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Ching Ming/Easter

Eye | Land | View

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Waterfront dim sum restaurant, day-glo steamed buns

What with it being Ching Ming festival as well as Passover and Easter and Muhammad's birthday (according to Shi'a), the waterfront is real busy with people!

Hong Kong: Ching Ming festival

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Fifth of April is Ching Ming festival. Ching Ming is also known (in English) as Grave Sweeping Day, and it's a public holiday.

But before the grave comes the funeral service. On a little island in the South China Sea such a service is usually held in the open-to-the-elements funeral parlour in 'funeral square'. The square in reality is a rectangle. And this rectangular space has good feng shui, backed by a small hill and overlooking an unimpeded view of the sea.

Even in death life goes on. As well as the funeral parlour, there is a video games centre, pet shop, and three restaurants with alfresco dining in the square. So one can watch a funeral service and dine in the open air at the same time. Cool, eh?

And for funeral participants (and occasional restaurant watchers) the funeral services come and go in a variety of styles: ancestral, Christian, Taoist. Often what occurs seems to be a mix melded from two or more traditions -- all the better to hedge one's bets in matters ethereal, celestial, spiritual.

Anyway, the photo above shows a mourner and some of the bamboo and paper replicas which will be burnt during this ancestral-Taoist funeral service. With a car, house, trunks full of goodies, the departed is assured creature comforts in the netherworld after a life which may have included assorted disadvantages and discomforts in this one.