Out with a Bang

I just didn't know what the ruckus was the first time I heard all of the fireworks down in the park, fireworks sounding off at all hours of the day and night for several days in a row. I found out soon enough. About once or twice a month since then, I've had an opportunity to witness from a distance  another Chinese funeral.

This funeral was in progress when two Chinese students and I walked by, and "Bill" commented that funerals like this were no longer practiced in his home town, far north of Beijing. However, ancestors are still worshipped, certainly in his own family. The other student listened to the discussion of ancestor worship without showing expression before saying that funerals like this were still very much standard practice in his home town, somewhere in the southeast. Clearly, things are changing fast in China, and many traditional funeral rites are among them.

Given that the park below my apartment is the center of all kinds of community activity, from taijiquan early in the morning to  various group dances most evenings, I didn't at first associate the very loud pop music and fireworks with a funeral. It took only one funeral, though, to realize that the music and fireworks can go through the night--night after night for three days.

In subsequent conversations, friends and students described funerals in their home towns and the importance of filial piety, the continuity of generations, and the transition of the soul from this world to the next.  Bill wasn't the only one who said he believes quite literally that his deceased elders are actively involved in his family's affairs, and that it's important to keep them well stocked with supplies. Accordingly, during a funeral and during another memorial festival held in the seventh month of the lunar calendar, paper replicas of food, houses, cars, maybe even computers and smart phones are burned. Listening to my friends' and students' stories about these rituals, I'm struck by the curious mix of ancient folklore; remnants of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism; and something that borders on entrepreneurial creativity.

One friend, a graduate student, described being the one in her family who was charged with the job of addressing a hundred envelopes to dead relatives during the memorial holiday, each stuffed with paper money, because she was the only one who could read and write, and the postman on the other side needed to know where to deliver the burned paper goods. She was a little girl when she did it the first time, using a calligraphy brush, and it took her hours. Today, she, like Bill, claims no religion and yet she believes in the active presence of her dead ancestors' souls, and she hedged on whether she thought they really do return as ghosts for a week during the memorial holiday. She told me that you just don't know what they might do, and you need to be wary of running into an orphan ghost, a ghost with no family to return to, a ghost who might have special needs.

Other Chinese friends describe rituals still practiced in their home towns, beginning with the required keening and wailing, sometimes guided by a professional hired for the job. The wailing stops, but singing and noise-making continues, often joyfully. I've witnessed in the little park below my apartment a curious blend of ancient Chinese songs and pop music blaring throughout the same funeral. There might be gamblers outside the funeral tent, because the corpse needs to be guarded and gambling might help keep the guards awake.

A friend tells me that cremation is required by law, but that her grandparents, like many older Chinese people, didn't approve of cremation and her family went to great lengths to bury her grandpa secretly at home twenty-some years ago. However, they felt they could not break the law twice, and, when her grandma died ten years ago, she was cremated.

In my own reading, I find accounts of all sorts of rites and ceremonies, many of them seemingly related more closely to folk culture than to either Buddhism or Confucianism. Mixed in with reverence for the dead are all sorts of social hierarchies and do's and don't's and folk logic, but I'm struck by the core themes of reverence for the unity of creation and of celebration of the departed one's life.

For years I was one to scoff at rituals without substance--and I thought I would far rather have my cremains quietly sprinkled into the Current River, without any fuss, but I've come to appreciate the multi-layered catharsis that comes with some funeral drama. The Chinese understand something about fireworks, and I think fireworks, as well as good music, can express layers of layers of emotion all at once--and with a big bang. I want to go out with fireworks.