There is a specific kind of quiet that falls over the climbing gym during the Qingming Festival. For those who don’t know, Qingming—or Tomb-Sweeping Day—is a time when families in China visit the graves of their ancestors, tidy the headstones, and offer food and incense. It is a holiday about memory, but also about spring. The rains come. The bamboo shoots push through the soil. It is a season of delicate balance between holding on and letting go.
This week, while many of my friends in Shanghai were burning paper offerings or flying kites in the suburbs, I found myself alone in my garage, staring at my Two Stones hangboard .
At first glance, a hangboard has nothing to do with ancestral worship or spring cleaning. It is a brutalist block of resin and wood, drilled into a doorway. It has edges, pockets, and slopers that feel like insults when you first touch them. But as I dusted off the chalk from the holds—a ritual that felt strangely appropriate for Qingming—I realized that the Two Stones philosophy carries a whisper of the holiday’s deeper meaning.
The Weight of Two Stones
For those who haven’t tried it, Two Stones makes hangboards that feel different from the Western brands. The edges are often shallower, more precise. The texture is rougher, like volcanic rock. The name itself implies partnership: two stones, grinding against each other to create friction. In climbing, we talk about "contact strength" and "friction." But during Qingming, I think about the metaphor differently.
The two stones are the past and the present. They are you and your ancestor. They are the climber and the hold.
Qingming is not a sad holiday. Please do not confuse it with a funeral. In Chinese culture, we sweep the graves, but we also picnic. We eat cold food (a nod to the legend of Jie Zitui), we fly kites, and we celebrate the fact that we are alive because those who came before us were strong. Similarly, hangboarding is not a punishment. It is a celebration of potential. Every time you lift your feet off the ground and hang from a 14mm edge, you are saying: “I have the strength to hold on.”
The Ritual of Sweeping the Holds
Yesterday, I performed my own version of tomb-sweeping. I took a soft brush and a bowl of warm water. I scrubbed the Two Stones hang board gently, removing the white ghost of old chalk from the crimps. I swept the dust off the screw heads. I wiped down the wooden center beam.
In Chinese tradition, sweeping the tomb is an act of love. You remove the weeds so the spirit can rest. As I cleaned my hangboard, I removed the "weeds" of my ego—the failed attempts, the days I skipped training, the excuses. Underneath the grime, the board was beautiful. The resin was still sharp. The edges were still honest.
I realized that a hang board is a monument. Not to death, but to discipline. Every session you log is a brick in your own ancestral lineage of movement. One day, you will get older. Your tendons will complain. But the work you do now—the deadhangs, the repeaters, the three-finger drags—becomes the soil for the next generation of climbers. You are the stone they stand on.
Spring Loaded: The Season of Training
Qingming falls at the perfect time for training. In most of China, the winter fog has lifted, but the brutal summer humidity hasn't yet arrived. The air is crisp, like a fresh sheet of paper.
This is the season of "Tuanqing" (团青)—the green dumplings made of mugwort and glutinous rice. It is sticky, chewy food. Hanging on a Two Stones board feels like that: a sticky, chewy kind of strength. You don't rip through the moves; you settle into them.
I put on a playlist of Guqin music (an ancient Chinese zither) and started my session. Three sets of 10-second hangs on the 20mm edge. Two sets on the 15mm pocket. As I pulled, I thought about the nature of "ancestor strength."
We tend to think of our ancestors as fragile old people in photographs. But the reality is, your ancestors survived wars, famines, and long winters. They had grip strength you cannot imagine. They carried water up hills. They held plows against rocky soil. When you hang on a Two Stones board, you are not just training for a project in Yangshuo or a crack climb in the Gunks. You are remembering a physical history. You are honoring the calluses on the hands of your grandfather’s grandfather.
The Joy of Not Falling
There is a Chinese saying during Qingming: "慎终追远" (Shen zhong zhui yuan) – "Reverently remember the distant past." But the second half of that phrase implies that by doing so, the people’s virtue becomes substantial.
In climbing terms: by respecting the holds (the past), your fingers become virtuous.
Hangboarding is lonely work. There is no belayer. No crashpad. Just you and the board. But with the Two Stones, I never feel alone. The roughness of the texture reminds me that the earth is old. The precision of the edges reminds me that progress is slow—millimeter by millimeter.
I did a one-arm lock-off on a shallow edge. I held it for five seconds. Last Qingming, I couldn’t even hold that edge with two hands. That is the gift of the festival: perspective. You look back one year, see where you were weak, and realize you are stronger now because you kept showing up.
A Toast to the Dust
We don't talk about death much in climbing culture. We talk about "sending" and "projecting" and "beta." But Qingming asks us to look at the dust on the floor—the chalk, the dry skin, the swept-away dirt—and smile.
The Two Stones hangboard will outlive me. It is a block of engineered rock. But for the next ten years, it will be my partner. We will grind together. We will sweat together. And every April, during the Qingming rains, I will brush it off, thank my ancestors for their grip, and hang on for one second longer than I did last year.
So this week, if you have a hangboard —Two Stones or otherwise—don’t just train. Sweep it. Clean it. Touch it with respect. And as you pull your knees to your chest and feel the burn in your forearms, remember: You are not just getting stronger. You are continuing a chain of hands that have held on for thousands of years.