Half July, Chinese New Year’s Eve, Qingming Festival and Double Ninth Festival are the four major Chinese traditional festivals for the worship of ancestors.

On August 15, 2019 which was also July 15 of the Lunar calendar, I was alone in Chengdu waiting for my high school reunion to be started on the next day. In the afternoon, while wandering around for street food near the hotel, I accidentally walked into Temple Wenshu, a famous Buddhist temple. I saw many people, old and young, burning paper money and incense sticks, kowtowing and bowing in the courtyard of Temple Wenshu, which was already piled with lots of ashes. An old man with incense sticks on his hands told me, “Today is the Zhongyuan Jie, a day to worship our ancestors.” What I heard and saw in the courtyard confirmed that Half July is really a trinity of festivals for Buddhism, Taoism and secular Chinese culture.

After witnessing the whole-hearted folk worship of ancestors in surprise, I also burned paper money and incense sticks, and knelt and kowtowed to pray for peace. In the land of my home province, after a long separation, I closed my eyes and thought of my ancestors. Under the rich ceremony atmosphere, I remember the remote full of love ceremony given to me by my mother and my nanny in the mid-1990s.

In the mid-1990s, while my parents and my nanny Yeyi were in my hometown Zigong, I did my PhD research at VSL in the department of physics at the Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C. In that time, e-mail did not exist and my parents and I exchanged greetings and family affairs through overseas letters every month. After my daughter was born, my mother wrote to me in a letter: “Today, your Yeyi (my nanny) visited us and asked for the childhood clothes of you and your bother. Your Yeyi was going to Mountain Emei soon. She planned to hang the clothes on the JinDing (the top of Mountain Emei) for the Buddha’s blessing for a peaceful life for you and your brother.” My mother’s detailed and emotional description of my Yeyi’s love ritual for us touched me very much and I will remember this love forever.

“There is no boundary between life and death in Half July”. My love reverberated between heaven and earth, spreading sweetness and eternity, and enriching my soul. I suddenly realized that one of the driving forces for the continuation and spread of ancient customs is love and family affection.

Little Episodes

1. August 15, 2019. I burned paper money and incense sticks, knelt and kowtowed in the courtyard of Temple Wenshu, worshipped my ancestors and prayed for peace.

2. My shared moment: While witnessing the rich and deep rooted folk ancestor worshipping ceremony, I also burnt paper money, worshiped my ancestors, knelt down and expressed my feelings of thankful and gratitude. Today is my mother’s second Zhongyuan Jie in heaven. May my late mother and ancestors bless us with safety and auspice（2019-08-15-2019).

At that time, we didn’t have a thermometer to measure our body temperature. If Yeyi saw that we were uncomfortable or weak, she would measure our body temperature using her forehead to touch our forehead to feel whether we were feverish or not. From this, if Yeyi felt we had a fever, she would make egg flower soup with sugar for us to drink, instead of a regular meal.

When my brother had a fever, he often said: “Yeyi, I couldn’t drink the egg flower soup.”

Naturally, I would help him drink his egg flower soup.

But when I had a fever, I always drank the hot egg flower soup with sugar, made by Yeyi, quickly.

Later, Yeyi said to me: “When your brother is sick, he has no appetite for egg flower soup. You usually have no appetite for regular meals. However, when you are sick, you always have an appetite for egg flower soup. Are you really sick? ”

Yeyi seemed to suspect that she was misdiagnosing my sickness, but I didn’t know how to answer Yeyi’s question.

Then Yeyi said to herself: “Little kids will not pretend to be sick.”

Looking back to the past now, in my childhood when the supply of pork meat was limited by government issued coupons (to half a pound per person per month), we could buy eggs from farmers market without limitation. So I ate more eggs than pork meat, and I had more chances to enjoy eating eggs as good things. Even when I was sick, I could drink egg flower soup, which showed that I really liked delicious things as a child.

Little Episodes

Yeyi’s egg flower soup recipe:
1. Crack a raw egg into a small bowl.
2. Beat the raw egg with chopsticks.
3. While stirring the raw egg, slowly pour the just boiled water into the bowl containing the raw eggs.
4. Slowly, egg blossoms appeared one by one in the water.
5. Add a spoonful of sugar to the egg soup, mix well and drink while it is hot.

When the supply of pork was limited every month (half pound per person), we could buy eggs from farmers market without limitation. Therefore I had more chances to eat eggs than pork. Delicious eggs retained several stories of my childhood.
Stealing Egg.
Egg as snacks.