The longer I stay here the more I experience the real culture and get better understanding about Asian Culture in general and the Taiwanese/Chinese culture in specific. The other day for the first time I saw a funeral. I was heading to the Chinese class I am taking and saw a big tent in the middle of the street; depending on the family financial means, different people have different ceremony to pay tribute to the deceased. The funeral I saw had a camera man recording the video of the ceremony. There were also flower cars/pickups playing traditional music which it seems to be the most common custom for an event like this.
A practice that was very popular in the 1980s when Taiwan’s economy was booming is the dancers and singers. Singers, dancers and sometimes strippers will be hired to perform during funerals. It’s a kind of a belief as a mean of sending off the deceased with a smile. I read about a new documentary that discusses this custom in Taiwan called “Dancing for the dead”. Another practice I heard about is the hiring of wailers to perform during funerals. These performers will cry and crawl into the funeral hall. It’s a way to show sadness and give a somber atmosphere during the funeral. Here’s a youtube link that talks about it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYxOBoHHJ9M
These funerals are not as common as they used to be but they’re still practiced to lesser extent in rural areas.
Last week, I visited Chang Kai Shek memorial hall for an ancient Egypt civilization exposition. I attended similar expositions in the past and visited Egypt before, but I still always find old civilizations like the Egyptian, the Chinese, the Mayans and others very fascinating. While at the exposition I was thinking and comparing between the old Egyptian civilization and the Chinese civilization. Two things came to mind, first, the writing; when you think about it the old Egyptians used symbols or figures to represent the characters in the writing or what’s called the Egyptian hieroglyphs. This is very similar to Chinese writing and what makes it interesting the fact it survived all these centuries with little modifications.
The second thing I thought about while at the Egyptian exposition was death and how different cultures look at death ceremonies. The old Egyptians built these pyramids because they believed the eternity comes after death. Since the majority of the world believes that the hereafter is the eternity, shouldn’t death be celebrated in a cheerful way?
