As the day of Qingming Festival (a festival in early spring to commemorate the deceased) is approaching, Beijing saw the first peak of sacrificial ceremonies on Mar. 26th. With the appearance of sea burials, tree burials, and SMS and online memorial ceremonies, Beijingers adopt diversified ways to mourn for the deceased.
On the website www.netor.com, the largest online memorial in China, a man posted a message to show his love and memory for his elder brother in heaven in this way on March 26, "My dear brother, it has been one year since you were gone quietly. We just celebrated our maternal grandpa's birthday and we all wished you were at the birthday party on that day. Do you know that grandpa missed you so much that he could not help crying bitterly?"
Nowadays, people prefer a new way of mourning by SMS as they are getting more and more used to sending messages by their thumbs. According to the website www.netor.com, hundreds of memorial SMS will be sent through the site during the Qingming Festival, mainly for paying respect to departed relatives and friends, as well as historic celebrities.
In this year's Qingming Festival, many people will express their saddest thought with computers instead of visiting the cemetery with flowers as they did in previous years. By a simple click of mouse, they can log on the online memorial any time any place to present a bouquet of flowers, light up a candle, dedicate a song to the deceased, leave a message for memory on the forum or send a condolatory e-mail to the family of the dead. In this way, the appearance and voice of the departed and memories of relatives and friends can be preserved forever.
On the morning of March 26, over 500 family members of the deceased arrived at Tianjin's Tanggu by a special bus for the sea burial ceremony and sprinkled bone ashes of their beloved ones into the sea. This was the 39th sea burial ceremony organized by related departments. In addition to the traditional sacrificial ceremony, civilized ways of mourning by SMS, online memorial and sea burial have been accepted by more and more people nowadays.
(China News Service March 28, 2006)
