Ching Ming

Ching Ming is the time where all the Chinese ghosts are released from hell. They'll come out and haunt every household, freak every living member in the family and scare the living hell out of people by appearing in random places.

No, I'm kidding. (That happens in July, on the 14th to be exact.)

It's the time where family members gather together to pray for their dead ancestors.

When I say family members, its my aunt's side (8 people), aunt no.2 (2 people), aunt no 3 (4 people) and my family (4 people), it's like a CNY gathering.

Minus the gambling and the ang paus, of course.

My gathering is like a huge ass picnic in the graveyard. In the day time-lah. Loads of fun and laughter, basketful of food and HEAPS of noise. Bwahahaha. Yeah, we don't care if we do wake up the dead.

So first things first. Upon arriving, we set about cleaning the graves. Lalang (wild grass) has sprouted all around the graves and concrete so the macho men of the family start by hacking the grass with their parangs and their garden shears.

Hmm..what is my mum doing there with the macho men?

That's my cousin-in-law refilling the place with dirt. Easier for us to place joss sticks and candles later.

The very artistic family members (female relatives) went about painting the words which were engraved on the tombstones.

Now, what is my cousin-in-law (the male) doing in front of the tombstones? He's supposed to be up there weeding. (Woi, Wind kor kor, don't think because my mum and you both have short hair means you can trade places wor.....)

The older family members, namely the parents of us kids, stood around while a waiting for the men to clean up the grass from the concrete. Cleaning the entire compound is because we're laying out a feast for the dead ancestors.

Check out the amount of food. There's rice, Chinese cakes: fat gou (some kind of pink Chinese cake that's rather fluffy), egg-tarts, pumpkin cake that aunt no. 2 made, chicken, siew yuk (roast pork), vegeterian curry, vegeterian duck and all those fake vegeterian meat, Chinese sweet and salty Dim Sum, Western baked goods such as Portuguese Egg Tarts, curry-puffs, sugar-canes, various types of fruits, tea and coffee and everything else under the sun. I actually don't know what's in all those bags and utensils.

Seriously, the Chinese find every other opportunity to have a feast.

CNY has got reunion dinner, baby's full moon also got huge dinner, people get married, that everywhere also pretty much the same unless you eloped.

Pray ancestors also use so much food in the process, and there's all those festivals like the Zhong Chiu Jie (Mooncake Festival), Duan Wu Jie (Dumpling/Dragonboat Festival), Seventh Day of CNY is everybody's birthday, all the more reason to eat, Chap Goh Mei (Last day of CNY, so eat and be merry before you start working like a dog again), and last but not least, Dung Zhi (the day where everyone eats little balls made of glutinous flour and cooked in a sugary base soup, together with ginger, gula melaka or salty fillings such as minced meat and shitake mushrooms, ). I still think I've missed out a lot of festivals. *FUMES*

Point is, there's is plenty of food at any point of tme should there be a form of family gathering. In my family, there's no need for a festival. As long as my mum's siblings have a get together, the noise is enough to bring the house down. The kids alone are sheer terror.

I digressed.

Halfway through weeding, painting, 'laying the table' and such, fat little droplets of rain started dropping. We continued because it's gonna be so very troublesome having to gather everyone again to come back to the graveyard.
Umbrellas began popping up like magic mushrooms. I have never seen so many umbrellas in such a compact place in my life. Talk about cooperation. And it wasn't just us. The entire mountain was crawling with people, errr, sprouting umbrellas.

After the initial preparation, joss sticks were handed out to every member of the family and
Everyone has to hold three (why three, err) joss sticks and bow to the ancestors.

After bowing, stick the joss sticks in the sand.

There's 2 'ovens' on the site, it's for burning those million dollar notes and funny shaped things. People actually make things such as paper houses, cars, clothes, jewellry and all, so all you have to do at this time of the year is to buy as many of these luxuries as you can afford and give them to your ancestors, by burning them for your ancestors.
We also heaped a bunch of those things and money on top of the grave for the ancestors.

Raindrops were pelting hard and fast so we had to pack and leave. Usually, my aunt would throw 2 coins to find out whether my grand-aunt and uncle had finished with their meal. If the coins show up on the same side, it means they're not done yet. Means that we have to wait for head and tails. But because it raining harder by the second, we apologized profusely and packed the things and ciao-ed.

Something funny happened. Someone found a miniature liptick rolling about the ground as we were about to leave. Went around asking who it belonged to. It's actually an identical of the samples that mags like CLEO give away so I just assumed it belonged to one of the many female cousins in the family. When we got back, only did we realise that it belong to my ancestor. There's this jewellry and make up set for my deceased grand-aunt and the lipstick was part of the set.

LOLZ. Imagine someone actually brought it back home and used it. Grand-aunt might come back and give the lucky person some 4D numbers.

****
I went Ching Ming another time with my dad.

This time, the grave's in Port Dickson and I dunno who am I praying. Seriously.

Woke up at 6am. Freaking 6am. The one day of the week that I get to sleep in late. I had to wake up at such an un-godly hour.

The graves there are a whole lot bigger. Like dem huge. Compared to the previous one. (The people in the pic are the relatives I have no idea about. I'm not being rude or ignorant but never visit during CNY, Xmas or any other festivals, not my fault. Sumore PD dem kao far.)

That's the dead people's money I'm talking about. Look at those ZEROs man....like millions and billions and trillions. And we don't just burn one piece, it comes in stacks, like huge stacks. They are gonna be loaded, I tell you.

After sticking joss sticks in the sand, burning trillions of dollars and inhaling tonnes of smoke in later, we decided to leave for breakfast.

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Breakfast was freaking good. Look at the Wan Tan Mee in PD.

I don't like the char siew for Wan Tan Noodles. Not burnt enough, not sweet enough and extremely dry. Yeah, the blacker it is, the yummier and the faster I die from it. But heck, char siew is not char siew if it's not burnt, sweet and shiny.

So I asked the auntie to replace dry, tasteless char siew with fried pork balls and fried dumplings. She even gave me a spoonful of minced pork.

Yums. That's all I can say.

Darn cheap summore. This is considered 'ga liew' (add ingredients) already and it only costs RM3.00..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How cheap is that.

But this place reminds me of Canberra. Ha.

Nothing to do, no where to go, everyone know everyone. Urgh. Not very nice.

I'm such a city girl. Town girl. I can't imagine living in the country, hearding cows/bulls/sheep, collecting chicken eggs in the morning and making bread and pies for dinner at night. As much as I love cooking and wild daisies, I need to party like a wild girl, yum cha until 5am and shop till I drop.

OMG, can you imagine shopping in a small town like that? *Sheer Terror*

ROFLMAO. I'm bimbotic. So what?

Enjoy.