Qing Ming Festival

Qing Ming festival is around the corner, we have to go and pray our grandparents as a form of memorial. In this festival, we have to sweep our ancestors’ grave, making offerings and burning ceremonial money. Joss paper is usually burnt, however, in some places it is not burnt but tossed into the air. Then there is the practice of placing a stone over pieces of yellow and white or multi-colored joss paper on the gravestone, the front of the grave and at the Hou Tu's alter. The offering of joss paper represents wealth given to the ancestors for use in the underworld - it also shows that the descendents have visited the graves. After sweeping the graves, families offer fruit and flowers to their ancestors and remember them in their hearts. This year, we decided to go to our grandparents’ graves one week before the actual day. As the actual day itself, the graveyards are crowded with people.

We set off early in the morning around 7am and the first stop was my grandma’s grave. Now then I realized that my grandma’s graves had a number engraved on it, the number was 87. We did a quick offering and praying, if I was not wrong, it took less than 30 minutes. Our next stop was my grandfather’s grave; it was a long journey from my grandma’s graves and took us 45 minutes to 1 hour to reach there. My grandfather’s grave number was 680 and lucky the weather was cooling; as I remember 2 years back when I was there, the weather was very hot and my parents and I were sweating liked a melting ice block. As usually, we did a quick praying and start burning the ceremonial money. It was time to go home and heated up the offering food for lunch.