I didn’t expect the cemetery to be so alive.

People were everywhere, talking, laughing, carrying bags of food like they were heading to a picnic instead of a place for the dead. Red paper fluttered from branches, and sharp cracks of firecrackers echoed in the distance.

“This is normal,” Mei said, looking at me. “You look scared”.

“I’m not scared,” I said quickly. “Just confused”. She smiled like she had been waiting for that answer.

We stopped in front of a small stone grave. The writing on it was in Chinese; it was intricately precise, completely unreadable to me. Mei kneeled down and started pulling weeds from the base, brushing dirt away gently.

“Can you help me?” she asked. I crouched beside her, awkwardly copying what she was doing. The ground was dry and uneven, and the air smelled like smoke and something sweet I didn’t recognize.

“What is this for?’’

“It’s Qingming,’’ she said. “Tomb sweeping day. We come here to clean, bring food, and honor our ancestors.”

“Ancestors…” I repeated, not understanding what she meant.

“People who came here before us. Family.”

She stood and handed me thin sticks.  “Hold them like this.”

I tried to copy her, but my fingers felt stiff. She lit them, and the tips glowed orange before releasing thin streams of smoke.

‘’Now, bow.”

I hesitated. “To them?”

“To show respect,” she replied.

I followed her movements, bending forward three times. It felt strange, like I was pretending to understand something I didn’t.

Mei didn’t seem to notice. She was focused, placing oranges and small dishes of food in front of the grave, adjusting everything perfectly.

“Do you really think they eat this?”

She paused and looked at me. “It’s not about eating,” she said. “It’s about remembering they were here.”

I watched her for a moment. The way she moved, the way she spoke. It felt different from how she was at school. She handed me a stack of thin folded paper, gold, and silver; she explained to me how we had to burn them for money for them.

I let out a small laugh. How could paper become money for the dead? I caught her expression and stopped, apologizing quickly.

“It’s okay,” but her voice was softer now. It’s so strange if you didn’t grow up with it.

I dropped the paper into the small fire she had lit. Flames caught quickly, curling the edges until the paper collapsed into ash.

We stood there in silence for a moment. The smoke from dozens of fires drifted together, hanging in the air, like something shared.  It didn’t feel sad; I couldn’t understand that part.

I looked at the grave again. “Did you know them?”

“My great grandparents,” she said. “I never met them”.

“Then why doesn’t it matter so much?”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she cropped down and pressed her hand lightly against the stone. “Because they’re part of why I’m here,” she said finally. “Even if I didn’t know them.”

I thought about that. Back home, I barely knew my grandparents. We didn’t have traditions like this. Nothing that connected us backward in time.

Mei stood and brushed her hands off, prompting me to close my eyes.

I hesitated, and then slowly closed my eyes.

“Think about someone important to you”

I pictured my grandfather. His laugh and the way he used to call me by a nickname no one else had used.

“Now imagine you can talk to them,” she continued.

“I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“That’s okay.”

For a moment, I just stood there, feeling a little ridiculous. Then, quietly, I said his name. The air didn’t change. Nothing dramatic happened, but something felt different. Not magical, just less empty. When I opened my eyes, the smoke had drifted higher into the sky.

Mei was watching me.

I shrugged, but it wasn’t the same kind of shrugged as before.

“I think I get it.”

She smiled, “that’s enough for me.”

We started walking down the cemetery. The noise of the crowd faded behind us, but the smell of the smoke clung to my clothes. I didn’t brush it off. For once, I didn’t want to.