ABSTRACT
Using the case study of the Ke lineage within the Diaspora Chinese community of Anxi origin, this chapter will explore the dynamism that surrounds the practice of ancestor worship across transnational spaces. It first examines the formation of a rooted Diaspora Chinese identity where ancestor worship is an important cultural practice in the Singapore Diaspora Chinese community, where it is conducted rarely within the household but largely in the temple and columbarium. It further examines that among a small group of these Diaspora Chinese, their fulfilment of ancestor worship is governed by their understanding of the requirement of filial piety according to their interpretation of Confucianism. One act of filial piety is to fulfil the wishes of the first-generation ancestors to return their ancestral soul to their ancestral home. This involves the journey of creation and placement of the “split ancestral soul” encapsulated in the “split ancestral tablet” or an ancestral photo in their ancestral village. This journey completes the process of sinking the roots in the local community to returning to its original roots. Finally, this chapter also touches on ancestors crossing the digital divide where ancestor worship is also conducted virtually in twenty-first-century modernity.
