'The Spring Festival, named Ching Ming or Festival of Pure Brightness, is usually commemorated in early March. Streams of pilgrims can be seen hiking through scrub-covered approaches to family tombs sited in auspicious positions.
Dutiful sons and daughters return to the family household to reverence ancestors at the ceremonial tablets kept in the home and at the family tombs or in pottery urns kept on peaceful hillsides.'
Source: The Yip Family of Amah Rock by Jill Doggett
Date picture taken
1930s
Comments
Potted ancestors on Cheung Chau
In her Annals account of life on Cheung Chau, Winifred Clift has a chapter on ‘Potted Ancestors’. She asks her Chinese helper how long they left their relatives buried before digging them up, cleaning them off, and putting their bones in pots. ‘Three or four years, sometimes five or six,’ was the answer, ‘without a shudder at the gruesomeness of it all.’
‘Ancient tombs are scattered all over the island, but now the cemetery is confined to one part, though these big brown glazed jars still confront one on every side, sometimes six in a row, sometimes covered with a little bundle of paper money weighed down by a large stone, for the replenishing of the departed spirit’s purse.’