Annual Duty

April is the month for filial piety.  Yes, this is the time when families remember their departed loved ones and pay them a visit either at the cemetery or at a columbarium.  Known as Cheng Beng (All Souls' Day), the festival falls on 5th April every year but 2016 being a leap year, it fell a day earlier, 4th April.  This is also the time when the angsana trees bloom and shed their flowers to form a lovely yellow carpet over roads and pavements..  When you see these yellow flowers, you know it's Cheng Beng time! (Pictures below taken in our neighbourhood).

Cheng Beng can be observed anytime within the 10 days before the actual date and 10 days after. Weeks ahead, we were already folding the joss papers and making arrangements to order food as offerings!

We arrived at Mum's columbarium at around 9 a.m. on 4th April to find the place already packed with cars.  We had thought that since it was a working day, there would be less people but we were mistaken.  When we queued up to pay the parking fee, we were pleasantly surprised when the chap at the parking booth told us that the car in front of us had paid for us!  We don't know the reason for this, maybe it was a random act of kindness or they didn't have any change?  Whatever it was, I felt it was a "bonus" from Mum!

Table of offerings

Fortunately the floor where Mum stays was not that crowded and we managed to set up our table of offerings very quickly.  We had chosen some of Mum's favourite food such as Lor Bak, Otak Otak and Joo Hoo Chah together with her favourite fruits. So not surprisingly, when I tossed the coins to ask whether she had finished her meal, the answer was "Yes"!  (If you're from the Chinese community, you would know how this is done!).  So after brother-in-law burnt the joss papers, we were ready to go home.

It was very encouraging to see so many young people paying respects to their loved ones in the columbarium.  It shows that filial piety, so important to the older generation, is still not dead.  But ten, twenty years from now, will they still be coming or will the columbarium be a lonely, deserted place then?  The answer to that remains to be seen.