Shangsi Festival: China's Forgotten Spring Purification Day

On the third day of the third lunar month in the year 353, forty-two men sat along a winding stream in Shanyin, near modern Shaoxing, and drank. Cups of rice wine were floated downstream; wherever a cup lodged against the bank, the man nearest had to compose a poem or drink a forfeit. Twenty-six of them managed poems. The host, a calligrapher named Wang Xizhi, wrote a preface to the collection while somewhat drunk, and that preface — the Lanting Xu, Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection — became the single most revered piece of calligraphy in Chinese history.

The gathering was not a private whim. It was a Shangsi Festival observance, and at the time everyone understood exactly what day it was.

Today most Chinese people could not tell you when Shangsi falls. This is the story of a festival that once outranked Qingming, faded almost entirely, and is now returning through two unexpected doors.

What Shangsi Actually Was

Shangsi Festival (上巳节), also called the Double Third or simply "March Third," falls on the third day of the third lunar month — which in recent years has meant 14 April 2021, 31 March 2025, and dates scattered across late March and April.

Its name is a calendar artefact. In the earliest practice the festival was held on the first si day of the third month according to the sexagenary cycle — shang si means "first si." By the Wei and Jin period this floating date had been fixed to the third day for convenience, but the old name stuck.

Traceable to the late Spring and Autumn period, the festival's original purpose was fuxi (祛秊) — purification by water. Communities went to a riverbank, held a sacrificial ceremony honouring ancestors, then bathed in the river with medicinal herbs to wash away pollution, illness and bad luck accumulated over winter. Only after the ritual cleansing came the enjoyable part: a spring outing, food by the water, and — crucially — unsupervised time between young men and women.

"On this day, people would hold a sacrificing ceremony on a riverside to honor their ancestors, and then take a bath in the river with herbs to cleanse their bodies of filth. Following that, young men and women would then go for a spring outing." — chinaculture.org

The Book of Songs preserves scenes of exactly this: the poem "Zhen and Wei" describes young people gathering orchids by two swollen spring rivers, teasing each other and exchanging peonies as parting gifts. Read plainly, it is a record of Shangsi courtship two and a half thousand years ago.

Three Signature Customs

Floating Wine Cups Along a Winding Stream

The elite version of Shangsi produced qushui liushang (曲水流觞) — the winding-stream banquet. Participants sat along a deliberately meandering watercourse, often an artificial channel cut through a garden. A lacquered cup of wine was released upstream. Where it stopped, that person drank and composed.

Some scholars trace the practice to a Zhou-dynasty banquet at the Qushui River; others see it as a refinement of the purification bath, with wine substituting for immersion. Either way, the stone channels survive. You can still see carved winding-stream courses in imperial gardens in Beijing and in scholar gardens in Jiangnan.

Skirt-Canopy Feasts

In the Tang dynasty, women held qunwo yan (裙幄宴) — "skirt-canopy banquets." Groups of women would tie their long coloured skirts together and hang them over poles or branches to create an open-air pavilion, then picnic beneath. It is one of the more visually striking customs in the Chinese festival record and one of the least known.

Wearing Orchids and Willow

Participants carried orchids for their cleansing scent, tucked willow branches into their hair or belts, and in some regions ate a specific dish: eggs boiled with shepherd's purse (jicai zhu jidan), a custom still alive in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangsu and Anhui. The herb is credited in folk medicine with clearing damp heat and easing headaches — the medicinal thread from the original purification bath, surviving in the kitchen after it vanished from the river.

Why It Disappeared

Shangsi's decline is a case study in festival competition. It shared the early-spring calendar with two neighbours: Hanshi (Cold Food Festival) and Qingming. All three sat within days of each other. All three involved outdoor excursions and ancestor observance.

From the Tang onward, the three began merging. Qingming, backed by the powerful obligation of tomb-sweeping, absorbed the spring-outing function of Shangsi and the food customs of Hanshi. By the Song dynasty, Shangsi as a distinct observance was fading among the Han population; by the Ming and Qing it survived mostly in literary allusion and in specific regions.

The purification bath had a further problem: it required going into cold water in early spring. As Chinese society urbanised and Confucian propriety tightened around mixed-gender gatherings, a festival whose core activities were public bathing and unchaperoned courtship was always going to struggle.

Two Revivals

The Zhuang "Sanyuesan"

While Han observance faded, the third day of the third month became something else entirely in the southwest. For the Zhuang people of Guangxi, Sanyuesan is the year's most important festival — a song festival where young people court through antiphonal singing.

The folk explanation involves a legendary singer whose daughter chose her husband by holding a singing contest. Since 1983, song festivals have been held annually across Guangxi on this date, and the day is now a public holiday in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Bamboo-pole dancing, in which participants hop between clacking poles, is a standard accompaniment. The Dong, Yao, Li and She peoples all hold their own third-of-the-third observances.

"To the Zhuang ethnic group in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, March 3 is a festival for young people to sing songs and find their true love. Since 1983, singing festivals have been held annually on this day throughout Guangxi." — China Daily

Look at the components — spring gathering, singing, courtship, water — and the family resemblance to ancient Shangsi is hard to ignore.

Hanfu Day

The second revival is recent and urban. In 2018, the Communist Youth League Central Committee designated the third day of the third lunar month as China Huafu Day (Chinese National Costume Day), promoting traditional dress.

The effect has been visible. University students in Nanjing, Xi'an and Guangzhou now stage Shangsi events in hanfu — riverside processions, coming-of-age ceremonies, archery demonstrations and, inevitably, reconstructed winding-stream wine games. Greater Bay Area coverage in 2025 described young people gathering in hanfu "to keep a spring appointment in the name of tradition."

Whether this counts as authentic continuity or invented tradition is a fair question. My own view: a festival that survived by being useful to young people looking for each other has simply found a new group of young people. The mechanism is unchanged.

Observing Shangsi Now

If you want to mark the Double Third without a river or a wardrobe budget:

• Go outside near water. The entire festival rests on this.
• Cook eggs with shepherd's purse, or any spring green. Regionally documented and genuinely good.
• Run a floating-cup game. A stream, a shallow bowl, and a rule that whoever it reaches must produce two lines of verse.
• Read the Lanting Xu. Its second half turns unexpectedly dark, meditating on how quickly joy becomes memory. That, too, is part of the festival.

Quick Reference

• Chinese name: 上巳节 Shangsi Jie; also 三月三 Sanyuesan
• Date: Third day of the third lunar month
• Original purpose: Riverside purification (fuxi), ancestor sacrifice, spring outing
• Famous moment: Wang Xizhi's Orchid Pavilion gathering, 353 CE
• Modern forms: Zhuang song festival in Guangxi (public holiday); China Huafu Day since 2018
• Traditional food: Eggs boiled with shepherd's purse

Sources consulted: chinaculture.org, "Shangsi Festival"; ecns.cn, "Culture Insider: Shangsi Festival" (2021); China Daily, "About Shangsi Festival" (2016); Sina Finance coverage of 2025 Shangsi hanfu events in the Greater Bay Area. Lanting Xu details follow the standard historical account of the 353 CE gathering at Shanyin.