KUALA LUMPUR, April 4 -- Tradition is a funny thing. Despite the passage of time, changing values and norms, some traditional practices are honoured as they were in the centuries and millennia past.

One such practice is Cheng Beng (Qing Ming) or Tomb-Sweeping Festival which falls on the first week of April every year.

So firmly does the Chinese community in Malaysia adhere to it that they would go through great lengths of inconvenience and discomfort to honour their departed ancestors.

I am vaguely reminded of when the Communist Party in China finally agreed to let its populace observe their cultural and religious ceremonies in the mid-1990's, after decades of prohibiting them and labelling them feudal superstitions.

It is said the na...