Finished with Cheng Beng

Well! Finally, I've finished my obligations for this year's Cheng Beng worship two days ago. By a coincidence, the exact day for Cheng Beng, the tomb sweeping festival, fell on Sunday, the fourth of April this year, and thereby allowed my son to come back in the morning to participate in the worship. Nothing elaborate in our household, actually, because all we prepared for the worship was to buy several types of fruits and cakes. Despite not going to the cemeteries and temples this year owing to the coronavirus pandemic, there was a bit more variety purchased. The worship table was full. 

But although my family did not go to the Batu Lanchang and Wat Pimbang On cemeteries this year, we did arrange for the tomb sweepers to clean up the graves of my two pairs of paternal and maternal grandparents. Guess that was the least I could do for them. As for my parents and aunt, their ashes are in the Batu Gantong columbarium. We don't normally go there and instead, we would always remember them at the Triple Wisdom temple where their memorial tablet is located. Since last year though, the temple is also closed to visitors due to the virus.

In the non-cultural sense, Cheng Beng marks the start of the Chinese seventh solar term, incidentally called Cheng Beng (清明). 

There are altogether 24 solar terms which are determined by the positions of the earth in the ecliptic, that is, the orbit of the earth around the sun. The start of each solar term corresponds to a certain position of the sun every time it moves 15 degrees on the ecliptic. According to the Chinese luni-solar calendar, the sun would have crossed the celestial 15˚ longitudinal line on the ecliptic on the fourth of April this year. I've written about this before, which can be read here,