Opinion | This Ching Ming, let’s sweep away fusty Chinese ideas of death and dying

A reluctance to talk about death can rob us of a proper farewell to loved ones. But attitudes are changing with modern education and younger people registering wills

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Hong Kong families visit the graves of their deceased loved ones at a cemetery in Hong Kong’s Chai Wan district on April 4. Life and death are integral to each other. Only by properly facing death can we properly value life. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:30am, 7 Apr 2024Updated: 10:43am, 7 Apr 2024

Death is a sensitive word in the Chinese culture, something people try to avoid saying. It is like a taboo: mention death and something bad might happen.

Ching Ming, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, is one of the few traditional Chinese festivals related to death. It takes place on the 15th day after the spring equinox and usually falls on April 4 or 5 (this year, it is April 4). It’s a day for Chinese people to honour their ancestors by visiting graves, cleaning tombs, making food offerings, burning incense and paper money and paying their respects.

Even though, for more than 2,500 years, the Ching Ming Festival has given us an annual occasion to talk about the deceased, death remains a heavy topic and one that we can neither speak of nor accept easily.

No one ever told me how to learn to accept peacefully the loss of a life, especially of a loved one.

I lost my elder brother to heart disease in June 2021. After 10 hours of a scheduled surgery, he ended up in the intensive care unit (ICU) for 30 days, unconscious. That was a month full of anxiety, worry and fear, driving the family to the brink. The Covid-19 quarantine policy made everything more complicated.

We couldn’t visit. All we could do was wait at home for the hospital’s daily report. I felt like I was on a roller coaster, becoming emotional with any word from the doctors, and so did my parents. I believe they had considered the worst, but still hoped for the best.