Image credit: Taken by me at Jeju Island

Hello! My name is Zhi Wei and thanks for reading my blog on Chinese cultural practices! I’m a 3rd year psychology student who has created this blog as part of my HP3203 Conservation Psychology module. 

I had chosen this topic as it was something that I had pondered about as a child, when my parents practiced those customs. Every year, it was the same routine, as we go through temples to temples to make offerings to the deities for prosperity and good health, while during Qingming, we burnt offerings en masses to our ancestors to show our respect and filial piety. When I has asked my parents on why do we carry out these practices, they usually just remarked it as being traditions that we must follow as Chinese. To diverge away from these practices would be showing disrespect to our ancestors. This was a very unsatisfactory answer for me, and coupled with recent attempts to educate students on the causes and effects of environmental issues of the likes of climate change, it made me wonder: is it possible for old traditional practices to change or adapt for the sake of the environment? Or might it be already too late? Hence, in this blog, I attempt to consolidate the possibilities of traditions changing in favour for our environment, while examining the possible impacts they have on the environment.