Speaking to my dead 公公

As a second-generation migrant living in the West, I am constantly trying to understand my own culture and find ways to connect with my home country. The practice of paying respect to ancestors is a common practice for many ethnically Chinese people, particularly those practising Taoism. My family aren’t Taoist but we partook in some of the festivities or rituals when we lived in Malaysia. 

As a child, my parents would take us to visit my 阿嬤 Ah Ma (paternal grandmother)’s final resting place during Qing Ming. Qing Ming festival is an annual day for families to visit and clean the gravesites of ancestors and make food offerings. We didn’t get to do it every year, as travelling to a separate city to visit 阿嬤 was too hard. 阿嬤’s ashes were housed in a two-storey building next to a Buddhist temple. Her ashes also lived in a concrete columbarium. Ah Ma’s ‘unit’ was housed on the second floor, facing the window. A crackly and distorted version of the Buddhist recitation of Amitoufo played in the background over old speakers. This chant that Buddhists use is meant to incite blessing and peace, yet I felt as though someone, or something, was hovering over me. My knees felt wobbly and the fine hair on my skin stood up on my arms. My parents spoke to my grandmother as if we were just popping by for a house visit. They would parade me and my sisters and spoke about our latest academic achievements to a literal brick wall. I could only manage a soft whisper when my parents told me to greet my grandmother. The black and white photos of her neighbours followed me wherever I looked. We would leave offerings of fruit and flowers and I would bow to offer my respects and pray for ‘A’s in my upcoming exams. Secretly I wished 阿嬤 and her neighbours wouldn’t visit me as ghosts. 

My childhood worry as well as watching horror movies as a teenager meant that my association to the deceased was fear-based. Instead of coming together with family, sharing meals and activities to reminisce about our ancestors, the dead represented something unnatural, a sin. My visit to 公公 allowed me to see my connection to the dead in a new light.

Visiting 公公 an adult was starkly different to my memories of the columbarium as a kid. The cemetery was quiet. Perhaps it was because I had a stronger relationship with 公公 than I did with 阿嬤, who lived in a separate city and passed away when I was much younger. It felt comforting rather than scary to think that 公公 had other friends around him. I wanted to stay and speak to 公公 and reminisce with my family about who he was.

Australia hails itself on its multiculturalism. Yet, Australia’s mainstream discourse around death has always been based around Western comfort. Death is a natural cycle of life that touches upon every human being, but Australians pretend it doesn’t exist. It wasn’t until I was back in Malaysia that I realised how much I had repressed talking about death and the dead for the comfort of others. It comforted me that talking with the dead is so normalised in Malaysia.

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“On the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the gates of the spirit world open for all spirits and ghosts to roam the earth realm, signalling the start of the hungry ghost festival.”

Eager to join in on the festivities, I held my mum’s hand and dragged her down the three flights of stairs to get closer to the music. The play was already underway—actors adorned brightly-coloured opera masks and traditional Chinese gowns. The actors sung and dragged-out syllables to tell their story. I was entranced by the way their movements and costumes shone in the bright spotlights. I looked for seats for me and my mum, but most of the rows had been filled by our neighbours. Illuminated by the lights from the stage, I saw that the first two rows closest to the stage were empty. I tried to pull my mum’s hand toward the seats but I was jerked back by her sudden change in direction. ‘Eh, we cannot sit there leh, it’s reserved for the ghosts,’ she said to me as she pulled me away from the stage. 

On the way back to my grandparent’s apartment, we saw people burning joss paper—a form of money to be used in the afterlife. Sheets of yellow decorated in red were fed into an old metal can used to create a makeshift fire pit. One short man fed a papier-mâché car of joss paper with a Mercedes logo on it. One tall woman threw a papier-mâché iPhone—her bangs singed in the process. When I think of the afterlife, I don’t picture myself using a smartphone or navigating traffic, but with this ritual, it was comforting to think that families continued to care and think of their loved ones.

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I used to think traditions were silly. This chokehold of Western ideals around my mind only started to loosen in my late 20s, when I thought of my final resting place as a columbarium surrounded by family and community. 

Back at 公公’s columbarium, I stretched my right hand as far as I could and stood on my tippy toes to clean 公公’s headstone using a wet wipe.  We laid out four small orange mandarins on a red plate and taped fresh white chrysanthemums to the side of the headstone. It was time to communicate with 公公. I used a mix of broken Hokkien, Mandarin and English to tell 公公 that I’m finally here to visit him. My parents and I shared stories of 公公 and joked that he would be popular in the neighbourhood with lots of new friends. By midday, the fresh flowers we bought have started to wilt from the heat, and my feet were swollen from wearing thick socks and sneakers in the sun. It was time to say goodbye. We packed up the fruit which we shared among ourselves later. Leaving the cemetery, I licked my lips and obsessively reapplied my half-melted lip balm. My head felt tight under my cap. When will I see 公公 next? 

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The question remains on how I can practice these traditions in Australia. I Google: “Qing Ming Australia” and 2,670,000 results showed up on my Mac. I was surprised to find that Qing Ming has been performed in cemeteries with a high population of ethnically Chinese migrants across Australia. Buddhist and Taoist temples across the country offered services to encourage people to pay respects to their ancestors. Other results show that there are now options to perform this ritual online through virtual offerings for those who can’t visit the grave in person. There are online memorial websites that offer different ways to remember your loved ones, from sharing photos to videos to laying virtual offerings at the online memorial. The growing popularity of this online option is partly from an adaptation during the global pandemic, but it is helpful for millions of migrants who are unable to return to the graves of their loved ones. 

It was comforting to me that rituals can still be performed and adapted as we advance into the digital era, and for migrants who live far away from their home countries. I wanted to feel closer to my own family and culture by remembering those who have come before me. I decided on setting up an altar at home. Having a permanent domestic altar at home is common for Buddhist people, but it is also common for people practicing African religions and Mexican culture.

For my makeshift altar, I printed off the photo of 公公 and placed it in a $4 black K-mart standing frame. I chose to have his altar at the top of my bookshelf. ‘公公, have you eaten yet?’