清明节 Highgate Cemetery, London

[Zeppa]

I succeeded in finding my grandparents' grave at last and also saw these graves. I hope it is OK to post them and does not bring bad luck.

[amytheorangutan]

Highgate cemetery is so beautiful! I take it your grandfather’s grave is in the East side? 

[Zeppa]

My grandparents are on the east side, yes. They are very hard to find and I don't think people walk past that bit. I have done a visit to the other side and seen Litvinenko's grave, where we were glad to hear that the half-life of polonium is very short.

Grandparents died in 1933 and 1938 and I wasn't born till 1947 so this was purely a family history exercise. I did not burn any incense or paper money!

[abcdefg]

3 hours ago, Zeppa said:

I did not burn any incense or paper money!

 

But it's 清明节。Were other people out there tidying up the graves of their ancestors? I see fresh fruit, fresh flowers and candles in the photos you posted, particularly the first one, which looks like it was someone born in Taishan 台山。Did you hear firecrackers or smell incense?

 

Here in Kunming today (Saturday) the streets are empty. No bikes, scooters or cars of people rushing to work.Very few vehicles of any kind. It's one of those short, intense holiday weekends. 

 

I'll be going into the hills with local friends tomorrow. The plan is to visit the family plot and then have a picnic, complete with 烧烤。

[Zeppa]

It's a huge cemetery with a few Chinese graves. No one was tidying graves when I was there apart from one probably British woman. I was surprised to see any signs of fruit or firecrackers at all.I was there in the afternoon and these two families must have been there in the morning. The last time I was there I stopped by the Karl Marx monument and met an East Berlin tube (underground) driver who phoned his mother in Berlin and asked her to guess whose grave he was near - she guessed Stalin!

https://highgatecemetery.org