Compiled by TRACY GUNAPALAN, C. ARUNO and R. ARAVINTHAN
OBSERVANTS of Qing Ming (Tomb-Sweeping festival) are making an effort to beat the crowd, Sin Chew Daily reported.
A visit to the Kwong Tong Cemetery in Kuala Lumpur on March 22 found many families already there to clean up the tombstones and pay respects to their deceased relatives.
According to the cemetery’s administrative manager, families in the past would usually observe Qing Ming a week before or after the actual day.
However, he said this was just a tradition and there was no taboo in celebrating it later or earlier.
Many families have turned up at the cemetery since March 16, three weeks before Qing Ming, which falls on April 4 this year.
A woman who wanted to be known as Zhong, said her uncle suggested they visit the Kwong Tong Cemetery early as Qing Ming fell on the same week as Hari Raya Aidilfitri this year.
> The daily also reported that a man and woman in Jilin, China, ended up in the hospital after attempting the hand-in-mouth viral social media challenge.
Video footage from the emergency room on March 18 showed a man with a woman’s forearm sticking out of his mouth.
It was later revealed that they took on the hand-in-mouth challenge, where the woman would try to put her whole fist inside the man’s mouth.
While she managed to get it in, she was unable to take it out.
“It was as if my hand was stuck in a meat grinder,” she said.
To help the couple, the doctor injected the man’s lower jaw with a muscle relaxant.
It took about 20 minutes for it to take effect and the woman could finally remove her fist.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a, it denotes a separate news item.
