Tomb Sweeping Festival

A few weeks ago there was a holiday called Tomb Sweeping Festival. The translation isn’t great but it’s essentially about visiting the graves of your ancestors to honor them. A few days before that I learned that the freshmen students in the Education school, 90 out of maybe 180 or so are my students, were going to go down to a memorial park not that far from the school. I decided it would be fun to go with them. They all showed up in an open area in front of the north cafeteria about 20 minutes before they were supposed to leave. I had mentioned to some of my students that I was thinking of coming along but most were really surprised to see me there. To them this was just some boring thing they had to do, but I was really interested to watch.

The school doesn’t really have uniforms but each grade have what are essentially track suits with the schools initials on them. Most of them showed up wearing those. They had two big flags with them. One was a red flag with a yellow star in a circle in the upper left hand corner. This is the flag of the Communist Youth League. Most of the students are apparently members, though I don’t think you have to be. They also had a much bigger flag with the name of the school, school of education not the whole school, on it. Once most of them showed up they formed up into lines, I guess that military practice last semester came in handy, and walked off toward the park. The park was actually about 2km down the road so it was a longer walk. Not only that but this road has essentially no sidewalk.

As we walked down the street trailing the large flags in some sort of odd parade I talked to one of the other students there who wasn’t wearing the track suit. She was an older student who was apparently assigned to these students to keep track of them. She said that it was pretty much only the freshmen classes that did this. We had to stop several times as cars would cut through the middle of the line when we crossed four way intersections. We finally arrived at the park which was near a bus stop I’ve been to a lot of times. Despite having passed it a lot I’ve never seen it open. Apparently it’s a memorial for people who died for the country. Just inside the gate there is a statue of several early party members from around this area. Past that is a walkway between two buildings that both serve as museums. Finally there is a stone monument of some kind that serves as the central focus of the park.

The students had with them some sort of wreath like thing made up of paper and plastic flowers. When I started taking pictures of it I noticed a reaction from a number of the students. Worried that I was somehow being offensive I asked them what was up. They said that it was bad luck to take pictures of these since they represented death. The Chinese are really sensitive to secondary meanings and what not. Words that sound close to positive words like wealth or luck are considered good while ones that are close to death and the like and bad. I of course responded by taking as many pictures of these wreaths as possible.

The students then stood in what was essentially a line waiting for there turn to go near the big monument at the end of the park. There were groups from a lot of other schools, also in school jump suits, ahead of them. These students gawked at me more than I’m even used to since I was the only foreigner anywhere around there. They considered it so unusual that I’d want to come watch this. Each group would go to just below the monument and stand in a tight pattern while a few people would go up and read speeches. They’d then walk around the monument once before leaving for the next group.

When our school finally got to go up I wasn’t sure where to stand at first. In the beginning I just stood quietly in the back with the students. After a while though I noticed that several students were walking around taking pictures of the group so I started to do the same. One older guy I didn’t know gave a speech then Winter, one of my tutors, gave one. His was nice in that he actually talked in a loud voice and looked up at the other students. I have a video of it, but of course it’s all in Chinese. After that there was some speech where they held up the Youth League flag and the students gave a little one fist salute which was funny in a cute way.

By far my favorite thing there though was the little kid honor guards who stood in two at either side of the monument. They were kindergarten or first grade aged kids who wore white gloves and red sashes. They stood there very serious looking as everything was going on around them. They didn’t seem to have any job besides to stand there. At one point there was even a changing of the guards. Two new kids walked up, actually they got stuck behind some students but dutifully marched in place while they waited to continue, and saluted the kids standing there before taking their place. It was all so adorable that I forgot to pull out my camera until they were almost done.

After the speeches were concluded the students walked once around the big stone monument and put little pieces of tissue folded to look like flowers into some bushes nearby and then left. As we were leaving we passed a group of young school children who were coming to do the same thing. Winter and some of the other students took me to the museums which were interesting but I didn’t understand much of it since it was all in Chinese. The best part was a picture of young Mao who I didn’t recognize since he had so much hair.