Cheng Beng

This is cheng beng week and cemeteries will be jammed and filled with lotsa people, loved ones and people out to make a quick buck...that would be the grave cleaners who offer a myriad of services which includes clearing weed and refilling of earth on grave mounds.

This week and for the next two weekends loved ones from all over the country head back to their hometown to pray and make offerings to their dearly departed. I am among one of the travelling horde. Leaving KL at 0430hrs on friday and arriving at 0714hrs in Taiping i beat the mass traffic expected and upon arriving at my aunties place we loaded up my trusty Batmobile and off to MaKauTiong we went...well after a spot of my aunties wonderful tea that is.

The first grave we visited was that of my great grandmother's and since my great grandfather's grave is supposedly lost among the weeds, my uncle and aunty has sorta invited him to reside within our great grandmother's grave. Don't ask me how...it's very technical. Smellius Yingus and I believe we can find it...it is about 500 paces to the soutwest of the big tree at the entrance.
His tombstone is just a retangular tablet measuring about 3x5 as i recall. When ah poh was around we would go find it...now that she is with them we have taken shortcuts.

We do the customary clean up and weeding of the grave and touch up the tombstone so that future generations will be able to find it. We have even put the surname in english so that the keng chiou langs in the family would be able to wonder if this is "the TAN" and our great grandmother. We should bring a GPS next...heaven forbid that the marker trees that we use to locate it is chopped off.

Anyway after that we place all these colorful papers on top of the grave and light joss sticks and placing the food offerings we chit chat. Once the joss burns to about halfway we start to burn the "new shirt, pants, shoes and some kum ngan...hell notes etc" some even burn viagra...yes they have that now. Once the stuff is burned we will partake in the food as if we are eating together with our dearly departed.

That done...we pack up, say our goodbyes and head to the next grave.