Friday, April 05, 2013

Ching Ming (清明節) - the good and bad of it


This is Ching Ming Festival.  So we went grave sweeping at my grandparents’ graves at Aberdeen Cemetery. As usual, I took a detour to pay my respects at Cai Yuanpei’s (蔡元培) grave.  As usual, someone had been there before me, and placed flowers there.  He died in Hong Kong in 1940.  It has been 73 years, and still, many people remembered him.  He was a great man, a great president of a great university.


I would not be so kind to the people who decided to block off the main access road leading to the west side of the cemetery, forcing people to climb up and  down many flights of stairs to get to the graves and columbarium.  In fact, forcing many older people, including my 80 year old mother, to give up.  Many people who were old or otherwise having difficulties walking struggled unnecessarily.  Many more people endured long and annoying jams because the narrow and winding stairs were not meant to handle so much traffic.


I checked.  The normal access road was clear, despite some construction.  In fact, there was no work going on today.  The only thing blocking the access road was a gate installed to “protect” the construction.  There was no real reason why the access road could not have been opened to allow the people normal, albeit slightly narrowed, access.

What an idiotic decision of a government who do not care enough to spend just a tiny bit of their time to consider the needs of its own citizens, to unblock the access road for just one day, on the one day when most of the people want to pay their respects to the dead. 

What a bunch of idiots.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As I understand it, "idiotic" has more to do with the intellect. To me, this government is worse: it is uncaring. It does not care about its citizens, and so its priority is not the welfare of its citizens. People higher up (in government and/or construction) do not have to go to the cemetery on foot, and they don't know (idiotic), and/or don't care (brutal) most citizens do. They do not give directives for construction people to ensure easy access around Ching Ming.

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StephenC said...

I agree. If they do care, it is really not difficult to fix. It is clear they were aware of the problem. They did re-route the access route and put in directions and extra police. They just didn't care how inconvenient it is for the people who live in the real world.