A Grave Ride

Finishing and decorating an apartment starts to take a toll on a person. I needed to get on the bike again.

This Saturday the weather was nice. Not sunny. Slightly cool. No rain.

So I hopped on the bike and just took off down a road.

I noticed more and more people along the road. Far more than a usual Saturday morning.

Suddenly I ran into this mass of students…all going to climb Mt.Lu. Wow! That’s a lot of buses to wait for! I waved hi and kept going.

40 minutes later I was at the base of the mountain.

Thousands of people were streaming to a local graveyard.

Ah! That’s right! It was Grave-sweeping day. (Well, the weekend of.) Everyone was going to clean the graves of their ancestors and pay their respects to the spirits.

I wandered up through the graveyard and until I hit a path. The bike went on my shoulder and I started climbing up the side of Mt.Lu. After an hour, I decided climbing a mountain with a bike on my shoulder wouldn’t be as fun as it could be, especially since I had heard that bicycles weren’t allowed on the road at the summit.

What else wasn’t allowed? Fire. This sign says, “Whoever starts a fire will go to prison.” No beating around the bush there.

I walked/road back down the mountain and started asking the locals if they knew of a dairy nearby. Several directed me to the nearby Saiyang. There I chatted with several different farmers who owned dairy cows until I found one whose price was right and would deliver both cow milk and goat milk (!) to our apartment. The farmer’s wife’s family were all there at the time getting ready to celebrate Grave-sweeping day. They invited me to lunch with them and to go with them to observe the grave sweeping.

First they needed to clean off the old flowers from last year and pile on fresh dirt.

Then new flowers (all plastic) and fruit were planted. (Makes the afterlife look nice.)

Fake Money was burned. (Sending money to their father in the afterlife.)
Incense was lit. (Makes the afterlife smell better.)
Fruit and hard liquor were placed in front the the grave. (Might as well party in the afterlife.)

Then everyone bowed down to the grave three times and asked (mumbled, really) the father to give them prosperity, etc. for the coming year. And that was the grave-sweeping ceremony!

Afterward we went down for a home cooked meal with the entire family! Notice how the food is cooked on a wok embedded into a concrete stove. There’s another wok next to it for the Chinese New Year cooking capacity.

LuShan

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