Stories of two post-Covid homecomings to mourn loved ones and sweep the tombs on Qingming Festival
“I told your dad this morning that you’re coming home,” my mom says as she rushes to help carry my luggage out of the train station. But when I arrive at our house on the outskirts of Ningbo, my dad is not waiting at the door to greet me as usual.
After a 20-hour journey from the Netherlands to Zhejiang province—my first trip back to China since 2021—I am home for Qingming (“Tomb-Sweeping”) Festival to commemorate the first anniversary of my father’s death.
On April 17, 2022, I woke up in my apartment in Amsterdam to countless missed calls and voice messages on WeChat. “At 3 a.m. your dad was coughing. I poured him some hot tea and he said he felt better. At 5:30 I woke up again to find he had passed away already,” my mom sobbed down the phone. “I didn’t know when he left us.” At 67 years old, my dad had died unexpectedly in his sleep.
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