I think it would interesting to focus on the differences of observance of this holiday.
When my family and I celebrate this holiday, it is extravagant. There is more food than on a Thanksgiving dinner. When we go, there is usually at least fifteen people. However, when I was speaking to my maternal uncle, when celebrates, he follows the customs of his mother-in-law. When they go, they keep everything really simple. They burn some incenses and that’s it. I want to know why there is large difference between the way we celebrate this holiday.
Our differences raises these questions:
1. Does having a lot of food make more of holiday for the living than the dead?
2. Does making the holiday more festive diminish some of its importance?
3. To what extent do the celebrations of this holiday differ in different regions of China?
4. How have these practices changed since immigration to NY?
5. Is there a “right” way to celebrate a holiday? Must we follow how it was practiced back then?
– I will do a lot more interviews. I do speak Cantonese, but a lot of people from China speak mandarin. And my mandarin is embarrassing.
– Maybe I’ll just study how to ask my interview questions and if the interviewees let me record, I’ll ask my mom to interpret them. I’m not too sure about how to do that yet. Or maybe I’ll just stick to English- and Cantonese-speaking populations.
– I will do a videochat with my relatives in China soon and will post that up the interview up.
– I found a DVD about Qingming and I will use that as a source to describe the history of the holiday.
