Does It Rain Everywhere During Qingming Festival?

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“The drizzle falls like tears on Mourning Day; the mourner’s heart is going to break on his way.” That’s the opening line of a famous Tang poem describing the gloominess of Qingming Festival, a traditional Chinese festival to worship the deceased that falls annually on April 5th.

It’s not difficult to tell from this poem that Qingming is an occasion that usually comes with grief over great losses.

I grew up in a small village with less than 200 households. The villagers were quite close and familiar with each other, and people will be invited to all local celebrations such as weddings and parties for newborn babies: the occasions that I looked forward to a lot because I was a kid. There were also funerals where I barely had access to (also because I was a kid).

The concept of death was something missing to me as a girl. There was only one thing I knew for sure: it’s a topic that would always come with its euphemisms, and these expressions made it even more of a topic of confusion for me.

I have this memory of a nanny who was always nice to me. She would tease me every time she walked past our house and always surprised me with some wild fruits she picked.

One time, I accompanied my mom to do farm work in a vegetable field on the foot of a small hill. When we walked past a big tree, I saw a small slope gated with a stone tablet under the tree. I remember myself asking, “What is that for, mom?”

I can’t recollect exactly what mom’s answer was, though I think it was something along the lines of: “Remember the nanny who has always given you those wild fruits? That’s where she sleeps now.”

“The drizzle falls like tears on Mourning Day; the mourner’s heart is going to break on his way” opens a famous Tang poem describing the gloominess of Qingming Festival.

That’s probably the first time I had a conversation about death, though not in a very understandable way. I remember she used the word “sleep” because that’s a common euphemism when people talk about death.

When I look back, I think the neglect of being taught about this concept of death definitely adds more fear towards it. I still remember the young me being frightened to think that the nanny was now sleeping in a lonely place. It even made me more frightened imagining, "What if that happens to me?"

In Chinese culture, death is a taboo subject. In fact, there are nearly a hundred of euphemisms for it, with oral ones such as 没了(méi le), 走了 (zǒu le), both are similar to the word “gone.” Written and respectable ones include 去世 (qù shì) and 作古 (zuò gǔ), which are generally translated into “pass away” in English.

Qingming Festival naturally slips into people’s minds with a certain degree of melancholy, especially it is a day of remembering the ones we lost. Actually, there is a part of the definition of Qingming that is usually being neglected, as it is supposed to be an occasion to celebrate life while remembering the dead. Certainly, bottling those feelings up towards death doesn’t take it away. However, it would benefit us more if we were able to see through the loss with more courage and gratefulness towards life.

If I could time travel back to that day, I wish to hear: “That nanny is dead. Death is not a punishment; it happens to everyone. And it’s not the ending. She is having a good life in the other world because she was such a lovely person.” That, I think, would have made the acceptance of my grandfather’s leaving less painful for me years later.

Photo: Pixabay

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