Journal: Accidental Funeral

Not far from our office in Xining, there is a row of 10 or so shops all selling huaquan. Literally "flower circle", these consist of a wire frame with a diameter of a metre or more, covered with colourful paper flowers. I know nothing about these except that they're used at funerals, and only yesterday morning it occured to me that I should ask someone what they are actually for. In my experience, you can learn a lot more about a foreign culture by asking questions than by merely observing, yet it's surprising how long it sometimes takes to think of the right questions.

But before I had the chance to ask, that very afternoon I was walking down a small street and suddenly three people carrying huaquan emerged from an alley. I had stumbled across a funeral ceremony, the first that I have seen in China. Next came a man with a bucket of rice porridge and a ladle, sprinkling it on the street. Then came a line of people, accompanied by two men playing on a kind of trumpet. I counted thirteen in the line, joined by a length of white linen draped over their heads. The man at the front was carrying a framed black and white photograph of the deceased, while the woman behind him had white linen draped like a long apron over her whole body and was carrying a strange object: a strip of red cloth and some other shapes dangling from a stick. I guessed she was the widow, if the deceased was as young as the photograph showed him to be. Some of those in the line or those who came after them had white linen caps, or a white strip tied around their head or around one arm. One of the three huaquan, which all this while were being propped up on their two bamboo legs next to the road, was also white. White is a colour associated with funerals in China (although that doesn't seem to hamper the sale of western-style white wedding dresses).

The people under the white cloth lined up next to the curb, and knelt down on the road. In front of them, one man began burning paper money (large sheets of soft yellow paper) and another set off firecrackers. Another man was offering a bottle of beer to some of the people: they each poured a little out onto the ground first, and then took a swig.

A table covered with various objects was placed at the back of the line, three monks standing behind it. One had a pair of cymbals, one beat on a small drum, and the one in the middle carried a small bell in one hand and with the other hand knocked on a muyu—literally "wooden fish", this is a small, hollow, and not at all fish-like instrument that monks beat upon while reciting scriptures. The three monks chanted, and the middle one carried out various rituals while reading from a narrow book: there were three rolls of scriptures that were sent one by one to the front of the line to be burned, he also scattered rice grains over the table from time to time, and at one point tossed handfuls of sweets, walnuts, and dates in all directions. Bystanders (including me) and even some of the people kneeling under the white cloth leapt to pick them up from the ground. During the ceremony, one of the huaquan was also incinerated, and a second string of firecrackers was set off.

All this went on oblivious to the cars and motorbikes which passed by, beeping their horns. The ceremony lasted about half an hour, after which there wasn't much left on the monks' table except for six momo (bread rolls). The procession headed back down the alley from which they had come. I followed, and found that the house they returned to was adorned with a couplet (a vertical line of chinese characters pasted on either side of the doorway), and on red paper pasted above the doorway was painted what I think was the name of a buddha.

I was cursing myself for leaving my camera at home. Although I would have felt a bit guilty taking pictures of a funeral, I still would have done it—I was not the only passer-by who stopped to watch, after all. But even so, photographs never quite capture the moment the way I wish they would. I wish I could record every interesting thing that I see here in China, to share with my readers, but even if I was a better photographer I don't think this is possible: some things pass by too quickly, or are simply unphotographable. I can only offer a few random glimpses of life here. If you want more, you will have to come and see China for yourself.

You may notice that I have categorised this entry as "Journal", not "Culture". I am not writing this to educate you about chinese funerals, because I don't know how typical this one was. Customs in the next town might be completely different, and customs for other nationalities almost certainly are. Yet I feel compelled to note this event down: the funeral I saw by accident on the way to buy a pirated copy of Adobe Acrobat. Customs in China are so many and varied that I have given up any hope of gaining a comprehensive knowledge, but the wonderful thing about living in a foreign country is that every day you can learn something new, provided you keep your ears and eyes open. Every day, your life becomes a little richer.

Ambiguous Ideographs One might assume that in an ideographic script, every idea is represented by a different character. But this is clearly not the case for chinese. Consider the characters for huaquan: The character on the left is hua, meaning flower. This character has a "grass" radical at the top, and the bottom is another character that also has the pronounciation hua. This way of forming characters by combining a meaning-related part and a sound-related part is very common, and so this seems like a very suitable character for "flower". However, depending on the context this character might have several other meanings, such as "mottled" (colours), "blurred" (eyes), and as a verb it means "to spend" (money, time, etc). There are many examples like this, where a single character represents two or more unrelated meanings. Now consider quan, the character on the right. In this context, it means "circle". But it can also mean a pen for an animal, in which case the pronounciation changes to juan with a falling tone. It can also be used as the verb "to pen", but again the pronunciation changes to juan with a level tone. Sometimes one cannot help but feel that chinese characters are over-worked!

A chinese reader named Alice emailed me with some comments about funerals. I want to translate one paragraph of her email here: “Huaquan...like paper money, paper sheep, paper horses, etc, are burned to give to the deceased, because of the traditional belief in an afterworld where people go after their death. The living hope that the deceased person can lead a happy life in that other world, so they sent money and many other things with them. What I want to mention is, in many big cities now, these objects are made according to popular trends, for example there are paper BMWs, paper Benzes, paper villas, paper cellphones, even paper women. So if the afterworld really exists, it must have long since fallen into decadence and immorality.” Alice also said it was probably lucky that I didn’t have my camera with me, as it might have caused trouble.

Todd@waze 02.01.2005 , 23:02

Nope, it seems that funeral customs, at least for the Han majority, hasn't changed all that much. For my grandmother's funeral (in Hong Kong), there were alot more elaborate rituals to be followed. Wearing white on the head and body, like wearing sackcloth, is a symbol of mourning. The amount of sackcloth you wear, and where you stand depends on your kinship to the deceased. As my grandmother, I had to wear full-sackcloth. The eldest son, or the oldest living male relative carries the photo of the deceased. And running into a funeral procession is still bad luck in Hong Kong, though it's too bad China has lost so many of its customs due to the turmoil of the 20th Century. As for the afterworld, it has a name - Fengdu. Or at least that's the name of the City of Hell. 2 court officials from the Han dynasty built a replica of Fengdu in China, which is now a MAJOR tourist attraction. If you want to learn more about Chinese funerals, go here: http://www.yangtzerivertour.com/amaze_yangtze/attraction/city/fengdu.htm

IronMouse [] [homepage] 05.01.2005 , 20:10

On my trip to Hong Kong, I saw a paper car and a paper villa, just as Alice described. But also, all the huaquan that I saw there used _real_ flowers. Somewhat smaller than paper huaquan, they have a frame made out of dry intertwined branches (probably good for burning), with fresh flowers attached to the frame.

Todd@waze 22.03.2005 , 22:04

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