Hello everyone 👧.
Last Saturday, my Mum and I went to my Mum's side's family graveyard for tomb sweeping or cleaning. We called this day Ching Ming Festival to honor the deceased by cleaning their graves, offering food and burning joss sticks and joss related items (such as paper clothing, paper latest motor vehicle and hell notes) for them. The last date or day of Ching Ming is April 5. However, that day is a working day. Thus, most of the people prefer to do this festival during the weekend which most of the family members are not working.
My other family members (who some of them only meet once or twice a year) also joined us at this event. Since the distance from my house to the family grave is quite far, the graveyard had already been cleaned up by my other family members when my Mum and I arrived. We just left to present the food we prepared in the morning and burning joss sticks for my Mum's grandparents tomb.
By referring to the picture above, this graveyard belonged to my ancestor. In other words, the people who attended our Ching Ming Festival were also our family members. Behind my Mum, those group of people are my Mum's relatives, but we are not very close to them. In family tree, my Mum's grandfather is their grandparent cousin.
After finishing burning all the joss sticks and joss papers, we started cleaning up and making sure the fire for burning had completely stopped to prevent spreading after we left the graveyard. As for the food we just left it there except for the meat. The meat we donate it to our poor background family member.
During the cleaning, we chit chatting about recently the young deceased had been presented with Boba milk tea and pizza for worship. Then, some of us suggested why not next year at Ching Ming Festival, we present KFC snack plate for our deceased family members. We think that our deceased family members are already bored with the same food being offered every year and want to give them tried new thing. Not sure about this, are they serious about this talk? Let's see next year whether this suggestion be used or not.
Before leaving the graveyard, we take a family photo and share it on family group chat. This is to show the other family members who could not attend the event.
Some joss sticks had 4 digit numbers on them. We recorded it and bought the 4-digit lottery number to try our luck in one week. Probability our ancestor will help us won the lottery. 🤣
My family members and I did not go straight home after leaving the graveyard. We headed to a nearby restaurant to have breakfast together. In addition, we continued our family conversation there.
Usually young children have a small appetite and cannot finish a plate of food ordered. This was, however, an exception for my nephew in red shirt, who is just entering kindergarten this year. I'm amazed that he was able to finished off his plate of meal without sharing it with anyone else. No wonder my cousin or his mother are in good shape 🤔.
That's all. Thanks for reading my post 🤗.
