Ching Ming Festival: Hongkongers crowd cemetery for grave-sweeping after 3-year tradition drought amid pandemic
- Waiting time for lifts at columbarium section at Diamond Hill site can be as long as half an hour
- Many families thankful for lifting of gathering ban, which has stifled rituals in recent years
Thousands of Hongkongers visited the graves of their loved ones on Wednesday, turning up in big groups and mostly without masks to mark Ching Ming Festival for the first time in three years.
Occurring on the fifteenth day after the spring equinox, the tradition honours the dead through tomb-sweeping and the burning of paper offerings.
Despite occasional rain and humid weather, crowds gathered at a public cemetery in Diamond Hill as early as 9am.
A few steps away at the multistorey columbarium, dozens of residents were seen in long queues for lifts, some waiting up to 30 minutes.
The annual tradition has been plagued by tough Covid restrictions in the past three years, including the mask rule and a ban on public gatherings, forcing families to pay their respects in small groups.
Tang Shui-lun, a chef in his fifties who was at Diamond Hill with a band of 20 relatives, said: “In previous years, we also came in a large group but had to split up. I am glad the mask mandate is gone, it was really hard to breathe in a mask when you are surrounded by incense smoke.”