Chinese festival honours departed
OVER the past week, all over the country, Chinese-Cambodian families bearing food, decorative paper, incense and other offerings have been making pilgrimages back to their hometowns for the Ching Ming Festival – one of the year’s most important holidays for the ChineseCambodian community and a testament to the deep cultural influences that have migrated south.
Today is the last day of celebrations during the 2,500year-old “tomb-sweeping” holiday – so called because families clean and adorn their ancestors’ graves during the festival, which officially lasts three days but often is celebrated for as long as a week.
For the Sok family, this week’s festival means a trip from the capital to Pursat. This is the first time in seven years that the eldest son, Rathanak, will take part in Ching Ming.
Though he has been back to his family home in Pursat town for other occasions, he has not been to the plot of land in the countryside near where his great-grandfather first settled in Cambodia and where his ancestors are buried. “I feel [it’s been] so long [since] I’ve been there and I just feel like I should meet my ancestors,” he says. “I’m afraid they don’t know me anymore.”
The family of seven pile into a car to make the sixhour drive from Phnom Penh back to Pursat province. Early the next morning, Rathanak and his relatives get up to cook the offerings CONTINUED
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