Hong Kong’s Chung Yeung Festival is also known as “Tomb Sweeping Day.” The celebration has its roots in a traditional Chinese holiday called the Double Ninth Festival. The term “Double Ninth” has to do with the festival’s being held on the ninth day of the ninth month of the Chinese calendar. The date changes every year according to the phases of the moon. This year, Chung Yeung fell on October 17.
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people celebrate some version of this holiday. In Taiwan, residents observe “Senior Citizens’ Day.”
On Wednesday, many Chinese people in Hong Kong visited their ancestors’ graves to celebrate Tomb Sweeping Day. They were hoping to pay their respects to their dead relatives. Entire families—fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins—head to local cemeteries to clean the stones, repaint signs and engravings, and pick up debris.
Sadly, the people also put out offerings of food to the gods. Typical fare might be roasted pig or fruit. The cemetery visitors often eat the food after they believe the spirits have eaten.
Family members may also burn incense sticks at the gravesites. Hong Kong’s cemeteries get quite crowded. Nearly every year, the burning incense sticks ignite grass fires.
It is tragic to think of so many people worshipping false gods and praying to and for the dead. The Christian knows that hope for eternal life is found in Jesus only. (Colossians 1:27)
(AP Photo: Worshippers walk at a cemetery as they visit the graves of their ancestors during the Chinese Chung Yeung, or Tomb Sweeping Day.)
