Every year from the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month to New Year's Eve, China folks call this period "Spring Festival" or "Dust Day". Dust removal is year-end cleaning, which is called "house cleaning" in the north and "dust removal" in the south. It is a traditional habit of our people to sweep the dust before the Spring Festival. Whenever the Spring Festival comes, every household should clean the environment, clean all kinds of electrical appliances, remove and wash bedding curtains, sweep six yards, dust cobwebs and dredge culverts in open channels. North and south of the great river, everywhere is filled with the atmosphere of being willing to engage in hygiene and welcoming the Spring Festival cleanly. The custom of "sweeping the house with dust on the 24th of the twelfth lunar month" has a long history. According to Lu Chunqiu, China had the custom of sweeping dust during the Spring Festival in the Yao and Shun era. According to the folk saying, because of the homonym of "dust" and "Chen", sweeping dust in the Spring Festival means "getting rid of the old and not being new", and its original intention is to sweep away all "unlucky" and "unlucky". This custom has placed people's desire to break the old and create new ones and their prayers to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new.

The origin of custom:

There is a strange story about the origin of ancient dust sweeping. Legend has it that the ancients believed that everyone had a three-corpse god, who was inseparable from each other. Three dead gods are a guy who likes flattery and gossip. He often tells stories in front of the Jade Emperor and describes the world as ugly. Over time, in the jade emperor's impression, this world is simply a dirty world full of evil. Once. The secret report of the three dead gods tells us that the world is cursing the Emperor of Heaven and wants to rebel against him. The jade emperor was furious and made an imperial edict to quickly find out what happened in the world. Anyone who hates gods and insults them writes their crimes under the eaves. Then let the spider cover it with a net and mark it. The Jade Emperor also ordered Wang Lingguan to go down to the lower bound on New Year's Eve, and all the marked families were beheaded, not one left. Seeing that the plan was about to succeed, three resin gods took advantage of the gap and flew down to earth. Indiscriminately, they marked the eaves and corners of every household to make the tomb palace extinct. Just as the Three Corpses God was doing evil, the Chef God discovered his whereabouts and was frightened to disgrace, so he quickly sought out various Chefs to discuss countermeasures. So, I came up with a good idea. From the day when the kitchen is delivered on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month to the time when the kitchen is closed on New Year's Eve, every household should clean up the house. If any household is not clean, Kitchen God will refuse to enter the house. According to the instructions of the kitchen god before he ascended to heaven, everyone cleaned the dust, dusted the cobwebs, cleaned the doors and windows, and thoroughly cleaned their houses. When Wang Lingguan visited the lower bound on New Year's Eve, he found that every household had bright windows and bright lights, people were reunited and happy, and the world was beautiful. Wang Lingguan was surprised that he could not find a sign indicating bad behavior. He rushed back to heaven, told the Jade Emperor that there was peace and happiness on earth, and prayed for a happy New Year. The Jade Emperor was greatly shocked after hearing this. He made a decree to detain the Three Corpses God, ordered him to be slapped for 300 mouths, and put him in prison forever. Thanks to the help of Kitchen God, this human disaster was spared. In order to thank the Kitchen God for helping people to solve disasters and bless Zhang Xiang, the folk dust-sweeping always starts from the kitchen and is busy until the New Year's Eve.