Personal Narrative: Tomb Sweeping

“This year, we will visit Grandpa next Saturday.” My grandma said this sentence once a year for as long as I can remember. Not a year went by without going to visit him. My grandfather was dead long before I was born. I had zero memory of him, but Qingming festival always reminded me that he was an important part of my family. Qingming festival is one of the prominent Chinese traditions. It is also known as Tomb Sweeping day, which Chinese families travel to their ancestors’ graves to clean the site, plant new flowers, pay respect, and offer food to the dead every year. After getting up at 3 a.m. and taking a shower like a zombie, I got on the driver seat and started the engine. My family and I were going to visit grandpa, who was buried in Chonburi. Bangkok traffics before the morning light was a stranger. Very few cars on the road, the headlights from cars on the opposite lanes and street lights irritated my eyes. There

It was like we were in a small town, where the graves were houses and the deads were the residents. Chinese graveyard looked like a small hill, about 6 square meters, in which the coffin laid deep in the ground. The front was a headstone in the middle and a place for placing offering foods and a space for the family to sit. The graves were located closely next to each other in order. As we passed countless graves, I was amused by the fact that people still held onto the materialistic things even when they cannot make use of it anymore. Some graves were bigger than others, always maintained by the staff and located at the auspicious spots; water in front of the grave, mountain behind and luxuriant plants around, to show that they and their descendants were wealthy enough that their resting places will be as luxurious as the days they were alive. But a few were neglected, the white stone was dirty and the grass on the hills was dead, not a green can be