Lack of writing and venting has made my life a living hell. So, here goes my bitching. Hopefully in doing so, I’ll be more sane and my life would be less smelly than some stinking poop with some nasty flies buzzing around to taint the innocence of my nose and my eyes.
As most of you Chinese buggers know, Qing Ming Festival ( 清明節 ) is around the corner. For those who are not ah beng or ah lian enough to know what is Qing Ming Festival, allow me to give short explanation on Qing Ming Festival.
All the bloody hoo hah about Qing Ming Festival is about praying to the dead, or to be more particular, your dead parents or your long dead ancestors who are rotting and decomposing six feet under. Qing Ming Festival is also known as Tomb Sweeping Day or All Souls Day and it’s observed by Chinese Taoist, Chinese Buddhist as well as Chinese Folk Believers. Qing Ming usually fall on 4th or 5th April which is 15th Day of the Spring Equinox.
The significance of this festival is to remember the long dead ancestor and usually the people who observe this festival will gather and bring their family and the descendants of the dead like a troop of army from all corners of the world and pray to the dead and sweep or clean up their tomb as a sign of devotion and love towards their dead ancestors.Some also believed that by praying to their ancestors, good luck will come and their life will be blessed.
While some perform the prayers to the dead as a sign of devotion, most elders emphasize on celebrating Qing Ming because they thought it’s a damn great idea to get their busy modern kids to remember their roots or whatsoever contributions their ancestors has made. In other words, it’s a bloody fine trick to get the kids from the bustling city to go back hometown to spend a couple of days with them and the kids have no excuse not to do it because the elders could lecture the kids that they have to go back and pray because it’s their damn obligation to do so.
Most kids these days don’t give a damn about Qing Ming whatsoever. But most are afraid, because they know what will happen if they don’t go back or spend some time to pray to their ancestors. The elders will yadda yadda and nag nag like the most common bitchy housewife you can find in those smelly wet market, and the next thing you know is the news of your fucking unfilial self will be broadcast with the efficiency of CNN and the Internet. Your reputation in the family will never be the same again, and your forehead will be labeled a ‘BITCH’ or a ‘BASTARD’ for being unfilial in the entire clan of your family.
So, bottom line is, even though most modern and open minded youngsters rather be off somewhere else instead of praying and cleaning up graves of people that they don’t even know under the the hot sun, they had no choice, because the only way to shut the pie hole of the elders is by doing whatever fucking thing they asked you to do so that you could spare your innocent eyes and ears from libel and seditions from family clan afterwards.
Growing up from a modern family, I never believed that by praying to the ancestors could bring any luck or benefit. If one tell me that you must pray to your ancestors because you need to tell your brats about family history, that I believe, but not the blessing and financial luck abracadabra. Hell, I don’t even believe that God or any other entity will help you just by praying to Him, because you still need to make some effort to get a good life.
If by praying alone could settle a lot of problems, then why the hell the world is constantly in crisis and at war? If by praying alone could feed the entire family, why the hell do we still need to work our butt off every goddamn day? If by praying alone could makeyou rich, then I supposed, we’ll have cash as rain instead of raindrops.
I have ‘opened’ eyes that can see many things others can see. Wandering soul, dead relatives, you name it. The dead cannot help, no matter how people try to prove and drilled to into your thick skull about it. They are the ones who need help instead, so praying FOR their soul so that they could rest in peace would be more fitting and appropriate than to pray to them to help you with your god forsaken life.
So, peeps, if you bring your brats to the graveyard to clean the tombs of the ancestors that they do not even know, kindly tell them that there is no such thing as an easy way out and not get their hopes high about getting a new remote control car or a new PSP after praying. They are gonna be disappointed and resent the whole Qing Ming thingie if they found out that the tomb of their dead ancestors doesn’t work like making a wish upon a Genie in a bottle. Unless of course, if you decided to act like a Santa Clause and buy em their wishes afterwards.
Cleffairy: It’s too cliche… why do you need to pray to the ancestors if you believed in reincarnation? The long dead ancestors would have been reincarnated, would they not?