Ching
Ming Festival is unique as observance of this day has sparked political
movements in China in the past. During the festival in 1976 thousands
gathered in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to honor late Prime Minister Zhou
Enlai, who died in January of that year. The gathering transformed into
a rally against the Gang of Four. Mao's disastrous decade-long Cultural
Revolution had come to an end.
In China in recent
years tight security has been ordered on this day to avoid demonstrations
by those wishing to revere the demonstrators killed in Tiananmen Square
in June 1989 when troops were sent in to the crush the fledgling pro-democracy
movement.
The
Ching Ming Festival in 1997 arrived less than two months after the death
of leader Deng Xiaoping. Security was stepped up in mainland China,
land in Hong Kong, then still a British colony, the government announced
it would take measures to ensure the festival passed peacefully. The festival
last year passed without incident.
Wishing to avoid
the cult of personality he had always abhorred, Deng
Xiaoping refused to be preserved as Mao Zedong has been for over
20 years in his mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. Deng was cremated and his
ashes scattered at sea and in different places across China. But according
to Ching Ming, one can
pay respects to the dead in other places than at the grave site: in public
places where a portrait is hung or at the person's old home.
It appears that Ching
Ming is not usually celebrated in China, contrary to what many people might
think. When Shi Nan was queried on this festival,
he claimed that neither he nor his family celebrates
it and added that people in China do not usually practice this tradition.
We infer that the vastness of the country does not allow much people to
learn of the occasion, much less celebrate it.
But we do admit Shi Nan may be an
isolated case, and in other parts of China people may not be likewised.
