Linguistic nuance of QingmingBy Hugo Tseng 曾泰元For more than a millennium, the lines from the Tang Dynasty poet Du Mu (杜牧) — “pure brightness, dual souls” — have defined the emotional architecture of Qingming (清明). I would often be transported to the Song capital, finding a strange comfort in the timelessness of the Qingming atmosphere. A solar term is a temporal milestone — a noun. Thus: Qingming (pure brightness). It is the moment when we tidy the graves of the past so that we can more clearly see the “pure brightness” of the world ahead.

Source: Taipei Times April 04, 2026 16:23 UTC