[[carry out your duties, my dear]]
A month or two back, it was the Cheng Beng festival. It's a Chinese custom for the people to visit their relatives' graves. My dad went, I was supposed to go, I forgot and I regretted it. This probably happens every year but I'll make sure I'll attend next year's. My dad visited my great-grandfather's grave at the next town's graveyard. [Speaking of my great-grandfather, I found out the other day, unintentionally, that he was actually an immigrant from Anhui, China! And to think all these years I've been thinking that he was from Kajang and so was his father and his father's father and his father's grandfather. I was mildly shocked, so was my sister. Who would've known? Jeez, remind self to put on to-do list : find out more about family's history] It's a tradition in the family. He and my uncle would go and clean the coffin and the bones, offer Chinese religious paraphernalia and then burn it. We're not practising Taoists. I feel stupid when it comes to this. [Remind self to put on to-do list : learn more about Taoism]
Since I'm on the topic, there's another festival coming up : the Dumpling festival. It all started when a Chinese poet killed himself by jumping into a river and and and ... um ... oh right, the villagers were superstitious of his unearthly returning thus they made dumplings and threw it into the river together with prayers of him not returning to haunt them. During the festival, my mum usually makes those dumplings. Mmm ... delicious, but not when you eat it the next time, it gets prosaic. [Ha! What a word] I wonder when it is. And also the Moon cake festival. No pun, but I love my inherited culture. [clears throat] Quoted from a Quentin Tarantino movie, said very proudly by Lucy Liu, "If you by any way question about my Chinese or American heritage, I'll chop your fucking head off"
Since I'm on the topic, there's another festival coming up : the Dumpling festival. It all started when a Chinese poet killed himself by jumping into a river and and and ... um ... oh right, the villagers were superstitious of his unearthly returning thus they made dumplings and threw it into the river together with prayers of him not returning to haunt them. During the festival, my mum usually makes those dumplings. Mmm ... delicious, but not when you eat it the next time, it gets prosaic. [Ha! What a word] I wonder when it is. And also the Moon cake festival. No pun, but I love my inherited culture. [clears throat] Quoted from a Quentin Tarantino movie, said very proudly by Lucy Liu, "If you by any way question about my Chinese or American heritage, I'll chop your fucking head off"