Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Qingming Festival

Monday marked the start of the 3-day Chinese Qingming Festival. The festival includes Tomb-Sweeping Day, where young and old alike visit the graves of their ancestors, to clean the graves, pray and present offerings.Thus, the festival is an opportunity for people to commemorate and honor their ancestors.

The festival also coincides with my dad's birthday, the first to pass since he passed away.  We managed to turn that day of sadness into something a bit more celebratory by talking about the customs of Tomb Sweeping Day, especially the tradition of burning paper replicas of things the deceased might want in the afterlife -- like money, houses and even iPads!  The girls remembered seeing people burning so-called "hell money" at Nanputou Temple (that's one of the furnaces there in the picture, above) when we were in Xiamen (and that served as the inspiration for our Mother's Day tradition of burning notes to their birth mothers).

We knew we couldn't actually burn anything (burn ban in Tarrant County!), but we came up with a list of things that we knew Grandpa would like.  Our list of paper things to burn -- Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, shrimp, coffee, a perfectly made vodka martini, a TV showing a Cowboys football game, country music CDs, books (Zoe wanted it to be a Kindle, no pun intended!) and, of course, a picture of his favorite girls, Zoe and Maya. I wish I'd thought of it at the time, but I think now we should also burn a paper replica (or maybe even the thing itself!) of Grandpa's favorite recliner!

I hope you were also able to remember your lost loved ones, with joy rather than sadness, this week.  Happy Qingming Festival!

3 comments:

Mahmee said...

Isn't there a law against burning an effigy of a perfectly made vodka martini? :-)
Seriously though, you are teaching the girls something so great by focusing on the memories with joy. That is a lovely tradition.
Happy Qingming Festival indeed.
M.

The Hernandez Herd said...

We celebrate every year too. It also falls near my fathers birthday. Our cemetary had loads of whole roasted pigs filling the air and everyone was burning money. The place was packed. Glad to hear you respect the holiday too. Victoria
www.hernandezherd.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

Grandpa's recliner? Duh. I so should have sent this to my dad. He was all about his recliner too. How uncomfortable he must have been this past year ;) Thanks for the reminder to smile and remember my dad with joy.