life and death

this is where my p. grand- mother is chilling. from l-r is my mum, my father's sister, my father's brother, and my father's other sister.

i went to visit my paternal grandmother's grave yesterday. it was a pretty emotional experience. one that i didn't expect to be so emotional. after all, i haven't really bonded with my father's mother as i have with my maternal grandparents (not that i've bonded that much with them, either). mostly because she was in china and i wasn't. i did, however, visited her three or four times when she was alive. the last was a number of years ago.

anyway, my mother, a paternal uncle and two aunts made the trip to this temple like place that serves as a resting place for a lot of people. given that space isn't a luxury we have in hk, well, i guess if you're really rich, you could afford to buy a lot of space. but since space is limited, people basically get cremated and interred at special sites around the city (i have no idea what they are called).

before we left, we bought a lot of paper money, clothes, shoes, etc., etc. to ensure that my grandmother will have lots of month and clothes in the afterlife. several days after my grandmother was interred, my father had a dream of her telling him that she doesn't have clothes to wear. so my father took some paper clothes up to her resting place and burn them in the incenerator. we also bought some oranges and a piece of roasted pork for her to eat.

it's kinda interesting. this ancestral worship. my mother wouldn't even go near the buddha statues because she's catholic. it's kinda funny, she would follow the specifics of ancestral worship to a tee, but if you were to go bow to buddha, she wouldn't do it.

the final resting place is in sha tin, which is in kowloon. it was an incredibly humid day yesterday. we had early morning showers, actually just after we left the flat. but by the time we got to the "temple," the rain had stopped. but in it's place was the torrid humidity. i sweated through a button up shirt. and being next to the incenerator didn't help either.

of course, it was an experience i wouldn't have missed. this was one of the reasons why i came back to hk in the first place. to pay my final respect to my grandmother. my father's two sisters came from china for this purpose as well. so the three of us had the pleasure (if you could call it that) of giving our respect for the first time.

there were a lot of incense burning and some sobbing. i didn't sob, but i did have some tears in my eyes. like i said, i didn't know her very well, but i still loved her cuz she was my grandmother. after a while, we took some pictures and left. it was a good experience. really interesting from a educational standpoint.

i finished the da vinci code earlier today. it's an incredibly good book. so interesting in fact. later ,when i have the time, i would go investigate all this crap. i'm going to go ahead and get the prequel to this. he's a very good writer, dan brown.

i was watching a chinese sitcom with my parents last night and this white chick was speaking perfect cantonese. i mean, if i wasn't watching the television, i would have thought that she was chinese. it's incredible. i don't think the notion that white people could speak chinese will ever cease to amaze me.

anyway, i have to run. i'll write more later. today is dinner with my relatives. shark fin soup night. sorry d, i've gotsta eat it.