A Wu's mama's funeral

Well I did manage to get up 7am after 5 hours' sleep but I wasn't going to believe the false dawn that is thinking I've beaten jetlag. Tan was up and I knew she was going to the funeral too and had already paid for us. For some reason I thought she was going with me but she went for a shower at 8.30am and when she got out she told me to hurry up and go on my own as she would only join for a meal in the evening. Shit, I got on the dian dong che and made it bang on 9am and of course all the blokes were there, as well as various members of A Wu's family of both sexes. I had no idea what was going to happen and wasn't sure asking about it would be the right thing to do. But eating breakfast was the right thing, and apparently, according to tradition, I had to eat two or three bowls. I don't normally do breakfast but reasoned for my body it was more like 2am as if that justified it, and managed a bowl with noodles and one without.

Breakfast before the funeral

As usual there was a lot of sitting about chatting, then a van turned up and a bloke with a light blue shirt got out so I guessed he was some arm of the police. He stood outside the house with the alter and body and started writing in an official-looking book. I offered him a bottle of water which he accepted, but I didn't have the bottle to ask him what he was doing, even though it was very likely he was some sort of death registrar.

I understood the van was to take the body, and started to get quite worried. The A Da came up to me and gave me a hug, as he sometimes does. But then the "close" family were called to go into the house and stand around the body, in front of which lay an open coffin being blessed. I stood near the open door and stared at my shoes. I'm familiar with a lot of this culture but I'm aware some cultures are ok to be close to dead bodies and even have them uncovered, and I didn't want to see that. I hoped they would coffinise the covered corpse while I was still studying my shoes.

The shoe studying went on for a few minutes. I'd at least put on some black canvas ones I'd left last time, but many others were in trainers or slippers. Then I heard "Doini" again from Huang Lei as I and four others were beckoned over to where the body was. I felt physically sick, but reasoned I had to be strong for my friends/family so duly walked over. I was stationed in the middle of three of us on one side, and understood we were to pick up the body and put it in the coffin. Jeez, but at least she appeared to be on some kind of simple stretcher, so we could grasp that rather than anything else. She was light, but we didn't make light work of it as obviously things had to be done very carefully. I was so relieved when we'd finally lowered her in, and another couple of blokes set upon putting the the coffin lid on. That meant the second part of carrying the coffin into the van was a bit less scary. It wasn't long gone 10am but if someone had offered me a drink I might well have accepted. In fact someone had offered me a beer at 9am when I got here but I waved it off thinking it was a joke. After what just happened it might not have been.

After more waiting around five of us got into Boss Liang's Renault Koleos and drove a good 20 minutes to some funeral place. Here I met Bak Sec Zai for the first time in years and we had a hug in the now boiling heat. Plenty of water bottles were handed out and I did my job doing the same. Now that I had calmed down a bit I started to appreciate how much I really have been accepted here, despite mainly only being here a month or so each year.

I went for walk around the buildings and then saw to my chagrin that there were two or three halls in which the middle was full of flowers except for a coffin-sized area with a clear plastic cover. Oh no, they couldn't be going to have a last viewing of the body could they? Would I be able to avoid this? It was a good 45 minutes before the next movement, during which I mostly chatted to Bak Sec Zai and a couple of other elder people. But then we started to move to one of those halls.... And yes, the coffin was there with the lid off, but the covers had been rearranged in such a way that I think, and only think, she might have only been exposed on one side. We all stood in rows at the foot of the coffin and I was in the third one, mostly shoe-studying again. It would have been an even more moving ceremony had I understood it better, and there was a lot of bowing. About 15 minutes later the first row started walking around the coffin, followed by the second, then ours and the rest, in single file. The first row comprised A Wu and siblings, and they stopped when they got round to the other side of the coffin to face the deceased. To my somewhat relief, from the second row on we walked up to the first row and shook hands with each of the closest relatives. So at least when I was shaking hands with each of them it was with my back to the coffin. And then after that we slowly walked back outside.

So it was back to more waiting, chatting, and drinking water for another half an hour. While we were waiting we saw another group go up and pick up an urn, then the front row from before went to another door of the same building and I was pretty sure it was where the cremation was taking place. Finally at well gone 1pm A Wu's elder brother and him went up to pick up their mother's urn, and for a last time we went to an alter, lit joss sticks, bowed, and said our last goodbyes.

Back at A Wu's mum's house there were many tables set up on both sides of the road, most now with food. It wasn't busy yet, but a number of us needed lunch so sat down to do that. It didn't take long for the beers to be poured though. Gradually, as the afternoon drew to the early evening, more people came, including Tan who said she was starving. I saw Boss Zhou at a table on the other side of the road and brought Tan over to introduce her to him, and of course they found they went to the same secondary school but were in different forms of the same year.

At various times of the day we had to wash our hands in water with these grapefruit leaves in order to wash off any evil and ghostly stuff from the funeral. I didn't realise this water was very hot and nearly burnt myself, or rather hopefully any ghosts...

I think this is traditional Guangxi funeral garb for the sons and daughters of the deceased. They wore the hats and white capes pretty much all day long

Preparing food for the wake

Tan was allowed to go after eating, but as a "close" member of the family I had more socialising to do, and I managed to till about 11pm when I was flaking so left about then and was asleep half an hour later.