HONOURING THE DEAD: Tens of thousands of people, including senior government officials, marching down a street festooned with lanterns and banners in China's north-west Shanxi province yesterday to attend a ceremony at the supposed grave of the mythical 'Yellow Emperor', who is honoured as the first ancestor of all Han Chinese. -- PHOTO: XINHUA

For centuries, Chinese had commemorated the day, falling in early April, by sweeping the graves of forebears and leaving symbolic tributes, an act reflecting Confucius' teachings of loyalty to family and tradition.

After 1949, China's revolutionary communists let the day pass officially unmarked and dismissed the festival as part of a 'rotten' and 'superstitious' old culture.

But the Beijing government last year made the Qing Ming Festival a public holiday when citizens would be encouraged to revive some old practices, as the Communist Party seeks to revive traditional virtues in a fast-changing China.

In cemeteries across China yesterday, people marked the first revived Qing Ming holiday with offerings of flowers, fruit and incense. Trains and buses in Beijing were crowded with residents heading to cemeteries on the city outskirts.

'This should have been done long ago, it's already well overdue,' said English-language teacher Cui Hengjie, who was visiting a family gravestone.

In the north-west province of Shaanxi, senior government officials attended a flamboyant ceremony at the supposed gravesite of the mythical 'Yellow Emperor', honoured as the first ancestor of all Han Chinese, state television reported.

A crowd of 10,000 bowed to honour the mythical emperor and men in red robes beat drums and bells as a choir trilled.

Last November, the central government decided to cut back the week-long May Day break and make national holidays out of three traditional festivals. The others are the Dragon Boat festival in June and the Mid-Autumn Festival in September.

For some scholars, the move marks a revival of Confucianism.

Political scientist Kang Xiaoguang has just published a 398-page study which he said shows Confucianism, not Marxism or Western liberal democracy, is the way forward for China.

'I hope that Confucian thought can win back its central status as a political philosophy, can become the ideology guiding China's development,' he said in his office at the People's University of China.

'Put bluntly, use Confucian things to replace Marxism-Leninism.'

Confucius is said to have lived between 551 BC and 479 BC, and his teachings became ruling doctrine for China's emperors.

While not a religion focused on a god, Confucianism took on the trappings of a religion, with ritual, classic texts and temples used to embody its beliefs.

China should stay a one-party state, but one ruled by clean-living, rigorously vetted officials steeped in Confucius, not Marx, Professor Kang argued.

That goal seems fanciful for now, he admits.

But China's leaders are certainly restoring some traditional beliefs to redefine their claims on power as the country sheds socialism and embraces capitalism.

President Hu Jintao has vowed a 'harmonious society' free of conflict, wielding Confucian phrases to explain his ideas.

REUTERS