢江晚報 (Qianjiang Evening News), 3 April 2012, as republished by Hangzhou Net, interview by Wang Jinshuai and Yang Xiaozheng. Rechecked alongside the Qiaokou account on 13 October 2026; neither sets a universal family rule.
So neither is a general rule. The closest recorded window is the Chaoshan one above, three days either side, and that too is one region’s practice. A site that takes your money should not hand you a local or untraceable rule as if it applied to everyone.
For what it is worth, ten days either side sits comfortably inside the half-month window recorded for Taiwan. So even the English version is not asking anything the records rule out.
If your family has always gone by 前三後四, keep doing it. What your family has handed down is a source in its own right, and the one closest to you. We just will not pretend it has a classical text behind it.
Overseas, which day is “the day”?
Something many people have never had reason to think about: if you are not in Hong Kong, “the day” is not one fixed day for you.
The festival dates are Hong Kong dates, and Hong Kong runs on UTC+8. The next two, checked against the Hong Kong Observatory’s Gregorian–lunar conversion tables:
- Chung Yeung 2026: Sunday 18 October (Hong Kong time). The 9th day of the 9th lunar month.
- Qingming 2027: Monday 5 April (Hong Kong time). Qingming follows the sun, so its lunar date changes; in 2027 it is the 29th day of the 2nd lunar month.
Each of those Hong Kong days runs from midnight to midnight in Hong Kong. On your own clock, that same 24 hours straddles two dates:
When the Hong Kong day falls on your own clock
| Where you are | Chung Yeung, Sun 18 Oct 2026 (HKT) | Qingming, Mon 5 Apr 2027 (HKT) |
|---|---|---|
| London | Sat 17 Oct, 5 pm → Sun 18 Oct, 5 pm | Sun 4 Apr, 5 pm → Mon 5 Apr, 5 pm |
| Toronto | Sat 17 Oct, noon → Sun 18 Oct, noon | Sun 4 Apr, noon → Mon 5 Apr, noon |
| Sydney | Sun 18 Oct, 3 am → Mon 19 Oct, 3 am | Mon 5 Apr, 2 am → Tue 6 Apr, 2 am |
These hold for those two dates only. London is on summer time (UTC+1) for both. Toronto is on daylight time (UTC−4) for both. Sydney is on daylight time (UTC+11) in October, but back on standard time (UTC+10) from 4 April 2027. Clock-change dates: GOV.UK, NSW Government, time.now (Ontario), checked 26 September 2026. For other cities, the conversion table in our dates article works it through.
That produces two opposite mix-ups:
- You think you have missed it, and you have not. In Sydney, just after 1 am on Tuesday 6 April, your calendar says Qingming is over. In Hong Kong it is still late on Monday evening.
- You think you have the whole day, and you do not. In Toronto, Monday 5 April looks like a full day ahead. But Hong Kong’s Monday ends at noon Toronto time. That matters if you have asked someone in Hong Kong to do it on the day, because they are working on Hong Kong time.
If you are making the offering yourself, where you live, none of this arithmetic applies. Keep your own day. The time difference only matters when you want something done in Hong Kong on a particular date.
None of this is meant to make you more anxious. Quite the opposite: if “the day” itself depends on where on the planet you are standing, being a day out is even less worth carrying around.
Can you split it up?
A few related questions, answered together.
Can we do both Qingming and Chung Yeung?
A list of different local festival dates does not set the number of visits each family must make. If your family already observes both, start with that arrangement; discuss any change in dates or frequency with them.
Our relatives are buried in different places. Can we visit them on different days?
Some accounts give new and old graves different timetables, but that does not establish that every family accepts any split schedule. Check each grave’s family arrangement and the site’s opening times before planning the visits.
We can only manage once this year. Does that count?
The list of festival dates cannot establish that one visit satisfies every family’s custom. Discuss what your family prioritises and what you can realistically arrange; this website cannot decide whether your year counts.
Can we split it between us and family back home?
For example, someone in Hong Kong goes to the grave on the day, and you mark it at home on whatever day you can. That is a practical suggestion to discuss with your family, not a universal custom established by our sources.
What if it was a death anniversary, and it has already passed?
The death anniversary article answers exactly that. The short version: do it now, and we found no traceable source saying it no longer counts once the date has gone.
So which day is right?
We are not going to choose your family’s day for you. The one your family has always used is usually your answer.
A few things, plainly.
One: we do not have a “best day”, and we should not. We are the people you pay to do the burning. If the one taking your money tells you which day “works best”, that is a conflict of interest, not advice.
Two: the best hour is something we could not trace either. The claims online contradict each other, so we have not written any of them in as if they had a basis. The dates article covers what time of day, honestly.
Three: if you want to get it right, ask the oldest person in your family. They remember how your grandfather did it, and no website beats that. We end up asking our own mother more often than we would like to admit.
If there is no one left to ask, pick a day you can actually manage, and do what you can. What the classical texts say about people who cannot get to the grave is gentler than most people expect.
If you are thinking of having it done for you, here is everything we can honestly say about timing. Once your payment is received, on ordinary days the packet is usually burned within three days (festivals excepted). Sometime between 3 and 6 pm Hong Kong time (UTC+8), the shop makes one trip to the burner with that day’s packets: one batch a day. Two photos go up on your tracking page within three working days of the burning.
You do not need to pick an auspicious day for it: any day is fine. Around festivals, we do not set a cut-off date; we burn what we can. But orders start piling up about two weeks before Qingming, so things run slower then. If you want it close to the day, order early. We cannot promise a particular date.
The records describe different local time windows, not a decision for your family. Agree on the arrangements, then work with what you can realistically do.
Sources and scope
Checked 13 October 2026. Official calendars provide dates; accounts of local customs describe particular places, not a rule for every family. Shop arrangements are stated separately.
If this would help
You have picked your day, but you cannot burn anything where you live and cannot fly back. That is the part we can help with. Doing it yourself at home may well be just as much part of the tradition; you do not have to use anyone.
See the offering packets