Introduction:
The wife’s dad had been in hospital for a while. He was an old dude, and shuffled off his mortal coil, as is the wont of old dudes. Wife was understandably grief-stricken.
Her: We have to go to Hong Kong next week for the funeral!
Me: Fuck that shit. I Don’t do funerals. Let the dead bury the dead. I didn’t even go to my mother’s funeral!
Her: It’s a family obligation. You’re married to the oldest child. You’re fucking going!
Me: Ah, fuck it. But what do I wear? I don’t have a suit.
Her: That shit is provided.
Me: perplexed What? They’re going to dress me? Hire a suit?
Her: Shut the fuck up and buy the fucking plane ticket.
I was extremely neurotic at this time, as I hate a) Hong Kong b) funerals and c) flying.
Day one:
We get to vile Hong Kong on Thursday night and have to wait for two hours for a vile overpriced taxi to take us to our vile abode, which, ironically, resembles a coffin in its spaciousness. Luckily, there is a vending machine that gleefully dispenses beer at exorbitant prices . I’m aching for a cigarette, and can’t smoke in the sarcophagus, so I take the elevator down from the 3256th floor. This takes an hour or two.
I get down eventually and light up a smoke, only to have a crowd of drunk Chinese tourists push me aside, screaming and shouting and bashing the shit out of each other.
Although I enjoy watching brutal spectator sports, I preferred to cross the road in this instance, and enjoy my vile cigarettes in relative privacy.
Day two:
It’s six a.m. I funnel myself into one of the coffin’s cubicles, weirdly named “the shower” and manage to wipe off most of the vile Hong Kong filth, and start my two-hour journey downstairs for my morning cigarettes. I pick up a beer from the gleeful vending machine on the way.
A bloke approaches me outside.
Him: Hey! Where are you from?
Me: I live in Taiwan, you?
Him: I’m from Sri Lanka.
Me: Decent cricket team. Haven’t been too good lately, though.
Him: Can I bum a cigarette? So where are you REALLY from?
Me: Yeah. South Africa, I suppose.
Him: Jacques Kallis!
Me: Yeah. Whatever. Isn’t he dead?
Mortality is top of the agenda this weekend.
We smoke a couple of cigarettes together, and then he asks me where to find a vegetarian restaurant. I’m like, “Dude, I dunno. I told you. I’m only here for a dead people weekend”. He glares at me, and much to my relief, slinks away.
I trudge back up to the 3256th floor. Luckily there isn’t a 4th floor because Chinese superstitious shit, which renders my ascent marginally less exhausting.
My darling wife is sitting on what would, in normal parlance, be described as “a bed”. If chopsticks ever slept, it would be perfect for one of them.
She’s folding bits of colorful paper.
I glace outside, through the unopenable, impenetrable window, and see a crane, about 2km tall, tossing shit about.
Me: What are you doing?
Her: Making stuff for my daddy in the afterlife. Shoes, clothes, money, etc.
I know she doesn’t really believe that nonsense, is just going along with tradition, but is in a state of despair, so I sit down and help her make the little paper things. I actually excel at some of them, rendering me an origami aficionado.
She’s very grateful.
Later we go out to a ridiculously overpriced restaurant with the nieces. I sit outside, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Eventually I go in and chomp on a piece of fish that is full of bones.
What little joy I had before is rapidly evaporating…
Day three, aka Dead Person Day:
It’s funeral time. I dress real nice, so that my gut isn’t spilling out. All in black, of course, which is not particularly unusual. Black is the colour of mourning, right? Wrong! In Chinese culture it’s white. More about that to follow.
We take an overpriced taxi to the death celebration.
Here’s where it starts to get even more weird.
The place is like a funeral factory. It’s somewhere on the outskirts of Hong Kong, and is ten long, separate halls, all in a row. Outside is a massive garbage heap of decaying flowers.
Me: Which one contains our corpse?
Her: I think it’s number three.
We head off to number three.
Outside, family members greet us. Some lackeys start to dress us appropriately. Because I am the husband of the oldest child, I am, bizarrely, afforded much respect. I seriously don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I blow with the wind.
They put white pants and a white gown on me, and then wrap a red headband around my bald pate. Apparently I am an important person. I don’t feel important; merely confused.
We go inside. It’s a large hall, with seats on the left and right. An enormous picture of the old guy is on the wall at the front, adorned with wreaths of flowers. I am told to sit in the specially demarcated area for immediate family, right in the front.
I sit down and take in the scene. The workers, nonchalant, who obviously do this on every auspicious day, start putting bouquets of flowers on all of the surrounding walls.
What catches my eye is a wreath right next to the dead bloke which says something in Cantonese, yet mentions my father’s name.
Me: wtf?
Wife: I did that. I bought a wreath from your dad.
Me: Okay. It probably cost a lot, but that’s nice of you.
I’m sitting there, and it’s baking hot. I’m sweating. Over my clothes are nurses’ attire and I’m wearing a headband. I look like a kung fu doctor, and feel like an American POW in the Vietnam war.
In front of the dead bloke’s picture is what could possibly be described as an “altar”. It’s packed with fruit, vegetables, and a ridiculous amount of unidentifiable, arcane objects. Oh, and incense. Tons of the shit. It resembles the aftermath of the carpet-bombing of Dresden in WW2, or the fiery finale of the incendiaries on Tokyo.
And behind this, is where they store the cadaver, in repose.
I told my dear wife, even before we left Taiwan. that I’m not going to look at dead people. She said “That’s fine. I’ll tell my family it’s a cultural thing”
Hence, I was spared the trauma of having to go around the back to gaze upon the dead dude, as all the family members had to do.
People kept arriving. Family, friends. Always, one of the siblings has to take them to see the corpse. It was pretty unsettling to see them come out weeping.
The hall is filling up now. Most people are dressed very casually: flip-flops and shorts. All banging away on their smart phones. Not my preconceived idea of what a solemn occasion should be. On the left side are family members. On the right side, friends.
And here’s me, sitting around, looking like a fat Bruce Lee, in the “special” section of this macabre vaudeville.
Wife goes around to the corpse. and arranges her gifts for the afterlife in his coffin. Luckily, I am spared from this joyous occasion. She is told by the paid ritual dude that the paper gifts are “nice”. I’m flattered, since I made a few of them in my high-rise casket.
The rituals: Too many to describe. I can’t remember half of them, but every few minutes I had to rush out, with incense in my hands, and bow when the paid ritual dude screamed “one, two, three!” In Cantonese, My poor wife has to be on her knees during these strange ceremonies. Luckily, I’m spared that hardship.
I’m burning for a cigarette. The lights are dimmed. The paid ritual dude charges around with a sword, banging effigies on the floor. Firecrackers go off.
Me: Honey, isn’t this costing a fucking fortune?
Her: Shut the fuck up. My daddy was an important man.
Me: Okay.
I eventually get a break to charge outside for a smoke. The nieces are there, looking as confused as I feel.
Me: What the fuck were those rituals all about? I didn’t understand a word of it.
Nieces: Neither did we. It was done in some ancient dialect. Anyway, we’re Christians.
Me: That’s nice, but what do you think it means or symbolizes?
Nieces: Beats the fuck out of us. Don’t have the faintest idea.
It was mildly relieving to learn that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what the fuck was going on.
The immediate family have to go outside to perform a money-burning ritual. Luckily I’m not included in this fascinating festivity.
After four hours of this shit, just when I think it’s all over, there comes another surprise.
The lackeys wheel the dead bloke out from the back, in his coffin. Paid ritual dude starts barking orders and incantations. People (some still banging on their phones) start lining up for one last look at the cadaver before it gets incinerated.
I avert my eyes.
Me: Honey, I’m not doing this.
Her: That’s fine. I told my family it’s a cultural thing.
After the crowd have taken one last look at the dead dude lying in state, I think, “At last I can get the fuck out of here!”
I’m seriously mistaken.
Wife: Get on the bus outside.
Me: Can’t we just go back to our cubicle?
Wife: Shut up and get on the fucking bus.
Now I’m exaggerating. My wife rarely uses foul language. But poetic license, and all that.
Me: Why the fuck are we travelling for an hour, in a tour bus, up to the top of a mountain?
Her: To burn him. Show some fucking respect!
Me: Okay.
We get to the cremation site. Paid ritual dude is charging around (having changed his attire for the 52nd time), barking orders and “one, two, three!” in Cantonese.
Just when I thought I’d avoided the gates of Hell, I enter the Abyss;.
The cremation torture area is a death conveyor belt. Imagine a dead people shopping mall.
I have to bow and scrape a few times (incense in my hands), and the eldest son is afforded the privilege of pushing a green button that sends the dead bloke in his coffin to his fiery doom.
Then I have to go outside, where they take off my nurse’s garb and burn it.
And it’s not over yet.
I still have to go to a horribly expensive aftermath - the “reception”.
I want to sit at the kids’ table, because that is where my nieces are, and they seem to be having a rollicking good time. But no. I am ordered to sit at the Very Important People table. I don’t feel important. I just want a fucking drink.
Eventually the wife brings a quart of beer over. It’s tepid. And I have to share it with everyone at the table. Luckily, I’m seated next to a drunken auntie with about two teeth in her mouth, who charges off to grab three tepid quarts of beer.
The eldest brother, who seems to be in charge of this afterparty, upon learning I’m vegetarian, generously orders a large bowl of mushroomy gloop for me.
I want to vomit. but I stoically sip on my tepid beer.
Day four:
Wife and I do a bit of sightseeing, and eventually fly the fuck out of brutal Hong Kong. I’m overwhelmingly happy to see my home and cats again. It beats me what people see in that playground of the rich.
