TONY MAK
Every year in April, the uphill cemetery in this Cantonese small town turns into a misty wonderland. It is the day of Qing Ming, the tomb sweeping day. The idea of ‘tomb sweeping’ is to clean the tomb for the ancestors, to get rid of mud and weeds, and to repaint the washed-out names on stone tablets. Each family brings a roast pig onto the hill as an offering. After carefully lighting up the candles and incense, they tell the ancestors about their recent life, ask for their blessing and burn some fake paper money for them in the nether world. At the very end, they light up a long pile of firecrackers, covering the entire cemetery in smoke and ashes, the echoing sound of firecrackers can be heard from miles away.
It is a folk ritual in remembrance of the past of family and the local community. It is the belief that should anything interfere with the repose of the dead, misfortune will come to the living.
After studying and living abroad for many years, I returned to my hometown in Guangdong to embark on this photographic project about ancestors, family, and land. The town was once an island on the Solitary Sea at the estuary of the Pearl River, where, 800 years ago, our ancestors settled and began to build their lives. Centuries of river silt accumulation, coupled with generations of land reclamation, have transformed this small island into part of the mainland. Yet, in just a few decades of urbanisation and modernisation, the history and traditions of our ancestors have been swiftly abandoned. Under the dominance of science and reason, we have also abandoned the religious world once filled with magic, transcending life and death.
There is a belief that when one’s life is overwhelmed by misfortune, it is a sign that something has gone wrong with the ancestors’ graves. In this era of rapid change, we often find ourselves adrift, disconnected from our roots. This sense of disorientation may stem from the abandonment of our past, as the once-anchoring traditions and rituals fade into oblivion.
Over the course of these few decades, the continuity of everyday religious rituals has been disrupted across generations. Like many other young people, I once dismissed such ancestor veneration ritual as superstition when I was a child. But now, it has become therapeutic and poetic. In a way, rituals help coordinate our collective memories by establishing a shared system of symbols, a scripted play. They dispel our anxieties by forming a dialogue with the past, a conversation between the profane and the sacred, and remind us that we are not the orphans of history.
Distance has granted me the clarity to see where my roots truly lie — it was only after living abroad that I came to understand the profound significance of these rituals. Through the images of everyday religious symbols, fragmented landscapes of the past, and communal and familial rituals, I seek to establish a sense of belonging and reimagine my cultural identity. In this rapidly changing era, I hope that these images will inspire viewers to reflect on their own cultural roots and reconsider the forgotten or overlooked spiritual worlds that still linger within us.
