The form and content of Dunhuang people's sacrifices

In our Wang clan, people from one generation to the next, year after year, following their fathers and grandfathers to carry out the ritual activities for ancestors every year. In order for these rituals to continue, the main forms and contents of each ritual are briefly described:
       New Year's Eve Sacrifice On the evening of New Year's Eve, after the New Year's Eve dinner is prepared, the first thing that must be done is to "invite the gods" (offer sacrifices to the ancestors). In the sunset, when the sky is dark, the whole family with cigarettes, wine, tea, paper money and a variety of dishes to eat, such as outdoor open space or the road to kowtow and burn paper, and respectfully invite the ancestors to return home for the New Year. After burning paper outdoors and returning home, the family puts offerings in front of the ancestors' tablets, burns incense and kneels down to worship and pray before starting to eat.
       Qingming Festival Qingming Festival on the fifth day of the fourth month of the lunar calendar is the day of ancestor worship and grave sweeping, commonly known as the "graveyard". According to Dunhuang custom, there is "early Qingming, late cold food". The so-called early is before 12:00 noon, not a few days earlier as in some places. When going to the grave, people should bring wine, food, fruit, paper money and other items to the cemetery, first offerings in front of the loved ones' graves, and cultivate new soil on the graves, called "saving graves". After the grave is saved, paper is pressed on top of the grave, paper money is lit, the offerings are scattered in the fire, and the basic ritual is completed by kneeling and bowing, and the remaining offerings are eaten at the gravesite and returned home.
       Going to the graves on the 15th day of the 7th month of the lunar calendar is also called the "Ghost Festival". On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, people bring offerings to the graves to worship their ancestors, similar in form and scale to the Ching Ming Festival. However, the difference is that they do not add soil to the graves, but mainly burn paper to worship.
       October 1 Festival The first day of October on the lunar calendar for the "Send Cold Clothes Festival", with the Ching Ming Festival, Ghost Festival is the same day of folk worship ancestors. As the first day of October is the beginning of the winter season, people think of the need to protect the dead from the cold by adding clothes to the living, so in addition to the general offerings of food, joss sticks, paper money, etc., they also burn an indispensable item - clothes for the dead - during the festival. Nowadays, with the increasing material abundance, people think that the netherworld is the same as the yangworld, and they can buy many things with money, so most of them burn more paper money, and usually no longer do the clothes of the underworld. The form of worship is similar to that of the New Year's Eve, which is to prepare offerings, and when the sky is dark, the whole family goes outdoors to the open space or the roadside to burn paper and kneel down. The reason why it is performed at night may be the symbolism of "late cold food". October 1 rituals do not go to the cemetery.
       In addition, Dunhuang also has a custom, after the death of a person generally at home for three days. If there are children, relatives and friends in the field due to the limitations of the return date, can also be parked for five or seven days. The first day is for relatives and friends to help set up the funeral hall and invite guests. When inviting guests, the son or daughter of the deceased, with a mourning cloth on his or her head and a funeral stick in his or her hand, is led by relatives and friends to the home of a close friend or relative to kowtow and perform a salute. They are invited to attend the funeral. The next day during the day. Friends and relatives of the deceased come to lay paper to offer condolences, and at five or six o'clock in the afternoon a memorial service is held to honor the deceased. At night, it is said that in order to let the deceased no longer stay in the world and can find the way to the netherworld, to hold "out of the paper" activities, please an older person to lead the deceased's children and relatives walking around while playing a gong, each called the deceased's "title", called "on the paper to come, on the paper to come", and then leave a few friends and relatives to keep vigil. On the third day, before 4:00 or 5:00 a.m., an elder puts the prepared offerings into the coffin, and the deceased's daughter washes the deceased's face and then covers the coffin. The coffin is carried by the deceased's eldest son, who carries the head, and the second son, who carries the feet, and the deceased's daughter, who meets the bridge along the way, will fire a cannon and shout. It is generally said that the coffin is buried before the sun comes up. After that, there are two visits to the grave to burn paper, one is the third day of "Zanshan", when relatives bring shovels to add soil to the new grave and then burn paper; and the second is the 100th day when the grave is visited to burn "Hundred Days" paper. If there is a "criminal seven" (i.e., the day of the deceased's death falls on the seventh, seventeenth and twenty-seventh days of the lunar calendar), every seven days from the day of death is a "period", a total of seven periods, and every period should be burned at the grave once. After a hundred days of paper burning, all kinds of sacrifices are synchronized with ancestor worship. However, those who died and were buried in the same year are called "new graves", and all sacrifices within these three years must be performed one day earlier than the agreed upon time. In addition, relatives whose homes are far away from the gravesite and who are unable to visit the gravesite as scheduled may burn paper outside on the evening of the same day to pay their respects.