Funeral II
Went to another funeral last Monday, but it was different this time. Lady D's grandmother had finally passed on, and so I participated as one of the family. To my relief, I found that no one of the more distant relatives, many of whom I had never met before, made a big fuss of a foreigner -- or 'American' which still often is the preferred way to identify a white foreigner -- participating, which so often happens in Taiwan when a white face turns up in unexpected contexts. But they all knew that Lady D is married to a foreigner, so I guess it wasn't that unexpected. It always becomes awkward when all the question starts, but this time we avoided that altogether, except for someone one asking whether or not this was the first funeral I had participated in here in Taiwan.
I have only had to stand in front of a picture of the deceased to offer my respects and burning incense before, but this time I had to dress up in funeral garb, kneel and kowtow a lot, too. The master of ceremonies called up people group by group depending on their relationship to the deceased, and with the men lining up to the front and the women behind, he took the lead, telling us when to bow, kneel, kowtow, get up, and burn incense or paper money. He also read a short obituary for every set of mourners. I was told that if everything was strictly traditional, the participants would have had to write the obituary themselves. The whole thing was of course carried out in Minnan/Taiwanese, so keeping up involved as much looking at Lady D's brothers as trying to follow what the man was saying.
When that part was over, we all walked in procession after the hearse down to and through the small town, from where they drove away with the coffin. Once again, the men walked in front, and the women behind. The sons, wearing capes and a hat made of a coarse hemp cloth over their normal clothing, and grass sandals walked first, and behind them, their sons wearing a cape of some kind of yellow cloth and a white head band. They also wore a small round copper plate, like a coin, in a string around their right wrist. To the right of the sons walked the sons of the daughters wearing a green coat over their normal clothes, a blue cotton cape on top of that, and then a blue hat. Behind them I walked together with the husbands of the daughters' daughters. We wore a white cotton cape and a white cotton hat with a blue ribbon running across the head from front to back and with a red line in the middle of it. Behind all of us were the women. I don't know in what order they were ranked, but I guess it would have followed the same principles, more closely related coming first.
Ahead of all of us was the funeral band, blowing their horns and beating their drums in some horrifying funeral music which always makes me wonder whether they are mourning the deceased or trying to scare its and other ghosts away. Probably both, come to think of it.
Once the procession stopped, we took off our funeral garb and tore it in two and took the ribbon off the hats. We then walked back to the home of Lady D's uncle, outside of which the ceremony was held, washed our hands in a bucket of water, symbolically purifying ourselves so that we would not bring anything bad back with us from the funeral, and then we ate.
Lady D said this was a traditional Confucian funeral, and neither a Buddhist or a Daoist funeral.