There is a lovely little national holiday coming up known as Tomb-Sweeping Day. We all get the day off, but someone has decided that we should work Saturday and thus have off three days--Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I don't know about you, but working six days straight in order to have a three-day weekend is not my idea of a Good Time. For one thing Ayi doesn't work on Saturdays, so I have to take care of the damn dogs AND put in a full day teaching, which means running home at noon in heels to walk Duchess and The Little Emperor. My disdain at walking the dogs has nothing to do with the fact that The Little Emperor is now so enthralled at Duchess that he laps up her pee--ugh--it's just that I hate having to run home, walk the dogs, and run back to school in a little under an hour. The only three-wheeled motorcycle pedicab available at that time is the one-eyed hunchback midget, and even though he's pimped his ride (it's now a very classy pedicab with Hello Kitty floor mats) it's still a wild ride with Mr. Toad, sans Disney sound track.
As for Tomb Sweeping Day: well, I'd happily dust off my ex's tomb, although he's not dead yet. I'm crazy about my mother-in-law and would, as the last member of the family still in China (no matter how ex-member my status is) indeed go sweep the tombs if I knew where they were. Mother-in-law's parents were killed by the Japanese during the occupation, so I doubt if even she knows where those bodies are. As for snobby aristocratic ex-father-in-law, his parents' tomb are a fucking shrine--I'm not kidding, they are a national shrine--so there's no need for me to Go South and pay homage. About the ex: once after he pulled a particularly shitty deal on my kid, namely calling her up, telling her he was in Beijing and asking her to wait on a street corner for him so he'd take her to lunch--then letting her wait an hour and a half in the 108 degree summer heat before telling her he'd changed his mind--- I told her once he was dead we'd drink a bottle of champagne, dance on his grave wearing pretty red dresses, and quote poet Diane Wakowski the whole time ("I'll dance on the grave of a son-of-a-bitch.") It cheered her up a bit, but cheered me immensely, as I finally put my Fine Arts degree to good use, quoting poetry and lifting my own spirits in the process.
When my daughter was here and in a particularly shitty mood, she once screamed at me, "We never have fun on Chinese holidays! We don't go anywhere, we don't do anything! We're not even having a picnic because we don't even know any dead people!" (She doesn't know how close she came to being one for that little comment.) I can't say Tomb Sweeping Day is a favorite holiday, but you know what? If I don't have to speak slowly and say, "No, honey, how ARE you, not WHO are you?" for the thousandth time this week, having a holiday is fine by me, even if I can't wear a red dress and dance the tarantella on the old bastard's grave. A girl's gotta have something to look forward to, after all.
As for Tomb Sweeping Day: well, I'd happily dust off my ex's tomb, although he's not dead yet. I'm crazy about my mother-in-law and would, as the last member of the family still in China (no matter how ex-member my status is) indeed go sweep the tombs if I knew where they were. Mother-in-law's parents were killed by the Japanese during the occupation, so I doubt if even she knows where those bodies are. As for snobby aristocratic ex-father-in-law, his parents' tomb are a fucking shrine--I'm not kidding, they are a national shrine--so there's no need for me to Go South and pay homage. About the ex: once after he pulled a particularly shitty deal on my kid, namely calling her up, telling her he was in Beijing and asking her to wait on a street corner for him so he'd take her to lunch--then letting her wait an hour and a half in the 108 degree summer heat before telling her he'd changed his mind--- I told her once he was dead we'd drink a bottle of champagne, dance on his grave wearing pretty red dresses, and quote poet Diane Wakowski the whole time ("I'll dance on the grave of a son-of-a-bitch.") It cheered her up a bit, but cheered me immensely, as I finally put my Fine Arts degree to good use, quoting poetry and lifting my own spirits in the process.
When my daughter was here and in a particularly shitty mood, she once screamed at me, "We never have fun on Chinese holidays! We don't go anywhere, we don't do anything! We're not even having a picnic because we don't even know any dead people!" (She doesn't know how close she came to being one for that little comment.) I can't say Tomb Sweeping Day is a favorite holiday, but you know what? If I don't have to speak slowly and say, "No, honey, how ARE you, not WHO are you?" for the thousandth time this week, having a holiday is fine by me, even if I can't wear a red dress and dance the tarantella on the old bastard's grave. A girl's gotta have something to look forward to, after all.
Doesn't Tomb Sweeping Day go against all communist ideals. I mean, didn't they try to get rid of all that ancestor worship stuff? Or are some things just to superstitious scary to give up.
ReplyDeleteWho the hell goes anywhere outside their house on a public holiday in China! I mean jeez, it's bad enough out there on a normal day, let alone a bloody public holiday.
Oh yeah, and tell that bloody dog of yours to stop being so utterly disgusting. I'm off to kill a couple of neighbours who can't work out which button sets off the car alarm and which button just locks the bloody car.