Personal experiences with Traditional Asian Holidays?

[Jayth]

Specifically Qingming? I'm doing preliminary research on Qingming for a school project. Unfortunately, my family has never been particularly observant of the old traditions so I don't have any personal experiences to work off of.

I was hoping someone here would be willing to share some of their own personal experiences with this holiday.

Personally I only remember my mother bringing out a portrait of my grandmother and making a make-shift altar and leaving a few offerings, then taking it down. Wasn't exactly what one could call orthodox (if that even applies to Chinese religion).

[nskripchun]

My family never was big into Qingming either. Pretty much Chinese New Year is the biggest "traditional" holiday I grew up celebrating.

Our family did do some of the other traditional customs in regards to weddings (tea ceremony), funerals (candy, burning paper money, bowing, etc), baby parties (100 day party, putting things on the tray for the baby to pick, etc).

Probably only time in my life that I got a lot of experience celebrating traditional holidays in a year-round fashion was when I lived in Japan and stayed with a host family.

[aelward]

We never celebrated Qingming when I was growing up; but as a parent, I take my kids to clean off my parents tombstones on April 5. To bad it's raining today....

[Jayth]

Ah, thanks guys! That's more or less what I've been hearing from the other people that I've asked as well. As far as I can tell, however, it my presentation of Qing Ming doesn't have to be a very long one. Thanks again!

[elliott20]

when I was kid, my parents and my grandmother would take my sister and I to my grandfather's grave with some rice wine, tangerines, incense, paper furniture, "money" of a sort, and some other foods.

once we got there, I remember bowing to the Tu Di Gong (I guess, roughly translated, "lord of the earth") 3 times, then to my grandfather's grave 3 times. I can't remember if we did this before or just after we cleaned or both. but I do remember it.

Anyway, we would clean up the grave, rip off all the weed growing in the immediate area, then afterwards, we would set up burning pot, and proceed to first burn the weeds and grass (just to get rid of them, I suppose) then we would burn the money and furniture. (I guess so that my grandfather would have some money in the afterlife) afterwards, we lay out the food (presumably for him to eat), bow to him with the incense, and then we'd pack it all up and go home.