Feasting with My Ancestors
By Jess Eng
When I was younger, I thought my grandmother had an obsession with the dead.
Before any family meal, she would carefully pour rice wine into three hand-painted cups, light thin incense rods, and rotate prepared food—roast pork, tangerines, and plastic grapes—to face the head of the table. "These are for your ancestors," she would say to no one in particular, never batting an eye.
Although I’m three years out of practice, the next part of this family ritual floods back to me in vibrant gestures, shouts, and smells. It’s as if I never left home at all. Each family member, starting with my dad’s oldest brother, takes turns clutching joss paper, a ritual paper eventually made into burnt offerings, and makes their way to an empty table lined with food.
One. Two. Three. These three bows to the empty table, slow and steady and respectful, can make or break the evening. As a kid, the bowing struck me as humorous; like a person waving to an empty chair or hungry customer accepting food from a waiter but not picking up a fork. But I always stopped short of laughing once I heard my aunt’s stern voice: “Three bows, Jess, and make sure it’s sincere!” She’s dead serious. Like my aunt’s and more so, my grandmother’s dedication to this ritual never wavers. Even in her old age, she wants to be the one stooping over a red tin can and burning the joss paper. With the outdoor ashes burning, the indoor incense percolating, and chopped roast pork and chicken steaming, the night feels complete, and we haven’t picked up our forks.
When I share stories about my family’s eating rituals with friends, I always field questions. “What religion is this?” “Do you actually believe your ancestors exist?” “So will you pass this on?” I never quite know how to respond. To translate a ritual that feels so natural, so fundamental to my understanding of Chinese culture, into a comprehensive and satisfying explanation for other people—I find it nearly impossible, though I often try to. As I muse on early memories with my grandmother, dating back to my first recollection of this ritual, I realize that no one has ever offered any explanation for the different ritual steps, nor did I ever think to ask. On the surface, this ritual provided structure to family-bonding time. At its very core, it has left me with more questions about my life and my family’s relationship to death and dying. Little did I know, it was ultimately my entry point to talking about religion and death.
For as long as I can recall, my family has not practiced a formal religion. While my religious friends attend Sunday service, my family stays home and watches irreverent Fleabag in the living room. When my religious friends say grace before dinner, my family digs right into our meal without small talk. The contrast baffles me. And yet, this ancestor worship—heralded by my grandmother—has become a family dinner staple, our very own folk ritual. Think our ancestors are dead? It’s not so simple, according to my grandmother. They are alive and well with us, watching us closely from living room portraits, feasting at our dining tables, and dancing in our local cemeteries.
Many media outlets cast-off cemeteries as creepy and horrifying, but this was one location where I never felt anxious. Early in April, our family would trek to Daly City, a sleepy car dealership city neighboring San Francisco, for our annual cemetery ritual. Fresh dim sum and oranges carried all the way from San Francisco Chinatown found new homes at my grandparents, great aunts, and grandmother’s friends’ tombstones. While I waited for my grandmother to set up the tin foil trays of food in front of the graves, unfamiliar Chinese families just ten feet away pulled me in with their comforting smells, shouts, and movements. Often, I would just stop and watch; these were relatable movie scenes flashing before my very eyes. I would see Chinese families dropping bouquets of colorful flowers, chomping on fried red bean filled jian duis, and bowing intentionally in front of graves. And who could forget the firecrackers? My morning wasn’t complete without the ear-piercing explosions that left my clothes and hair smelling like burnt toast, even days after the ritual. It is here, in this cemetery, where we all looked the same, smelled the same, and preached the same.
When I examine my relative’s dusty tombstones, I can’t begin to imagine their hardships, sacrifices, and emotions as they immigrated from mainland China to the United States. The generations seem so far away, and out of touch with my twenty-first-century reality. But who’s to tell me I can’t try? Bowing, offering my ancestors Chinese food, and talking about my cultural history with my grandmother transports me to a place of understanding and empathy, a place that’s often hard to imagine during the intense bustle of everyday school and work life. Without fail, visiting the cemetery year upon year has provided a necessary portal into the lives of people I never will have the chance to meet, and that gives me solace when the world starts feeling unwieldy.
The cemetery ritual I’ve come to know dates back to ancient times but was formalized by scholar Guo Pu during the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420 CE) and popularized during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE). In early April every year, thousands of Chinese families flock to cemeteries for Qing Ming Jie, also known as the Tomb-Sweeping Day Festival, in hopes of honoring and impressing their ancestors who will ultimately judge whether to bestow good fortune on their families. This tradition is universal in China. It’s not uncommon to walk into a Chinese cemetery in early April and be greeted with magnificent bouquets and immaculately clean tombstones. As Chinese immigrants in the mid-twentieth century started moving to the United States, a populous that included my grandparents, they inevitably carried this ritual with them. Many years later, it is me, a third-generation Chinese American, who now carries a slice of this history and ritual.
Most likely a result of my upbringing, my own rituals about death have made me more aware of similar holidays from other cultures. I remember learning about the Day of the Dead in my fourth-grade class. With the guidance of my teacher, my classmates and I scribbled on paper skeletons, traced Día de Muertos logos on colorful worksheets, and munched on skull-shaped cookies. A few years later, I learned about India’s fiery cremation techniques and Ghana’s handmade coffins. Instinctively, I’ve clutched onto rituals like my own, even without knowing much about the culture and history.
While many of my classmates saw these rituals as unique and foreign, I have felt an underlying connection to the people conducting the rituals. Simultaneously, I have felt a duty to prevent these rituals from turning into dusty relics on a museum shelf, forgotten and potentially misinterpreted.
I turn to my grandmother.
With all her years of knowledge and willingness to share, my grandmother, without a doubt, serves as my family’s ritual database. Would the death of my grandmother be the death of all my family’s cultural knowledge? Would her ketchup steak and roast pork recipes and her love for freshly cut tulips and fizzing firecrackers follow her to the cemetery? Could I even trust myself to replicate her ritual with the same movements and foods? As these questions swirl in my head, I’m curious if the next generation of Chinese-born Americans will feel the same way about this ritual. For all I know, Tomb-Sweeping Day could fizzle out into a meaningless April morning. I hope to see new generations pass down this ritual or adapt it into an entirely new tradition that feels natural with their understanding of Chinese culture, even if it may be indistinguishable from its origin. The best traditions, after all, are timeless products of change.
Despite leaving my grandmother’s home in California, I’ve looked back on my Chinese dining rituals with surprising endearment. I’m not religious, but like my grandmother, I have come to see this ritual as my own, and one that I can master soon.
Perhaps in time, I’ll become my grandmother’s contour — pouring rice wine gingerly into the hand-painted cups, bowing sincerely before an empty table, and smiling through the ash and flames.
