Qing Ming Festival

Today is Qing Ming festival. Here in China, the government has made this day an official national holiday. The move was to spread the annual holidays in the country over the month to curb the human traffic congestions during the Spring festival season, May day and National day period. It is a good move, as people can use this period to pay their respects to the dead.


This festival is both the fifth term in the traditional lunar calendar and a festival to hold memorial ceremony for the dead. It is a day in which one expresses one's grief for his lost relatives. People often go to sweep and weed graves with whole family and take a walk in the countryside as well. In Singapore, the Chinese took the time to pay their respects to the dead in cemetries. However, as the need for land is limited, most of the formal burial sites for our ancestors were moveto small areas. Many chose to goes through the respect visiting over a month.


Here in china, people can travel over across the land by train or plane to do the chore. And many chose to do it before the national holiday to avoid the peak traffic congestions, as well as spending perhaps a well worth holiday resting or doing some neat travelling.


So what am I doing here now in Shanghai? I spent the day watching Lost Season I and playing a little bit of mahjong. Luck is good. Won enough to buy 2 packet of tobacco to past time through the night.


Whatever or however things are, we just stay up late as our form to pay our respects to the dead as we gamble through the night.