Morning Market with Manuel: an April Adventure in Asia, Remembering QingMing

The other morning I had an occasion to spend some time at one of the Chiang Mai markets, Warorot, with my friend Manuel. It's a wonderful place to take visitors because it is a very Thai, typically Asian experience. As one of the largest markets in town, it draws locals as well as tourists and has an amazing, some might say overwhelming, mix of goods and services on offer. 

Long lines of the local transportation, a cross between a taxi and a public bus, the red truck called a "Songtaew", wait nearby to ferry shoppers to and from all points of the city.

Warorot is the best known flower market in the city and many of the stalls were set up to sell their arrangements for the upcoming Songkran festival. (More on that later…)

For westerners who have spent most of their lives in shopping malls or big box stores, the size and scope of the market can be incredible. I have no good images of my own from inside the main market so I borrowed this one from yaychiangmai.com:

A visit to markets such as this is not recommended if you suffer any claustrophobic tendencies. The amount of items the vendors can cram into a tiny stall is unbelievable. Here is one of my sister Victoria's pictures from her visit:

The vendors are packed into the main market hall, but then all of the goods and services spill into the surrounding streets for entire city blocks, heading east towards the old historic downtown. Again, a picture I have "borrowed" from my sister's visit:

You can truly find anything here: clothing, electronics, household goods, plastics, packaged food, preserved food and countless souvenir items, from the completely mundane to the culturally extreme. We bought some yummy fresh fruit but I am sorry to say I missed getting a photo of the stall where the lady was selling dried grubs. Bushels and bushels of dried beetles and roly polys, whatever your heart might desire. I'll pass, though; you can have my helping too! At least these were already dead, unlike the poor scorpions seen in Beijing.

As we wandered the market, we passed a stall selling certain items that reminded me we had recently missed one of the prime Chinese festivals, "Qingming", pronounced Ching Ming, also known as Tomb Sweeping Day. This is another one of those ubiquitous "More on that later" topics that I never did seem to get back to, have a few unfinished blogs in the drafts folder! I cannot believe we have lived in Asia for over 6 years and I am just now getting around to writing about Qing Ming! In my defense, though, it is not widely celebrated in Thailand, so it has fallen off my radar these last few years.

Qingming, also known as Chinese Memorial Day or Ancestor's Day, "is a traditional Chinese festival on the first day of the fifth solar term of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar. This makes it the 15th day after the Spring Equinox, either the 4th or 5th of April in a given year." (Wikipedia.com) In Chinese, the word for 4 and the word for "die" are very similar, leading to the belief that 4 is unlucky and very taboo, much like the number 13 in Western society. Having experienced Qingming as a public holiday in Kuala Lumpur (where the buttons in the elevator of our 24 floor apartment building had no 4's, only 3A, 13A, etc…) and Shanghai, I admit I always thought the date for the holiday, most often 4/4, was more directly related to that superstition. I guess not and I don't really get all this X day of the Y phase of the moon, yadda, yadda, yadda business! Regardless, "people commemorate and show respect to their ancestors by visiting their graves, and offering food, tea, wine, incense, joss paper (representing money), etc. They sweep the tombs, removing weeds and adding fresh soil to the graves, stick willow branches on the tomb and burn incense and 'paper money'." (Chinahighlights.com)

A few years ago I had occasion to write a bit about my exposure to the Chinese approach to the afterlife and ancestor worship in this entry about my own experience with loss in Asia, but until last week I had not come in direct contact with the accessories one might need to participate in the festival. (Although I did take these photos of a creepy cemetery in Malaysia that I finally get to share:)

Our recent trip to Warorot changed all that as we found the stall selling everything one might need, beginning with the paper money.

But your ancestors need clothing too, so we could have bought some shoes.

We did not see the iPads and iPhones or any electronics for that matter, not sure if they had them, but why not set your dead ancestors up to ride in style? An SUV will do, except this one can only be offered in Thailand or Malaysia, I guess, as the driver is on the wrong side of the car for China. Does that matter in the hereafter? My further understanding of the Chinese afterlife, via Lisa See's version in "Peony in Love" is that ghosts cannot travel around corners but must travel in straight lines or change course through a wide arc so I guess handling is really not a limiting issue….

And finally, if you really want to set your ancestors up to live luxuriously, it would stand to reason that you must provide a house too. Why not a pink one? Save your money on the SUV, this one comes with a cute little sports car! And a pool. And some electronics inside. Done.

I am left to wonder, do you have to assemble the gifts before sending up your burnt offerings or can you leave it in the package, unassembled and send them the Ikea version?

Life in Asia is never dull. I particularly enjoy the beginning of the year, specifically the western year, as there are so many holidays to celebrate, so many cultures to honor, starting with our Thanksgiving, through Christmas and New Year, followed by Chinese New Year, and then the Thai New Year: Songkran. And now that I know where to get all that I might need, next year I can also celebrate Qingming, right in the middle of it all. Fire up the grill, we've got some ancestors to support!