A funeral at the ancestral home

Last weekend a distant family member died, so this week the extended family congregated at the old ancestral village home for a traditional funeral.

We went there too, leaving our home early Friday morning and returning late last night (Saturday).

The ancestral home is in a village about an hour by car from the city of Meizhou (population over five million), which is about six hours by train from Guangzhou.  Our trip there was fairly relaxing, apart from two incidents.

Firstly, we got caught in the morning rush-hour traffic getting to the train station.  With sweat dripping down our faces from running hard, we jumped onto our train just a couple of minutes before it left.

Secondly, our taxi driver from Meizhou to the village thought he was a Jedi and calmly drove on the wrong side of the road while passing cars at high speed on blind corners.  The girls and I rattled around in the back seat with no seatbelts.

Miraculously, we survived the journey there and back.

This was the fourth time I had visited the village, though the last time was back in 2008 when Mulan was still not walking.  I enjoy it there, and if I could choose between the village and our apartment home in Guangzhou, I would definitely vote for village life.  (Though if I lived there I would turn one of the fish ponds into a swimming pool, create more of an outdoor dining area to take advantage of the beautiful mountain views, and possibly have a bit of a grassy lawn rather than the Chinese-style all-concrete front section.)

Mama’s father’s mother’s father build the big old dwelling in about 1930, after returning to China from working overseas.  Apparently, he had grand plans for his many children to raise their families there together, and so he built a couple of huge and beautiful buildings.  Sadly, though, most of his children moved away, and the old buildings were mostly left bare and empty.

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the big mansion was attacked and many of the most beautiful artistic parts were destroyed.  Time, too, has taken its toll, and the big wooden beams holding up the roof have slowly become unsafe.  One of Mama’s uncles is currently keen on restoring this biggest building and has been the driving force behind recent repair-work (funded mostly by rich overseas rellies).

Uncle has grand dreams of turning the mansion into a hotel, and he is currently modernising one section by fitting out five two-room apartments.  His hope is that the middle-classes from the nearby city will want to use it as a village retreat for a month or two at a time.  It is a wonderful, romantic, idea, though from a business perspective it is doubtful.  While to us this big building is a special beauty, in the area they are a dime a dozen and most families are just abandoning them when they move to the cities.  Nonetheless, we all hope it works out for Uncle.  (If anyone wants a romantic, old-Chinese-village-style holiday, just let me know!)

Two sets of descendants have continued to live in the other building over the years.  This is where Sanmei Ayi and her three sisters (Mama’s second cousins) grew up as children, and their parents still live there.  When we stay there, we always stay in their section of the home, and it is always very comfortable and welcoming.

When we arrived at the village in mid-afternoon, the funeral ceremonies had already started.  I don’t even pretend to understand much of what was going on, but the essential image is that of a lot of people and a lot of noise.  Along with the extended family, it appears that a lot of the village was there too.  Mama tells me that it is important that there is a lot of noise happening (traditionally, to scare away the bad ghosts) so the family provides heaps of free food and entertainment for a couple of days to attract the locals.  These locals sit there on the aforementioned concrete front section eating and playing mah-jong (and acting as ghost-deterrents).

Miya might be part-ghost because the noise certainly really scared her, too.  She clung tightly to me and put her hands over her ears at the loudest parts.  Often she and I walked away and either watched from a distance or did other things elsewhere.  Mulan also put her hands over her ears a lot, but she was old enough to be okay with it, and she stayed with Mama throughout most of the activities.

The loudest things came from three sources.  Firstly, as we all know, Chinese love long strings of bangy firecrackers.  Secondly, as we all know, Chinese are like teenagers when it comes to their loud sound systems (just visit any promotional performance at a shopping centre).  Just outside the main mansion doors, they positioned desk-height speakers to blast out their music and microphoned voices.

But thirdly, and surprisingly, they had hired a Western-style uniformed marching band, with drums and brass instruments led by a conductor with an arm-length baton (which was swung around but not thrown into the air, as far as I saw).  (Their uniforms, however, all looked very tired and stained, and their brass instruments were brown and unpolished.)  Mama tells me that this is a recent modernisation to traditional Chinese funerals.  Given the volume the marching band was producing as they did their thing back and forth across the front doorway, I can understand why Chinese would have latched on to this idea.

Dropping our bags when we first arrived, the four of us immediately paid our respects to the old granny by bowing to her picture while holding three incense sticks each.

Besides noise, one of the other central themes of the funeral ceremony is the (mostly symbolic now) way that the younger generation must provide for the material needs of the deceased.  Granny’s picture had been placed inside a very elaborate and very blingy-looking two-dimensional cardboard mansion.  Someone had cut out pictures from Home-and-Garden-style glossy magazines and pasted these in each of the mansion windows.  This is to (symbolically) give Granny a beautiful mansion to live in in the afterlife.  It was intriguing, though, that most of these pictures were of living and dining areas (she must have had half a dozen or more living areas, all with very different styling).  There were no bedrooms, toilets or laundries.  Only one picture had a kitchen, which was obscured and in the distance.  One picture was of an outdoor dining area, but this was confusingly on the second floor (maybe Granny has a sloping section in the afterlife?).  Forever the flippant little pedant, I whispered in Mama’s ear about this.  Word came back that those other essential rooms were all at the back of Granny’s new mansion, and so couldn’t be seen from these front windows.  That is a relief for Granny.  I understand that this cardboard mansion was burned for Granny, as it is only via the smoke from burning that the deceased can collect these afterlife gifts.  (I understand that while some Chinese still believe in this literally, for most it is merely a symbolic ritual and reminder of loved ones.)

Later that night, the girls and I crashed into bed one by one, with the activities still in noisy full swing.  The three of us slept together in a big traditional (but new) bed, which has three of its four sides closed.  Mulan was farthest in, then Miya, then me.  Theoretically, these beds are a wonderful idea, and I love their look, but they are not very practical to sleep in.  For one thing, it means that people inside have to climb over those on the outside to get out.  For another, it means that slightly taller people like me bump their feet on the board at the foot of the bed (I prefer to hang my feet slightly off the end of the bed).

Mama stayed up later with the others and slept in Sanmei Ayi’s room.  She informs me that tradition dictates that at least some of the family members need to be awake all night.  Mama tells us that we missed some good entertainment programming, including professional fire dancers.  I think I heard the music stop around ten o’clock, but I understand that they still kept up quiet prayer activities throughout the night.

When I woke around five-ish it was still dark, and it was just getting light when the girls both woke about half an hour later.  We wandered on out hoping to see the sunrise, but we were slightly too late.  Everyone else was up and moving again soon, too.

Hobbit-style, breakfast in the home was followed by a second group breakfast for the funeral.  Mulan struggled to eat anything for second breakfast, but Miya happily ate hers.

Between breakfasts, there were more planned activities.  The loud noises drove Miya and me away, and we watched on from a distance.  A professional singer cried while she sang, to get everyone in the mood.

Next, the Buddhist monks and the marching band led the procession out behind the mansion and up the hill.  The hillside is dotted with gravestones and pagodas of various oldies (positioned with solid feng shui views of the village below), and we walked up several minutes to where Granny is to be buried.  The ceremony complete, we came back down again for the final funeral activity of second breakfast.

The other main activity we did before lunch and before returning to Guangzhou was to pay our respects to Mama’s ancestors.

The first time I went to the ancestral village was for Mama’s grandma’s funeral in 2006.  Grandma has a very lovely pagoda built for her on the hillside.  Her husband and their son, Mama’s father, who both died much earlier, are also there.

A very meaningful activity for us each time we visit the village is to go up to the pagoda and ritually offer food and burn ghost-money.  Mama personally doesn’t believe the rituals literally, but as I see it this doesn’t lessen the meaning of the rituals one little bit.  Done in the right frame of mind, I think it is a lovely way to remember the oldies.  Doing something active keeps the hands busy while letting the mind silently reflect on the loved one.  And when this activity is familiar and homely, like preparing food, it all brings back the memories even better.

First of all, after wiping clean the gravestones, food and drink is laid out in front of their pictures.  Then with incense we bow to them.  Several minutes later, when the incense is halfway burnt, we burn the ghost-money.  This is similar to burning the granny’s mansion, in that burning (fake) paper valuables symbolically gives Grandma her goods that she can then enjoy in the afterlife.  Jointly, we burnt several millions of British pounds and Hong Kong dollars, as well as other indeterminate currencies and bars of gold.  When the wind swirled around Mama told me that this means that the goodies are being received.

Back down the hill, we had lunch before our Jedi-master taxi driver took us back to Meizhou.  This time we were about 45 minutes too early for our train.  Sanmei Ayi caught the train with us, and we had a very relaxing and pleasant journey home.

(PS, there are no photos of the events as I didn’t take my camera with me; I didn’t think it was appropriate for a funeral.  However, clearly, Chinese don’t think like me and they had a professional cameraperson snapping pictures and taking videos of all the events.)