Participant Observation Paper

Continuing the research topic from last data collection assignment, I will further investigate on how people in real life actually memorize and remember their ancestors, and different family traditions and customs to sacrifice their ancestors by utilizing the participant observation and the observation research methods. I recalled the memories of my personal experience during last August when I was engaging in my grandmother’s worship, which applied to both the participant observation and the observation research methods.
On the one hand, for the participant observation, I would like to share what my family members did during my grandmother’s worship. It was the first anniversary after the death of my grandmother, which was a significant day for all family …show more content…
During that day, all family members wore black clothes. We made several of my grandmother’s favorite dishes, including tofu, fried vegetables, fruits, and cakes, as well as other necessities, like alcohol, cigarettes and “paper money.” We took out the memorial tablet from the storeroom at the funeral home and carried it to a specific site, where there were several cubicles with an upper level of the platform for displaying photos, food, incense. You can also choose among the twelve Chinese zodiacs as the background. While the bottom level of the cubicles is the incineration, where people are allowed to burn all kinds of “paper money.” The grandmother worship started with burning the incense by each family members and make three bows in front of the memorial tablet. Each family member carried three sticks of incense and they all need to be inserted in the incense burner. All worships need to end before the incense was done. Then, my family members began to