Hani men bow behind a coffin at a funeral procession in the streets of Lüchun, Yunnan.
Jan
30
2010
30
2010
“Happy Sendoff”: A Fujian Daoist Funeral
By Evan
Looking down from about 3/4 up the giant mountain over endless bamboo stalks. Photo by Andy
It’s been a long time since my last update (is anybody surprised?), so I’ll try to go easy on not overloading you with the silly stuff we’ve been doing. When last we left off, we had been stuck in Jiangle for days due to nonstop rain. Finally we caught a break and rolled south three days after expected and after skipping past the Yuhua caves (玉华洞, we still refuse to pay admission anywhere) rolled for over an hour and a half up a mountain through cloud base up to just shy of 1000 meters high followed by a breakneck plummet of 10 km. At the bottom of the mountain in the little village of Dakeng (大坑), we came across an unusual sight: a large group of LBXes gathered on the roadside clustered around several women in red coats playing music on marching band instruments with the reverb kicked way way up (no, that’s not poor audio quality on the video). Intrigued, we asked what was going on, to which one of the red-clad band members responded: “a funeral! (葬礼呀)” Then about five women screamed at us in unison, “come sit down and have a drink (过来喝一杯酒吧)” and a minute later we were sitting at the table facing one Mr. Le (乐先生), whose grandmother, 87 year old Mrs. Zhang, had just passed away. (more…)
Jan
29
2010
29
2010
Photo: Funeral Onlookers
After descending from one of the highest mountains we've ridden over so far, we passed through a small village where a funeral celebration (欢送, literally a 'farewell party') was taking place. The family invited us in to "add to the noise" (加热闹), of which there was already plenty due to a brass band. The women in the mourning family wore what looked like burlap coverings. Here the onlookers watch the band, which the family hired for the day for 1,000 yuan ($146) -- a hefty price for the Chinese countryside.