This Friday is Tomb-Sweeping Day, one of the three traditional festivals that have been included as the Chinese mainland's public holidays starting this year.

Together with the other two additions, the Dragon Boat Festival in June and the Mid-Autumn Festival in September, the authorities have said that the inclusion is aimed at protecting folk culture and customs.

And Chinese nationwide have Chen Jing, a 68-year-old folk artist and professor from Nanjing University, to thank for the move.

"It is certainly a favorable gesture for the promotion and preservation of folk culture and customs," Chen said.

In 2006, Chen proposed to the authorities to have Tomb-Sweeping Day, also known as the Qingming Festival, made a public holiday. His suggestion received wide support from other folk artists.

"Tomb-Sweeping Day means a lot to the Chinese," Chen said.

"It is a day for people to commemorate and honor their ancestors."

As part of the festival, people clear family graves, touch-up tombstone inscriptions, burn incense and offer sacrifices to the dead.

However, without a day off previously, many people were said to have found it hard to carry out these activities.

Two years ago, on a trip to sweep the family tomb located in another city, Chen found himself in a train full of people carrying paper money and chrysanthemums, preparing to visit graves.

But he noticed that most of these were elderly, since young people were still at work that day.

Chen immediately took a vote in the carriage and found that almost everyone supported making Qingming a national holiday.

He later found that the elderly thought it necessary to include young family members in the festival's activities, while working people also wanted the chance to honor their ancestors.

Among those he spoke to was an elderly man from Hong Kong, who told Chen Tomb-Sweeping Day is a holiday in Hong Kong for paying tribute to ancestors.

Chen was inspired by the experience and insight from these people and put forward the suggestion for the holiday during an interview by mainstream media.

"If we do not take immediate action, our traditional folk customs will be forgotten by the young generation," he said.

His idea soon spread all over the country and was echoed by many scholars and experts.

Chen will go to his hometown of Taizhou, Jiangsu province, to honor his grandfather this Friday. Thanks to the new holiday, his children and grandchildren will be joining him.

Aside from promoting traditional festivals, Chen has also been dedicating his time to preserving the folk craft of paper cutting.

Born in a rural part of Taizhou, Chen became interested in traditional Chinese handicrafts during his childhood and dreamed of becoming a folk artist like his grandpa.

After graduating from university in the early 1960s, Chen worked in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, where the country's oldest examples of paper cutting were discovered. He immediately fell in love with the art and started his lifelong study and research of the craft.

In 1981, he organized a Sino-Japanese paper-cutting exhibition in Tokyo in collaboration with his Japanese counterparts. It was a resounding success, but he realized there should be more concerted efforts to preserve and promote the art.

"To promote the art, it is essential to let people realize its beauty and train talent to carry on the tradition," said Chen.

"Only when everyone cares about the preservation of our folk culture can our cultural heritage be restored," he said.

(China Daily April 2, 2008)