After reading Yixian's blog
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
I was just reading Yixian's blog and I remembered the interesting scenes I've saw at the cemetery. This year we didn't go with my uncles. So my nuclear family went on our own last Friday evening. Even though we reached around 6pm, we still saw many people around but no need for police cos it was almost dusk. So no worries, I'm sure most of us are still keeping the customs.
We visited 3 graves; my great-grandma and grandparents. We easily found Ah Gong's and Lao Ma's graves and prayed. And I remembered sitting in the car, praying to myself to let me find ah ma's grave before it turned dark. When we finally found Ah Ma's grave, it was nearly 7pm and we still managed to pray finish. Interestingly, I even saw people flashing their headlights so they could pray cos they arrived in the dark.
And according to my parents who were there on a sat/sun earlier to pray to my maternal grandparents, there were a lot of people and police helping with the traffic. Mum said nowadays people goes to sao mu 2 weeks before or after the actual day cos it's hard to go on the actual day and supposedly, people have busier routines. So it just depends on whether you prefer to go on a more-crowded day/week or on a less-crowded day/week.
Yes, I saw the ice cream man too haha but we didn't want any ice cream (I just ate at NYNY with TD) so we left him alone. And yes again, to the foreign workers. We saw chinese and indian (blangadesh or what) workers carrying bags and bags of offerings left behind on the graves. They took mostly oranges...
Well, depends on how you see it.
For me, I'm willing to accept their actions. Because if they are well-off they would not have resorted to stealing right. And technically that's not really stealing cos we left the offerings there and who's to say that other times the offerings are left untouched? If we had already offered to our ancestors, I'm sure they would have received our xin yi already. And if we can help others why not? I for one, saw that the workers would only wait around and would only remove the offerings after we left.
Isn't it the same as when we've just burned the paper notes etc, and the cleaners came to sweep away the ashes? What would you feel? It's the same ba, you would have believed that the ancestors would have received the items already. And the cleaner is doing his job; while the foreign workers are doing for their survival? What's the point exactly of letting the food rot on the altar if it could be more beneficial? It's actually like how we would eat the food after praying to our ancestors at home isn't it?
It's true that we may not know for sure what they do with the loots. Dad was saying perhaps they would sell cheaply to the fruit drink stall or they put aside for their consumption. I'm sure the workers themselves came from places with such traditions and customs as well and I think only people with a clear conscience would "dare" to take offerings.
Live and let live ^^Labels: Qing Ming
It was a love story @ 11:15
baby,just say yes.
