Qingming Festival at Block 14 of the Lone Fir Cemetery
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Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English, is a traditional Chinese festival that dates back 2,500 years to the Zhou Dynasty. Qingming translates literally to "clear and bright" in English, and is seen as a day to remember our ancestors and celebrate the beginning of spring.
We do this by visiting the cemetery to clean our ancestors’ graves, bringing offerings of food and other items we know they will enjoy in the afterlife, and decorating their tombs with flowers.
At Block 14 of the Lone Fir Cemetery, we lack any monuments or memorials at the site other than some signage and the labyrinth the community and I built from the rubble of the old building and parking lot. So, each year I create the opportunity for Qingming attendees to craft “headstones” for deceased loved ones using Sharpies and ceramic tiles. We used the “headstones” to honor those long-overlooked at Block 14, loved ones buried afar, our ancestral homelands, and others with whom we have no other means of communication.
Qingming Festival 2023
Things We Carry on the Sea
By Wang Ping, born in Shanghai 1957, master's degree in English literature from Long Island University and Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University.
We carry tears in our eyes: good-bye father, good-bye mother
We carry soil in small bags: may home never fade in our hearts
We carry names, stories, memories of our villages, fields, boats
We carry scars from proxy wars of greed
We carry carnage of mining, droughts, floods, genocides
We carry dust of our families and neighbors incinerated in mushroom clouds
We carry our islands sinking under the sea
We carry our hands, feet, bones, hearts and best minds for a new life
We carry diplomas: medicine, engineer, nurse, education, math, poetry, even if they mean nothing to the other shore
We carry railroads, plantations, laundromats, bodegas, taco trucks, farms, factories, nursing homes, hospitals, schools, temples…built on our ancestors’ backs
We carry old homes along the spine, new dreams in our chests
We carry yesterday, today and tomorrow
We’re orphans of the wars forced upon us
We’re refugees of the sea rising drowning in plastic wastes
And we carry our mother tongues
爱(ai)，حب (hubb), ליבע (libe), amor, love
平安 (ping’an), سلام ( salaam), shalom, paz, peace
希望 (xi’wang), أمل (’amal), hofenung, esperanza, hope, hope, hope
As we drift…from dream to dream…sea…to sea
Qingming Festival 2022
