Is an actual national holiday. While the name may sound odd, the actual spirit behind the day is pretty sweet. Essentially you and your family will go to the clean the graves of your ancestors. The idea being to bring the family together and to show respect to the previous generations.
In reality, it is practiced less and less. Obviously kids don't want to be cleaning the grave of some old person they never knew, even though they are given the day off from school. Also there is no guarantee that where your ancestors are buried is anywhere remotely near where you live. Most people just don't have the time or energy to go out of town to a cemetery to do manual labor.
The shame of all this is that most cemeteries don't have a groundskeeper. I'm assuming this is because they don't want to step on the toes of this previously important holiday. However with more and more dead people and with fewer and fewer people observing the holiday, it seems like cemetery groundskeepers are sorely needed.
I think the picture above illustrates my point perfectly. I know that Taiwan is very heavily influenced by tradition, but perhaps a new tradition can be started of creating groundskeeping jobs for some of those people who are alive and desperately need work.
