All Souls Day (aka Remembrance Day)

In Chinese culture, All-Souls Day is held on the day of the Third Moon, the day is also known as the Qing Ming. The latter literally means "clear and bright", a reference to the weather at the time of the year of the festival - the third lunar month or early spring, usually on 5 April or 106 days after the Winter Solstice (or mid-winter). If the year is a leap year, then Qing Ming falls on April 4. Note that this is the only known Chinese festival that follows the English calendar rather than the Chinese solar calender. Perhaps making it falls on the 5 April or one day before the day is easy to remember as in the Chinese language "4-4" means "die-die" literally speaking as All-Souls Day is associated with people who had passed away. Small wonder the All-Souls Day follows the English Calendar :)

Offerings of food, fruits and drinks are made including burning incense and paper money by the gravesides to ensure that the deceased have all that he needs in the netherworld. After prayers, the food is gathered together and taken home to be consumed by the worshipers themselves ;-)

Nowadays the festival has become more commercial. Today families go to the extend of purchasing paper replicas of essential items to offer the dead. These include luxury cars, mobile phones(make sure to write down the hand phone number too!),televisions, karaoke sets, refrigerators, DVD players, Air-cons, computers, PDA and GPS device. They also include shoes, designer clothes, handbags, boxes of jewelery items, shaving kits, cigarettes, cans of beer and liquor. One can still buy the traditional "hell money", but nowadays a selection of credit cards is also available. The "hell money" notes are huge, and believed it represented one billion units. Some families really go to the extend of ensuring their loved ones with the above paper replicas to make them comfortable - in my opinion is becoming ABSURD.

For a moment of time, let's look at it from a non-Chinese point of view. The non-Chinese might be wondering if what their Chinese counterparts think is correct, then the Chinese of the netherworld would be the only race up there to be enjoying their riches and the luxuries while the billions of the other non-Chinese race would have been starving and depriving of entertainments ever since time-immemorial.

If people are associating "All-Souls Day" as being Remembrance Day for their ancestors, then it is worthwhile commemorating it.

Cheers!