sharing food with the dead.

Broadcasting from Korea!

This is my last day in my father's hometown, Suncheon - tonight we take the bus back to Seoul for a few days before flying to Malaysia. Sorry I haven't updated in a little bit, but we are, ironically, suffering from prehistoric technology here.

One of the first things we do whenever we come is visit the graves to pay our respects. The most important grave we visit is that of my great-grandfather, who died when my father was four years old, and my great-grandmother, who died the year my sister was born. I don't know whether you've seen a traditional Korean gravesite, but it's actually very beautiful. An area is cleared out on the mountain, which is covered in dense forest, so that the dead can have a nice view. They are buried a few metres into the ground in simple wooden coffins and then it is covered in a mound of earth aout a metre high and two metres wide. Thatchy grass grows on the mounds as the years turn, and there is always a marble table in front of the grave with the deceased details etched onto it in Chinese. Some people, like my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, are buried side by side - spouses bound for eternity as they become one with the earth together. When we go we set up the small table with all sorts of food, and the thing I've always found funny is that it's all of my uncle's favourite foods - rice wine, rice punch, rice cakes, choco pies, chips, fruit and other miscellaneous junk food - because after bowing several times to the graves, the food becomes afternoon tea. Waste not, I suppose.

In other cultures nobody would dare eat the food offered to the dead, but to me it's almost spiritual. The Koreans love their food, and food is a big family thing. Food is shared, passed from parent's chopsticks to the rice bowls of their beloved children and nieces and nephews, heaped into huge portions and offered to the elderly. I've never met my great-grandparents, but somehow, there's something very nice about sharing a choco pie with them. It's how things should be.