Happy early Qingming festival (清明節)

Qingmingjie is an important Chinese festival for paying respect to deceased ancestors. It is a time to come together to visit and clean清 the old family tombs. We were very lucky with the sabbatical (and side-trip) timing to have the chance to be in Taipei just a week before the actual festival (which is on the 4th of April) to visit the final resting place of Nai-nai and Yeh-yeh in Yangmingshan.

Fortunately, Nai-nai and Yeh-yeh's urns are located such that we could knock politely on their little doors to say hi. Neither of them had met Davy or Meg yet - Yeh-yeh had barely even met Mommy! We hope that they were happy to meet the next generation and are satisfied with how we all turned out. After chatting a bit about death and cremation, whether the people buried in the big tombs outside were all there with their skin and bones intact, etc., we spoke briefly of what Mommy and Poppy wanted to do after dying, aside from give them all our money to buy Teslas.

Meg then became rather fascinated by the fact that she was named after Nai-nai and shares both her family name Su蘇 and middle name Yu玉. She may actually turn out to have a lot in common with her great grandma when she grows up - both are stubborn queens and of course never wrong! Hopefully Nai-nai will be able to look in on Meg from time to time and keep her on the right track. Davy was a bit sad about not being named after a family member. Thankfully, he then found out that he was named after a great Chinese engineering master who designed and built the first railways. He was pensive for a moment after that - perhaps even suitably pleased.Read more