Qingming Festival–Chinese Tomb Sweeping Day–and Easter fell nearly on the same weekend. While many around the world were celebrating an empty tomb many in China were remembering their dead and caring for tombs still filled with bones.

On this holiday Chinese traditionally return home to tend the graves of deceased relatives. Food and flowers are placed before the gravesites and various paper items such as money, cell phones and clothing are burned as a means to send gifts to the dead. For those unable to return home for the holiday, public sidewalks and traffic intersections serve as a kind of temporary graveyard.

Our family has passed group after group of people bowing down to burning piles of paper. The contrast between the hopelessness of death and the hope of what we had just celebrated had never seemed so great. I wondered how many people across China were commemorating the dead in the same way.