Sweeping Tombs and Leftover Children

This month is a celebration of family for many:  Easter, Passover – and, in China, Qingming festival, also known as Tomb-sweeping day.  There are a number of cultures that recognize the role death plays in the cycle of life – Easter, Día de Muertos, Obon Festival, and Qingming festival.   Many are formal celebrations of ancestors.   

The remains of the fires

Images of the tombs, drawn on city streets

Usually, in China, during the Qingming festival, relatives travel to family burial sites, bring offerings, burn incense and fake money, and then go on a family outing that might involve a picnic, kite-flying, or a family walk in the country.  It was formally recognized as a public holiday in 2008.  

 However, this year, the traditional activities have been curtailed due to the virus. Cemeteries have offered to perform the rites for families, in lieu of being able to travel.  Video conferencing has replaced family gatherings.  In the city, when people can’t make the pilgrimage to the village, they celebrate by drawing a picture in chalk of the ancestral tombs and burning the offerings in the city streets.

This celebration is interesting to me because it raises the issue of “left-behind” or “leftover” children.   Many of the students in my classes are leftover children.

Fires on every street corner

 What are leftover children? In modern China, employment drives parent to seek jobs in the cities.   When they obtain employment, they leave their children behind with grandparents.  The reasons for this are many.  For some, it is expensive to raise children in the city.  Others perceive villages as healthier places to raise children than cities.  In addition, for many, urban public schools are only open to the children who are born in the cities.  This is all tied to China’s Hukou system -- a law that requires families to register in the region in which they were born.  Rural children are required to attend school in their local region.    The reason is based on resources.  With no jobs in the country, rural workers migrate to the mega-cities – Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou.  If they bring their children,  the government believes that the urban schools would be overwhelmed.   

Many rural Chinese parents thus leave their children to be raised at the family house, and send remittances home to the grandparents for support.  New research in China is studying the mental toll taken on the children and parents, due to this separation.  Several of my students, in their writing, identified themselves as “leftover” children.

Studying American Literature, many of my students noticed a similar phenomenon in America at the turn of the 20^th century.  America then was industrializing, much as China is currently. Back then,  the American rural poor brought their children  to the city, and, because education wasn't yet compulsory, they put them to work in factories.   Some were sent to the countryside.  For example,  we read Sarah Orne Jewett, and met Sylvie, a girl sent from the city back to the Maine countryside to live with her grandmother:

“Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm.  She thought often with wistful compassion of a wretched geranium that belonged to a town neighbor.”

We read Willa Cather’s “Enchanted Bluff,” which describes in detail, the youthful adventures of young boys growing up in the natural landscape of Nebraska.  At the end of the story, they have abandoned their dreams to work in the city:

“Although that was twenty years ago, none of us have ever climbed the Enchanted Bluff. Percy Pound is a stockbroker in Kansas City and will go nowhere that his red touring car cannot carry him. Otto Hassler went on the railroad…”

We read bits of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, a long novel about a young girl who leaves behind her small town, and falls into dissolute city life.

China has its own stories about this migration pattern and its casualties.

One of my writing exercises asked the students to write about “Home.”  The goal was to help my students understand the role of rich description in literature.  A number of them wrote of their experience as “leftover” children.  Some speak of the difficulty of a having been left by their parents.  Many describe a deep bond between themselves and their grandparents.  All of them offer a fitting tribute and celebration of those who raised us.  They seem to me to be an appropriate “offering” for Qingming festival—and all of our family holidays, this week, whatever they may be.

  

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When asked to describe home, Monica remembers, as a child, a vivid and detailed portrait of her grandmother’s house:

As a little girl, that medium-sized courtyard, which is only tens of meters long and tens of meters wide, was a big world to me. Not only the courtyard, but also the stairway seemed too high to climb. The house was built into the side of the mountain, where were full of tea trees and towering bamboos. For decades, people there have been made a living, selling the famous West Lake Longjing Tea.

Sometimes when I got up early in the morning, I could see a group of squirrel jump down from the fence in order to grab the hen’s food. They would suddenly climb on the bamboo and disappear after hearing any slight voice from a human. My cousin and I used to climb that mountain nearby, for all of us firmly believed that the summit had the freshest air and the warmest sunshine. Most of the time, we sat on the rock on the summit and gazed at the traffic on the freeway at the foot of the mountain. Naturally, we forgot the beginning of the trail, so our grandmother would look for us, and take meals to us, which made me feel like I am still able to see her again as long as I sat on that rock for a while.

I still remember the last time when I saw her in that house, she excitedly pointed out a nest built by magpies on the eaves, and affirmatively told me:

“We will have a better day.”

Victoria also has fond memories, mixed with her frustration of leaving behind the comforts of the city:

 

I spent my childhood almost in countryside with my grandparents. That was a comfy house with a spacious yard, situated in front of a huge mountain. Due to the beautiful scenery, this small village attracted many tourists. However, in the beginning, I could not adjust to the life in countryside.

              Life in that small village was inconvenient. It was like primitive society to me at that time. Looking at those tourists, I thought that if they acknowledged the life here, they would definitely not like it. There was no internet, no air conditioning and no laundry machines. I was sure they couldn’t stand it all year.

On one night, I couldn’t sleep and went outside to hang out. I found that the village looks better at night than the day. But really, it is nothing special. Suddenly, when I looked up into the sky, I discovered a spectacular landscape. There were countless stars hanging in the sky. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was regretful that I didn’t look up at the sky earlier. Just then, my grandfather came out and stood by my side. He looked at the sky and said to me, “The sky here at night is all of the time the same, but you are too attached to your own world and refuse to know this village.”

This evening was very meaningful to me at that time because of grandfather’s words. After that, I tried to accept life here and found many lovely sceneries. Gradually I had fully adjusted the life here.

After that, I left the village and moved to the city. I still remember the countless stars hanging in the sky that night in the village. Whenever I am unhappy, I looked up to the sky and tell myself that I have to observe more and not be stubborn.

Ivy, too, has mixed feelings about her town and home with her grandparents.  She started out rebelling, but her memory paints a more beautiful picture:

Years ago, I had a strong thirst for fleeing from the town in which I spent six years, from 2005 to 2011. Back then, because my parents were busy working, I had to live with my grandparents in a little town. Anyone can imagine what separation from parents, loneliness and an under-developed town mean to a sensitive child. At that time, I put my heart and soul into study, hoping to escape from the lackluster town. No cinemas, no trendy skirts, no public transportation, even no decent public libraries. When I first read Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe, I identified with him largely because this experience. Having been accustomed to city life, life in a little town for me almost equaled life on a desert island for Robinson, which could be described as a torture or test for endurance. It never crossed my mind that one day I would cherish the memory of or related to this shabby town.

However, as I grew older, the town and my life there appeared more and more frequently in my dreams until they developed into my homesickness.

I asked myself, “Why and when did you begin to bond yourself to the town?”

The only answer was silence.

With the question, I stepped into the river of memory to seek answers. This time, I realized some things which shaped me.

It was a town with four distinctive seasons. In spring, peach blossoms and pear blossoms contended in beauty and fascination while their fragrances lingered in the breeze. On weekends, I tended to sit under the old willow, weaving wreaths with the fallen willow branches. At hot summer nights, my grandparents and I sat around the stone table in the front yard and tasted homemade pancakes, along with the chirping of cicadas. If lucky enough, we could see glowworms flittering about. In autumn, my grandpa’s orchard gave a copious harvest, with heavy fruits hanging in the trees. Purple grapes, golden pears, green apples and ruby cherries painted a colorful picture with refreshing aroma. In winter, the town became a snow-wrapped and crystal world with a splendid scene. Kids threw snowballs to and chased after each other, their faces red with cold…

Some of the students don’t end up in the countryside.  They live with their grandparents in the city.  Lynn writes of her experience with her grandmother:

I remember, when I was a child, that the house was always dim. I lived on the first flour and there is not much of light from the window. Chengdu city, as a basin, was gray and cloudy. My grandmother had the habit of her generation.  She was too frugal to turn on the light. Most of the daytime I lay on my couch and watched cartoons in the dark.

The couch was not very comfortable, it was wooden with a worn cushion on it. That cushion was one of my mother’s dowry.  It was dyed with big red blossom and verdant foliage, though the color faded over years.

Another products of the basin was the massive humidity.  A stale odor lingered in the room. The cushion had a scent of mold mixed with moisture, but I was obsessed with this stale odor. It is the smell of home. By that time dad served in the military and mom worked in the hospital. I refused to go to the kindergarten because I made no friends there. So I spent most of the time with my grandmother.

Old people spoiled the kids easily. I remembered the kitchen, it was small and the ceiling was low. There was a dusty cupboard which was out of my reach. Mom came home always late and in the long wait, I lost my temper and whined. At that time grandmother would say: “I will catch the stars.”  She then reached the cupboard while mumbling some spells. Suddenly she turned around and smiled, with two clenched fists. ‘Guess which hand have the stars” I stopped crying and stared it curiously. She opened her palms slowly and magically a mysterious snacks appeared in her palms. In the gloomy room I had my own stars.

Finally, Sarah chose to write a poem.  She explained in her preface that she lived with her grandmother in the countryside before she went to the kindergarten.

Where are you

I see you, there, far away

In a drizzling morning at the early spring,

Mountains dotted with green, but not much,

Paddies filled with rice, but also sweat,

Silence broken by a brisk whistle,

But soon submerged by rustling rain.

Where are you, the young whistling boy?

I see you, there, in my eyes,

In the blazing noon, in the drowsy summer,

Ancient trees dubbed with a cicada concert,

New stream inundated with frolicking children.

Somehow a thundershower is coming.

It promised a rainbow as a gift.

Where are you, the fleeting beauty?

I see you, there, behind the trees,

In the joy of the harvest smile.

The fields packed with ripe wheat;

Village stowed with delight in dialect tone;

The cow moos to the sunset sky.

But later the night falls

Where are you, the jubilant day?

I see you, there, with snow falling,

Bare hills lashed by the wind,

Stove surrounded by furry cats,

With the thick snow on the empty street.

Now and then

The bell of the vendors reminds people of the outside,

But soon it fades away with imperceptible footsteps.

Where are you, my missing one?*

* This poem makes me miss my grandparents.

So, in celebration of Qingming, Easter, Passover, and all other holiday that recognize the vital cycles of life and the importance of family, I offer these short sketches.  Despite the extraordinary nature of our current situation, I hope that my students’ reflections will encourage you to think of and celebrate your memories, your traditions, your relatives, your ancestors and your home, wherever that may be.