In my book Red Pockets, estate issues are explored. What are we owed to past centuries, both, and to the places we live in?
After nearly a century of generational division due to migration, war, and revolution, I was inspired to visit my ancient town in Guangdong in southern China. I’ve always wanted to visit this corn village because my grandfather wrote about it in his published memoirs.
During a research trip to investigate the effects of chemical waste on Guangdong in the spring of 2018, I suddenly had the chance.
My trip came at the same time as the Qingming festival in April, when people go back to their ancient villages to clean their family ‘ tombs, burn paper money and make food offerings for them in the future.
My father had described my ancestral village as being generally alive, among the rice fields and brick buildings in the western style. In Taishan region, which is known as the “home of international Taiwanese” due to its history of international emigration during the later 19th century’s western gold rushes, there are many similar clan villages.
navigating various social expectations was a moving but disconcerting experience that nearly made it into a comedy of errors. One of the village’s oldest residents still recalls my mother’s turbulent past, which turned out to be problematic.
During the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, my grandparents died unexpectedly, their graves were lost, and our hereditary home was taken over.
It would be impossible to rebuild my family’s place in the village; instead, we would have to construct a new home and give cash to all the clan members in blessed red pockets. Nothing could yet subsequently repair the past century’s ruptures.
What were the repercussions of not clearing the coffins every flower after watching the Qingming tomb-sweeping rituals in the hills?
When I returned to the UK, I carried tales of waste and ancestry abuse with me. As I continued my investigation into dangerous pollution and climate injustice, they stayed with me and began to take on new meaning. I came to the conclusion that neglected ancestors are hungry ghosts who cause misery and harm the environment in Chinese folk religion.
As the climate crisis grew worse, I couldn’t help but feel as though the hungry ghosts apparently embodied the social experiences of weather grief, illness, and stress.
After being let down by COP26 in Glasgow, I came up with the idea to create Red Pockets. Two seemingly disparate ideas came together as I considered the “heavy debt that we owe” to both current and future generations: the personal account of my “return” to my ancient town and the more general account of how to deal with the devastating effects of the weather problems.
I wanted to write a guide that explored the possibility of recovery and the difficulty of regaining lost worlds.
Writing included grappling with both different concepts and my own unique personality. In a way that felt authentic, the hungry souls were challenging to awaken.
I initially tried a more scientific approach by studying Chinese folk religions ‘ beliefs about burial and death rituals and global severe climate catastrophe.
But as soon as I could, I realized that the analogy was very thin and that I needed to speak about hungry souls from a different angle. They appeared to have a unique lifestyle after they emerged.
A divided home, a divided earth, a failing to talk, a failure to honor are the themes of eager ghosts’ interactions between the material and the moral. They want us to honor our cracked promises.
The weight started to slowly start to fall as I moved toward more encouraging designs in the book’s last chapters. I came to the realization that there are ways to live with spirits, including recognizing delight and hopeless times and opportunities for connection despite isolation and loving actions to “defend our estates and ourselves.” An providing was what I was looking for, exactly.
At the University of Glasgow, Professor Alice Mah teaches industrial and economic reports.
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