Hongkongers’ unfulfilled wanderlust spills into paper offerings this Ching Ming Festival, while some sweep tombs amid Covid restrictions
- Offerings resembling mainland travel permits, passports and flight tickets among the most popular items
- Grave-sweepers visit tombs in small groups, while others have done away with making the trip altogether with the fifth wave of coronavirus infections
Paper offerings resembling passports, mainland China travel permits and flight tickets have become the most sought-after items during this year’s Ching Ming Festival, as Hongkongers starved of travel due to Covid-19 curbs wish their ancestors do not suffer the same fate.
Grave-sweepers visited family tombs in small batches on Tuesday while adhering to the government’s social-distancing curbs that include a ban on public gatherings of more than two people across households.
Ching Ming Festival, a public holiday in Hong Kong, is important in Chinese culture. Families often spend it visiting cemeteries and remembering their ancestors.
But cemeteries across the city were quieter on Tuesday compared with previous years. In two graveyards located in Chai Wan and Diamond Hill, most visitors were seen in small groups from the same household, while others flouted social-distancing rules by gathering together with residents from different households. Others chatted without their masks on.
Retiree Wong Siu-mui, 67, bought two sets of paper offerings, including paper money, garments, iPads and watches, for about HK$400 (US$51) from a store in Sai Ying Pun on Tuesday morning before visiting the tombs of her father and younger brother in a cemetery in Chai Wan.
