Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Tomb Sweeping Day (Qing Ming Festival/清明节)

To Chinese, the Tomb Sweeping Day (Qing Ming Festival/清明节) is a very important festival. It is a day to remember and honor our ancestors at grave yards. Normally on this day, all the family members will gathered and together they will go to the graves of the departed relatives.

Qing Ming always falls on 5th of April (leap year = 4th April) but normally ppl will go on the weekend before or after 5th of April. This year, we will go before 5th of April, which is tomorrow morning.

I always go with my family members since I was a little girl. But sad to say, due to some reasons, now only me and my brother will go and clean up the graves. My brother will go get the "money" (金银纸) and etc (they said guy must buy wor, gals cannot buy.. got such rules? hmm...) As for me, I will go buy flowers and fruits. Ya, we go for vegetarian. hehe..

It is getting easier to clean the graves nowadays, last time the grave are full of grass, weeds and etc but now that grave yard ppl will clean up most of the weed and collect money from us. It really save us a lot time and energy.

"清明时节雨纷纷,路上行人欲断魂" This is a Chinese saying that says it always rain during the Qing Ming Festival. This is so true as nowadays it always rain, hopefully tomorrow morning won't rain. I remembered last year when we reached there it rain heavily. We all sit inside the car and wait for the rain to stop. Finally my brother decided to go clean the grave with umbrella. So hopefully this year we won't have this problem!

18 Flowers, RM 22
Why so many flowers? For 4 graves mar..
Tomorrow morning i only separate
into 4 and wrap nicely, now
let the flower drink some water first.. hehe..

Red apple, green apple, pear, china pear,
oranges and banana. 5 pieces for each kind of fruits.

What about you? Did you balik kampung for Qing Ming? What have you bought?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yours vegetarin one ar?

Jys said...

yup, since long long long time ago we will only bring fruits and flowers or some kuih to go 'bai bai'.