Columbarium

The smell of incense lingers in the air like an afterthought, or a dream, or a past life. We are back to do a familiar walk: pay our respects at the Sha Tin columbarium where are housed the ashes of 爺爺, 嫲嫲, and 伯伯. It is a glaringly sunny day, one of August’s final dances. Something about the whole locale feels timeless; a hundred years could pass and still nothing here would change.

I follow my parents into the room. Tall ceiling, musty air, urns sitting in rectangular plots lining the walls. Jade-crusted tiles, worn metal tables, candles. I pick up a vase, bring it to the sink outside, fill it with water. Unwrap the twenty-dollar orchids. Soak them in the vase. Set the flowers on the altar. Motions I have carried out infinite times.

“爺爺, 嫲嫲,” my dad says. Hi dad, hi mom. “我哋又返嚟啦.” He looks up at the black-and-white photographs of his parents, housed in connected plots as neighbors for eternity. As though following a script, he drags the swiffer with dampened cloth across their photos, brushing off dirt and dust. Home cleaning.

We hold up the incense sticks and bow. It is only respect. And then, my brother and I are told by my mother to “講嘢啦.” Speak to your ancestors; ask for what you want. An instruction that has not changed over the years. Holding those flickering sticks upward, Nicky and I whisper into the void. Worries, hopes, prayers. Somewhere, somehow, I think we are being heard. 

At the plot of 伯伯, which is in the next building over, we go through the same motions. By now it is ritualistic: flowers, incense, conversation. To my mother’s mother’s mother, Nicky and I repeat what we did with 爺爺 and 嫲嫲. If you truly believe, as we’ve been told, you will be heard, your wishes granted. 

拜神 was never be complete without the final act: burning paper money and houses and iPhones in the large brick stove outside. Our family has always kept with that long-held Chinese tradition: burn in smoke those necessary simulacra of material goods so that our family upstairs can enjoy them.

But today the stove is gone. New law, apparently—no burning allowed. Something to do with the environment, we find out. What a shame. We wander slowly up to the car, that final segment of our rituals now permanently excised from the itinerary. On the way out, one of those aunties at the small flower store by the entrance says, in passing. that there’s now, at the very least, an app that lets you “burn” things in a little animated incinerator on your screen. It doesn’t feel right to download it, at least not today. Maybe I’ll do it, somewhere further along, much further along.