Grandpa

My father asked me to go with him paying respect to our grandpa this Ching Ming Festival. His eyes were hopeful, his face eager. His son was ambivalent.

I'm sentimental about many things concerning my grandpa: the memory of going out with him when I was young, the time when I went to his home every day to have wound dressing for his foot ulcer, the night I accompanied him to have foot amputation at the operation theatre, the scene of buying him beer (alas, by the doctor of a patient with diabetes mellitus) in the hospital. But grave-sweeping eight years after his death leaves me cold. It's a festival that has not an iota of idea of what it’s really about. Or at least whom it is dedicated for.

In the interests of domestic harmony, I visited my grandpa's grave with my dad, and observed thousands of people climbing the slope to burn the paper offerings. There's nothing wrong, of course, with spending money on the gold and silver offering paper. Love or passion, apparently, can sometimes be measured in physical quantities. A grandson might measure it in gallons of beer he brought his grandpa; and the grave-sweepers in terms of the height of the stack of paper offerings awaiting to be burnt. For many of us, though, there is confusion between genuine belief of this folk ritual and pretended dialogue with our ancestors – or worse still, with the peers.