Qingming falls fifteen days after the spring equinox, around 4 or 5 April, and is a public holiday in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Families go to the graves, clear the weeds and undergrowth, repaint the incised characters on the headstone, set out food, wine and tea, burn spirit money and paper goods, and bow in order of seniority, oldest first. Then the food is eaten there, which is the part outsiders find surprising — the dead have taken the essence and the living get the substance. In Taiwan and southern China the family may also add a stone or paper strips to the grave to show it has been visited. The practical difficulty for the modern diaspora is that the rite requires a locatable grave and a family able to reach it, which urbanisation, cremation and emigration have made harder; columbarium niches and, in the last decade, online memorial services have partially substituted, and are argued about.