Ancestor Worship: An Impression

We left the tarmac road and walked towards our tombs. There was no path, so we weaved in single file among the scores of other tombstones, pushing back long grass as we went, shimmying along a narrow ledge, climbing a steep embankment, jumping a muddy gap before arriving at our two monoliths, which faced south to the green hills.

Both tombs were grey and tall – perhaps six feet. The ashes of the ancestors were entombed within. Each had a smooth face in which were etched their names along with their (still living) children. The names were neatly arranged in rows with enough space for more generations to be added. Having married into the family, it was briefly raised whether my own name – awkwardly foreign and long – would be engraved into the stone. But today was not the day for novelty and no conclusion was reached. Instead, as other family members arrived with plastic bags of food, the ritual began.

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We’d been dropped by a large, empty-looking hospital at the bottom of the hillside cemetery. Outside the hospital an elderly security guard scuffed his shoes while pacing slowly; his hands behind his back, a cigarette clasped between his fingers, he was surveying the traffic. The road past him which ran up into the cemetery was seldom used – but today it was rammed. The whole city had come out, a city of over a million. Cars full of families sat bumper-to-bumper. Only a scattering of passing places and the odd small car park allowed the vehicles brief progress. But nobody was in a hurry; our destinations were not going anywhere. We were all here to visit the dead.

Cemeteries are usually avoided, I was told, because of their ‘complicated energy’. Representations of death are seen as bad omens. But it was the second day of the lunar new year, one of a series of days when people make an extra effort to spend time with their family, wishing each other well for the year ahead. And today was the day to involve the forebears in the celebrations.

To reach our tombs we’d walked up the narrow tarmac road, alongside the stationary vehicles, passing roadside stalls selling what everyone took to their tombs: flowers, paper money, tapers. Vendors sat on low stools flashing QR codes to the steady stream of customers.

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We placed flowers next to our tombs, their petals plucked and sprinkled in a gesture redolent of Tibetans sprinkling paper prayers into the wind. But our motive was economic: vendors would stalk the tombs for fresh flowers to resell.

We were a group of seven: aunties, uncles, cousins. Various cakes, fruits and drinks had been brought to share around among both the living and deceased. As we munched and nibbled and sipped, orange segments, half-eaten buns, three-quarter full cans were left on and around the tomb for the ancestors to enjoy. At an adjacent tomb a recent visitor had lit and left a cigarette for their ancestor; its smoke rising in ghostly coils.

Great wads of paper money were produced from a bag and an uncle lit a fire. Everyone tossed sheaves of notes on to keep it going, the uncle prodding the paper fire with a stick. Then an auntie flattened a piece of cardboard and placed it on the ground for us to kneel on. One by one, we began.  

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The previous evening we’d had a family dinner. At one point the TV, which had been blaring out the spring festival gala, was turned off, covered with a cloth and two large portraits of the grandparents were propped up in front of the screen. A candle was lit but the bright ceiling light remained on. Some stood around the pictures, some stayed seated. Others looked at their phones or smoked cigarettes. A cousin glanced between the pictures and the assembled and asked who was going first.

We took turns to bow in front of the images. Each of us did so three times, bringing our hands together, then down for three prostrations. Each person did this with varying degrees of vigour.

Later, after the meal, a drunk uncle who worked as a car salesman told me that he was not ready for spirituality. His face washed red with rice spirit, he leaned in and said with hot breath that people like him were still meeting their material needs. Only when these were met, he slurred, would he seek something more.

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At the tombs we performed a similar rite. Bowing down in their shadow, sharing food. The atmosphere was not sombre, nor was it happy. It was a neutral mood, similar to going to the supermarket. A young cousin stared at me with glazed eyes, as if unsure how all this fit in with Tik Tok videos and 24-hour convenience.

He was not alone. As we stamped the fire out, left the food and flowers and headed back for the road, there was a sense that something was left undone. But it was quickly smothered. Phones were turned on, reports that the ritual had been enacted were sent. Engines were revved and soon the crowds were gone. By night, the road up the hillside cemetery was once again empty, left with its swirls of complicated energy.