硝山*4 : A Day for The Departed

清明 (qing1 ming2) – some say it’s All Soul’s Day, some say Tomb Sweeping (扫墓 sao3 mu4) Day. A day we honor our ancestors, paying respect and homage to those whom we missed dearly. In this case, my beloved grandparents.

For me it is more like a ceremony than festival. Festival, because thousands of people making a point attending the ceremony. Some might not meet all their extended family members during Chinese New Year, but most likely to crawl with them all here.

I mean here –-


Well it’s an uphill task, often slippery during rainy days. That white building on top is a water treatment plant cum reservoir. Water from a nearby river will be tapped and processed before being distributed to residence of Padang Rengas (硝山)town, villagers, to shops and houses. The river is probably just 500m away, with the exact tapping point some 3km upstream.

But my grandparent are nowhere near that reservoir, they are here –-


I was facing my grandparent’s tomb(stone), looking back to the reservoir. I used to wonder would our tap water taste differently if they painted that building black -- or colorful, like that green tomb neighboring my grandparent’s. Thanks to this green tomb, I can locate my grandparent’s tomb easily out of hundreds which looks almost the same, like this –-


Traditionally Chinese cemeteries are located at hilly area, most likely some distance away from housing area. Not necessary to be really far, but there’s always some sort of buffer zone to define our boundary/territory from “theirs”. To be exact from my house its 5 minutes drive to reach where I stand now. That’s about 15 minutes jogging distance, passing by a tunnel and rubber estate. Perhaps I should share my regular morning jogging trails in other post. Not evening jog - - not around here anyway!

Some of the tombs are merely a meter away, without careful surveyed location or level. At a glance they are scattered all over the hill, looks clean and tidy now as most of the shrubs and wild plants was cleared by the management weeks before our arrival.


Those ten bucks above was meant for general maintenance. We actually need to fork out some additional twenty bucks to tidy up our grandparent’s tomb. We used to do it ourselves, slashing burning and all. But now it may not worth our time and traveling cost to do that. And I would say that twenty bucks probably mean something for some retired villagers.

Even if we don’t burn the grass, we still burn something. Chinese believe this is the way to pass the earthy possessions to the departed, by burning them. Most common paraphernalia are hell currency notes, clothes, shoes, jewelry, mahjong set, TV, international passport, jeans…you name it. Bigger paper models of house, car or motorcycle are usually being burned during the funeral ceremonies.


Sounds environmental unfriendly after all? So since when we decided to ignore gas emitted by all those factories, land vehicles and most recently, cheaper and made-popular flying machines? Sometime I felt that it’s just not fair to blame some traditional celebration, traditional slash and burn farmer plus many others for contributing to environmental pollution. For instance the (almost) annual Sumatra (Indonesia) haze blown to Malaysia was mostly caused by timber industry, not some independent domestic farmers. Burning down the forest is the cheapest and fastest method for land clearing, fertilizing top soils while wiping out certain pests in the same time. It’s sad that once regard as contributor to agriculture development now named contributor to air quality depletion.

Of course, one can be certain that my grandma will actually get her mahjong set in the afterworld. But we will just let them burned. I don’t foresee any changes in my lifetime, simply because most people still think that there’s always more timber in the forest, it is impossible to fish everything out of the sea, and we’ll always have clean air, that global warming is a just big joke.


Anyway, we don’t burn the food, though. Offerings like steamed chicken, pork, fruits and rice will be served in front of the tomb, for our ancestor’s consumption. Everything will be kept for our lunch later. Funny as it seems, but the chicken taste as delicious it as should be, after the prayer.

I would say our ancestors who started all these practices are being practical in this matter. From young we are being told not to waste any food –if you notice your Chinese friend will try their very best to finish everything served on the table.


Going back to the grave, I particularly like this picture -- colored paper (or often known as rainbow-paper) arranged on top of the grave together with plenty of joysticks. Those colored paper represent “new cloth” to the grave, also brings annotation of “we’ve been here” as it tells everyone that this grave is taken care by their families. And all those joss sticks – to hold the papers in place, plus we don’t bring back any extra joss sticks back home. Joss stick for god’s prayer must be separated with those being use here.


The last picture was taken inside the only building at the cemetery. Usually people will have simple prayer here before they proceed to the tomb. Nobody bordered to have fluorescent light here. No one will be here after dark anyway. “They will have party here after 2400 hours,” a former park committee used to joke with us after his regular night out catching frog. For him, the night belongs to the deceased. Former committee -- because he join the same party few years back.

Are there any party at all? Well, it really depends on your mental state when you were there after dark…