Red Pockets

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRITING A poignant personal narrative about family, cultural history and ecology, and a quest to understand what we owe our ancestors and our descendants from an unforgettable new voice. Every spring during the Qingming Festival, people return to their home villages in China to sweep the tombs of their ancestors. They make offerings of food and incense to prevent them from becoming hungry ghosts that could cause misfortune, illnesses and crop failures. Yet for the past century, the tombs of many have been left unattended because of the ruptures of war and revolution. Ninety years after her grandfather’s last visit and fifty years after her last relative died in the village, Alice Mah returns to her ancestral home in South China.