Today marks Chung Yeung Festival. Across Hong Kong, families will climb hills, sweep ancestral graves, and gather with their elders.

I appreciate our culture sets aside a day each year to honor those who came before us. For when I look at who we are today, I see their fingerprints everywhere: their commitment, their sense of responsibility, and the quiet sacrifices they made without being asked. They are the ground we stand on, and too often we forget it’s there.

This Chung Yeung, I hope our elders know how deeply they are valued — not just in what we say, but in how we live, in the values we’ve chosen to keep because of them, and in what we pass on to our children.

As a parent educator, I keep coming back to one truth:

Children don’t learn respect from what we tell them.

They learn it from watching how we treat the people who raised us.

What we give the next generation began with what our elders gave us.

For some families, this might mean visiting grandparents in Hong Kong, sharing a meal, listening to their stories, or bringing children along when paying respects to ancestors.

For others, family may be spread across the world. It could be making time for a video call across time zones, helping a child record a message for a grandparent overseas, or looking through old family photos together and sharing the stories behind them.

These small moments matter. They show our children family deserves our time, care and attention, whether our loved ones are around the corner or on the other side of the world.

This weekend, call, visit, or thank an elder in your life.

And if you can, bring the little ones along. Because they’re watching, and they’re learning.

Wishing you and your family a meaningful Chung Yeung Festival.

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