More than 200 Chinese from the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao stood in front of the grand gate of Xuanyuan Temple to honour the ancestor of the Chinese nation yesterday morning.

Jia Zhibang, deputy governor of Shaanxi Province, opened the memorial ceremony and Cheng Andong, governor of the province, read the elegy.

April 4 is the Chinese Qingming Festival, a day on which people pay homage to their ancestors.

Every year during this festival, official and folk rites are performed north of Xi'an to commemorate Huangdi - the legendary ancestor of the Chinese Nation.

A fund for the upkeep of the Mausoleum of Huangdi was established in October 1992 and a State project to renovate the mausoleum was approved this year with a planned investment of 150 million yuan (US$18 million).

But some things about the Qingming Festival are changing with the times. Because people are often busy with work and cannot travel home, many find it difficult to observe the festival.

Luckily, the Internet has a solution for these people. On the website http: //www.netor.com people can build on-line memorials to remember their ancestors.

Web surfers can send flowers and burn paper money for their ancestors.

The site even provides information to users about the history of their ancestors, allowing them to search a database by family name.

Some Beijingers still pay homage to their ancestors in the traditional way. An estimated 1.1 million people will take the subway to get to their ancestors' tombs from April 1-9, according to a Beijing Metro Co official.

To ease crowding, the company increased the number of trains running over the weekend.

The Beijing Public Transportation Corporation also added 17 special routes to facilitate residents travelling to cemeteries, said the official.

Since Beijing prohibited burning paper money for the dead at cemeteries in 1995, city residents have gradually got used to taking flowers instead to commemorate their late relatives, said Xue Chaoxi with the Beijing Futian Cemetery.