innerline

A few weeks ago my father and I sat down to have a conversation. It was perhaps the longest time we have ever spoken to one another. It involve small and big topics, his mother, his childhood, the weather, his brothers, what was for lunch, my childhood, terrible day time television shows, my brother etc. It was also probably the best conversation we have ever had. 

Why am I writing about this? Well during our conversation the topic of my crematorium came up. My father was never really interested in what I learnt at school or university (that was my mother’s job). I can understand why, being a handyman and a self-proclaimed builder he didn’t believe you needed degree to design a good house (the BCA constantly tells me otherwise). However on this occasion we spent a fair amount of time discussing traditional Chinese culture, specifically the way architecture deals with death. 

It was like being bombarded with a tsunami of nostalgia. Memories of all those chinese temples visited in my youth flooded back. It is amazing how little you understand when you are a child. Burning incense, bowing constantly, pouring wine, placing fruit and cake in front of name blocks, more bowing. It all began to make sense (12 years later). I was of course discovering the chinese tradition of ancestor worship.

“Therefore, for people unfamiliar with how “ancestor worship” is actually practiced and thought of, the use of the translation “worship” can be a cause of misunderstanding and is a misnomer in many ways. In English, the word “worship” usually refers to the reverent love and devotion accorded a deity or divine being. However, in other cultures, this act of “worship” does not confer any belief that the departed ancestors have become some kind of deity. Rather the act is a way to respect, honor and look after ancestors in their afterlives as well as possibly seek their guidance for their living descendants. In this regard, many cultures and religions have similar practices. Some may visit the grave of his parents or other ancestors, leave flowers and pray to them in order to honor and remember them while also asking their deceased ancestors to continue to look after them. However this would not be considered as “worshipping” them.” 1

Now I am a christian, but at the time I saw nothing wrong with being fascinated by other religions or in this case, cultural practices. My father spoke of family shrines and temples back in China, places he visited during his youth. He also talked at great length on the architectures of such ‘other’ spaces. The way we travel through the spaces, the wisdom behind layout and the dimensions of structures. In the end it got to a point where my ABC(Australian Born Chinese)-level of Cantonese could not keep up with his descriptions. This is when I asked him to sketch out his ideas. We grabbed the closest thing at hand, the back of used sticker paper.

1 Ancestor Worship, (Wikipedia, 2009) Last updated on 21/05/09: Description

This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.