Service Interrupted (2)

A week ago on Friday, we had the first of our last three ceremonies (which I have been able to attend). Traditionally, every seven days, there is a ceremony. Though, in modern times, this is occasionally abbreviated. Last Friday, was the seventh seven day ceremony. If you do the math, this means that the seven day periods were abbreviated.

Before that, though, there were many activities to be had. Each morning after paying our respects to my grandfather, my family was busy planning for both the small and big ceremonies. As I mentioned earlier, we bring offerings each morning such as fruit, my grandfather's favorite snacks, etc. This is not burned in offering, but large amounts of paper money and the paper lotuses are. Last Saturday, we had an additional ceremony to wish my grandfather good health in the afterlife, as well as to give him his home and seemingly a ton of sacrifical money. You can see a photo below of the house that we had constructed. Not included in the photo are representations of some of his favorite activities (mah-jongg and fishing). The model house was quite large and fully furnished. I say was because Saturday night we burned it in offering. Since it was large, and also the immense amount of sacrificial burned, we used the temple's incinerator as opposed to the traditional firepot.

 

On Monday, was the official ceremony for all of the people who aren't in the immediate family. Before it started, I took a bunch of pictures of the flowers and drinks that people sent. In return for attending a funeral, a towel is given to the attendee. I don't have any pictures of that.

   

This ceremony lasted quite a while and my brother and I were part of the procession even though we are "outside" grandchildren (i.e. we do not carry the name of our grandfather since he was our maternal grandfather - we were clothed in a manner to indicate this though I don't have any photos of that). One of the most difficult parts was seeing my grandfather lying in his coffin. After everyone paid their respects (which involved lots of incense, kneeling and bowing on lots of people's parts), we saw him again. However, everyone who wanted to see him one last time saw him with us and my grandmother. It was so strange because less than a year ago I saw him alive. There really are no words to describe how I feel about it. As poor as his health had been in recent years, my family was not ready or really expecting this to happen.

We escorted the coffin outside to the hearse. All of his "direct" family (except my grandmother and me) went to accompany his body to the funeral home that will house his ashes until my family is ready to transport them to the temple they have elected on the south side of the island. I went with my grandmother to help her with the offerings and prepare for their arrival. Afterwards, we paid our respects once again. We "washed" ourselves. The rest of my relatives went back to the temple, while my first aunt and I took care of burning the last of the sacrificial money for him. There was a lot left and we were burning out of our improvised offering cauldron - a rather large mixing bowl on the rooftop of my grandparents' apartment building. Being rather windy, and with a rather large stack of ceremonial cash to go through. This took us all the way through to dinner time since it was just my aunt and me.

After the services, most of my relatives left for home within the days following. My brother and I went to see my paternal grandmother yesterday after paying respects to our namesake my paternal grandfather at his temple on the south side of the island, and then visiting the technical school he founded and my dad's childhood home.





I think my grandma looks great for someone who is turning 97 this year. You can also see the quality of my camera with these photos. It stitches panoramas for me fairly well. It's got loads more megapixels, but I don't know if this is necessarily an advantage.

Well, back to your regularly scheduled programming starting Sunday.

Service Interrupted (1)

Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noel! Sheng4Dan4Jie2Kuai4Le4!

If you search Google for information regarding Taiwanese funeral customs, you see a fair mix of information. Here is one site that I have found that accords with some of my family's practices. Practices and beliefs differ from group to group (even from family to family) within Taiwan due to the wide mix of people on the island (they may all look the same to you, but to me there are Taiwanese, Chinese, the indigenous peoples and others). I thought I would blog about my experience to share a little about my experience with Taiwanese culture and also to document it for my own sake.

General things you should know about my family and me. My parents immigrated from Taiwan before I was born. For the most part, my family (grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins) lives in Taiwan. More so on my mother's side than my father's side. When together, my family speaks a mix of Taiwanese/Mandarin/English/Japanese (due to the Japanese influences on Taiwan). I am practically illiterate. I attended Chinese school for a few years as a child. I can write my name, numbers, and a handful of basic characters. I figure out pinyin/characters through a combination of the internet, phonetics, vague memories and the power of deduction.

My grandfather's funeral rites follow a mix of Buddhist and Taiwanese traditions. Since he passed away, my relatives have been going to the temple to pay respects to my grandfather. Each morning, they go to bai4bai4. This involves burning incense and giving thanks or offerings and general respect paying. According to Taiwanese beliefs, he is ascending to the afterlife but he has not taken anything with him. Each morning, after paying our respects by burning incense at his soul altar, we burn paper flowers (the steps for him to reach the afterlife) and sacrificial money (money for the afterlife). Basically, my grandmother's apartment is reminiscent of a paper/origami factory.

An auspicious day was chosen for my grandfather's funeral (07/01/08), unfortunately it is not so for my uncle's wife. A Buddhist ritual, two wooden-pieces are tossed to the floor. If they both land face-down, the answer is "No". One-up and one-down means "Yes". The internet (i.e. I don't know this person) tells me that having both face-up means that the spirit really approves. Though my family believes if they are both face up, the answer is also "No". Of all the days suggested to my grandfather (each one inauspicious for each of his children and his daughter-in-law), he selected the one that was inauspicious for my uncle's wife.

Yesterday, we went to select my grandfather's urn. Well, really my grandfather had already "selected" (same eight-ball method) his urn, but we went to inspect it for flaws. My grandmother and mother wanted a perfect one of course, but after much careful inspection, they realized that all of the urns had their own particular flaws (of course, you can't expect anything human-made to be perfect - that would imply that humans are capable of perfection). So, the family decided on the original urn.

Ancestor worship may be unfamiliar to some of you. The concept is even more difficult to explain in French to HCNs who for the most part think the three choices for religion are Christianity (Catholic or Protestant), Islam, or Animist. In fact there is a joke that the sum of the distribution of religion is 2 (and not 1) because everyone is animist. Really the closest in village I could come to describing it was animism.

Anyway, speaking of respecting my elders, it is getting late and I need to go to bed.