And mocking voices ring the halls.
Imperialistic house of prayer,
Conquistadors who took their share.
That keep calling me
They keep calling me
-Joy Division
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| Tombs in Taiwan -- They need their weeds cleared |
A few weeks
ago, China celebrated Qingming Jie (清明节Qīngmíng jié), which literally translated means “Pure Brightness Festival.”
The English translation, Tomb Sweeping Day, highlights how people traditionally
celebrate this festival: they clear away the weeds from ancestral tombs and
make offerings for the dead.
This year, Qingming Jie fell on Saturday,
April 5. All over China, the dutiful set fake money ablaze on street corners, outside their
doorsteps, and on tomb stones. They journeyed to graves, cleared away the weeds, and set plates of food and fruit on altars. To human eyes, the money went up in smoke and
ashes. In the hereafter, however, the spirits may use this money for whatever
spirits need to buy. Maybe they rent a condo in an upscale spirit neighborhood
with a view of a celestial temple.
A few days after
Qingming Jie, I talked to an elderly woman whose husband died three years ago.
At the end of his life, he had lost his mind to dementia. He wouldn’t eat. He
couldn’t talk. He wouldn’t wear clothes. She worries that in the afterworld (另外世界lìngwài shìjiè) he doesn’t have any clothes
to wear, so during Qingming Jie she burns money. She feels that her husband
needs the money to buy clothes. I asked her what else he does in the next
world. Besides shopping, he probably has other interests. Of course he does. He
goes fishing.
While
slurping on his egg and vegetable soup in a “Chinese Hamburger” restaurant
(really that’s what the sign said), a cabbie driver told me spent his Saturday
worshiping his ancestors (拜先祖 bài
xiānzǔ). He and his family are from
Beijing, so visiting the tombs of his dead relatives is very convenient. He
brings them food and probably burns fake money. I asked him if he believes that
the dead continue on in the afterlife. He didn’t give me a direct answer (that
means he said a lot of things that I didn’t understand through his garbled
Beijinghua—so whether the answer was yes or no is unclear), but he was clear that
Qingming Jie is a very important in Chinese history. It is culture. It is tradition.
Such practices, however, are slowly fading with the younger and secularized Chinese. Millions of young Chinese leave their hometowns— fortresses of traditions—to live, work, and study in big cities. They leave behind the ancestral tombs, and their aging and superstitious grandparents. They embrace a secular way of life, consumed with higher education, finding a satisfying job, finding a spouse and having children. Money is king to many of these young bookworms. The old traditions are fun—but not spiritual or even necessary.
Such practices, however, are slowly fading with the younger and secularized Chinese. Millions of young Chinese leave their hometowns— fortresses of traditions—to live, work, and study in big cities. They leave behind the ancestral tombs, and their aging and superstitious grandparents. They embrace a secular way of life, consumed with higher education, finding a satisfying job, finding a spouse and having children. Money is king to many of these young bookworms. The old traditions are fun—but not spiritual or even necessary.
One young graduate student told me that as a child she accompanied her parents
to the ancestors’ tombs to burn money and to offer food. Now both she and her
parents live in Beijing. Their hometown and the tombs are too far away to make
the long trip to traditionally commemorate Qingming Jie. She does not think that her dead
ancestors need her money. She's not sure if she believes in
life after death (línghún 灵魂).
Instead of burning real money on fake money to literally burn, she spent 10 RMB
(1.60 USD) on an entrance ticket to the Beijing Botanical Gardens. Yes, she
spent Qingming Jie as most people with a day off do: she went out and played.
Chinese Word
of the Blog: 另外世界lìngwài shìjiè (literally,
another world)
English
Translation: place people go when they die – the hereafter
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| Everyone went out to play at the Beijing Botanical Gardens. There were as many people as flowers. |
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| These flower children dressed for the occasion |
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| Beijing saw blue skies on Qingming Jie. The ancestors must be pleased. |
