What
Cold Food is a short stretch of spring when households put out their cooking fires and eat food prepared beforehand. Other names are the no-fire festival, the cold festival, the 105th-day festival and the no-smoke festival (the name in the Yanjing Suishiji). In many places the cold-food habit later merged into Qingming food customs.1,2,3
When
About 105 days after the winter solstice, 1 or 2 days before Qingming, with a traditional 3-day fire ban (Jingchu Suishiji, usually dated to the 6th century, with Du Gongzhan's notes from the early 7th). By 1900, Qingming and Cold Food were treated as the same festival, also called the no-smoke festival, and people no longer observed Cold Food as a festival in that account (Qing author Fucha Dunchong's Yanjing Suishiji).1,2,3
Where
In the past it was kept in both north and south. In 2025, Jiexiu in Shanxi, traditionally linked to Jie Zitui's retreat on Mian Mountain, still kept the custom: 1 day before Qingming, people made colorful animal-shaped buns, avoided fire and ate prepared cold food in his memory. Jiangnan, Fujian and Guangdong still keep cold foods at Qingming, including Shanghai's green rice dumplings and southern Fujian's spring rolls and grass-leaf rice cakes.2,4,6
How
People avoid lighting fires and eat cooked food made ahead. Older customs include a 3-day fire ban, making tang (malt sugar) and barley gruel (Jingchu Suishiji). Cold foods documented in 2022 include jujube swallows shaped from flour and jujube paste and hung on doors with willow, and jujube cake, also called Zitui cake (already mentioned in the Simin Yueling). Green rice dumplings and fried dough twists also retain traces of Cold Food, and Shanxi still makes Zitui buns.1,5
Why
Cold Food may have grown from an ancient rite of putting out the old fire and lighting a new one, an explanation still offered in 2022. The fire ban is also linked to Jie Zitui and may preserve an older Zhou custom (notes in the Jingchu Suishiji). Tradition also treats it as a memorial to Jie Zitui.1,2,5
Impact and influence
The fire ban faded, but cold foods remained part of Qingming food customs. In southern Shanxi, white paper is hung on tombs without fire; Cao Cao also opposed the fire ban. In 2025, people in Jiexiu still made animal-shaped buns to remember Jie Zitui.2,4,6
The tale of Jie Zitui and the burning mountain
Legend has it that when his lord was in exile, Jie Zitui cut flesh from his own thigh to feed him. Later he withdrew with his mother to Mian Mountain. A fire set on the mountain to draw him out killed mother and son, and the lord ordered that no fire be lit on that day. Chinese Wikipedia points out that the thigh story is absent from the Zuo Zhuan and the Shiji, and the notes in the Jingchu Suishiji say the ban may be older than Jie Zitui.
Told in: A folk tale of the Jiexiu area in Shanxi, retold in Chinese Wikipedia and a 2025 report from Jiexiu. The notes in the Jingchu Suishiji tie the fire ban to Jie Zitui.
