This Past Week

This past week, I have been alone in the house, yes but I still have friends around me so that's great! I miss Stan and I'm excited for him to be back, but I also know he needs to be there, so it's ok! By the way, if you haven't read his most recent blog post, please click here! This past week I talked about the upcoming holiday with my students, "Qing Ming" or in English "Tomb Sweeping Day". I learned something new about the Chinese culture. On this holiday they take fake money to burn, flowers to lay on the graves of their ancestors, and clean it up a little. The new thing I learned about was the death experience itself. In China, if you live in the city, (and the cities are BIG here! Texas ain't got nothin on China!) Anyway, if you live in the city you MUST be cremated. The MUST is because you have no choice. There simply isn't enough in the ground to bury people. To have a cemetery. I mean, I guess if you want your relatives buried under building with no grave site, you can not cremate them. (I hope you know I'm joking.) So, they cremate them, but they put the ashes in a box (most likely a small coffin) and then bury that! So it takes up much less room. Interesting, huh? As I was explaining what the word cremating meant in English to my students, they told me the Chinese word. It just translates as "burned". They don't use any other more polite words to say it. They just say "burned". I told my students that was maybe the impolite way to say it, so I taught them the word "cremated".

I also explained that some people who get cremated like to have their ashes put in an urn, (and explained what an urn was) and maybe have the urn in a special place in the house. As I explained this, every class would look at me with disgust, trying to hide it on their faces as to not be rude. I finished explaining it by saying, "Some people think it's gross, so they don't do that." Then they all laughed. In China, if you live in the country side, you have all the room in the world! So you can be buried full body in the ground. All this was very interesting to me. I am learning more and more about the funeral customs (but that's for another blog entirely). I hope you enjoyed this bit of information as much as I did (as morbid as it may seem!) :) Thanks for reading! I hope you read Stan's blog post! I love you all!