Yesterday... Today

Yesterday was Cheng Beng. For those of you who doesn't have any clue of what Cheng Beng is, it is a day when we Chinese pay their respect to the deceased. In my case, it's my grandpa. Much is not known about my grandpa. I have never seen him in my entire life, i think. I learnt that grandpa was a child-loving person. My brothers once told me grandpa would give candies to us. Heck, i don't even remember it. The only time i remember what my grandpa looked like was from the photo of him. Anyway, yesterday was a quite important day for my family, but my grandma paid respect to her life-time partner today. I don't really know why she delayed it, but yesterday we ate something different. Roast chicken, roast pork, fried fish, you know, those food you buy to pay respect to the deceased. Since morning, grandma has been busy preparing this and that, cleaning that and this. It never failed to amuse me, just what are the procedures of paying respect to the deceased? I chuckled whenever i thought of that. If i had ever asked grandma this question, i am sure she would scold me for not respecting the tradition. It just comes, naturally, might be her answer to my question. Ever since i attended the Persatuan Hakka Pontian a few weeks ago, i started to ponder. The chairman of the Persatuan said in his speech, "We (parents) must continue to teach our next generation how to speak Hakka, so that it will not extinct. Nowadays people speak less and less dialect. I am sure most of the children attending this meeting today can't even speak Hakka. Let's not put Hakka into extinction...." So that's it. Nowadays, people just don't follow tradition anymore. Slowly, they forget their root. Those traditions have been passing on from generation to generation, and i'm afraid it would eventually come to an end. Seriously, i have no idea how to pay respect to the deceased; i have no idea how to speak Hakka correctly; i have no idea what will happen when i become a father. Will my children learn how to speak dialect, since there will be no one in my family to speak it beside my dad? Will my children hope to learn how to celebrate, say, Mid-Autumn festival? Or worse, will there still be lanterns or joss sticks for sell in the future? This is the so-called Generation Gap, where the thinking has changed along with time. I wonder what would happen in the future. Will there still be celebrations like Cheng Beng?