A Traditional Chinese Funeral: Rites, Rituals, and Little Time for Processing

Surreal is the best word to describe my dad’s funeral. It was a 3 hour-long series of Buddhist rituals interrupted by paperwork and following orders from the funeral director. 

At 6:50am, I went to the morgue to collect my dad’s body temporarily resting in a temperature-controlled box. We paid for him to have his own room so friends and family could come bid their farewells. I put 66RMB in the left pocket of his silky embroidered Chinese suit that made him look like a former official of the Forbidden Palace. The drivers lifted him out of the cold casket and into a gold one textured with dragons to be cremated with his body. 

His black and white portrait is taken down, and I’m told to carry it by my chest, face forward. Then I’m handed a prayer wheel to spin by his head. I would do this for the next 40 minutes, my fingers cold and numb from keeping the wheel spinning.

We drive to this massive building of empty rooms, big and small, where the ceremonies are held. Staff push rickety metal stretchers up and down the halls, making these loud booming noises like trucks zooming past your window at midnight. Sometimes they carry dead bodies. It’s so transactional and impersonal that I find it funny to watch the staff jogging up the sloped hallway to give their push more oomph since the stretchers carried deadweight in UN-blue-colored body bags.

At 8am, all the attendees arrive one hour early. The funeral director is busy decorating the space with huge flower rings that guests pay for to have their names and blessings stapled to them. Later these would be burned and delivered to my dad in heaven. My aunt and I also prepared a suitcase full of his favorite clothes, his bedding and other personal items that would be burned for him to use in the other world. 

The ceremony starts promptly at 9. Family line up on one side of my dad’s casket, close friends and “leaders/bosses” in front (I really disliked this bit of formality as said leaders were not close to our family), and everyone else stood in rows behind them. I am the first to recite his eulogy. I blubber through it, and then hand the microphone to my mom, who delivers a beautiful eulogy that makes everyone cry. But we aren’t supposed to cry. Tears make my dad lose his way towards heaven. 

At the end of our eulogies, the MC directs everyone to stand in a single file line and give each of our family members a shake and a message of condolence, like they do at the end of a ballgame, but more emotional of course. 

By 9:30 we are led out of the ceremonial hall with me at the front, carrying my dad’s photo by my chest, looking forward. I am directed to never look back, so I don’t. As I lead the procession to the crematorium where we get to see my dad in his entirety for the very last time, the cameraman runs up to me to inform me that his fee is 860RMB to be paid directly to him at the end of the funeral. Thanks.

The cremation furnace is in this long hallway with 10 other ovens where all the bodies go in in full form, and come out as ashes and bones. BONES! I sign some papers to release my dad to be cremated. The staff are amused that I’m American.

The gold cremation casket is covered and before the conveyer belt pulls him into the fire, I am told to get on my knees before my dad and kowtow (touch the ground with my head three times to pay my respects). This was very emotional for me. 

Off he went into the flames for the next hour, and the rest of us are led outdoors where we burn incense and Joss Paper including HELL BANK NOTES and shoes. So much smoke and incense have filled my lungs from these past few days. 

Finally my dad’s body is cremated. 

I am responsible for collecting his bones. BONES! I rarely saw bones in science class, and here I am, watching the morticians pick up pieces of my dad’s skeleton and neatly place them, then crush them so they all fit, in the heavy wooden urn that I cleaned earlier following a prescribed ritual.

With the urn all set, the procession marches up the hill, panting past the cemetery, to the storage rooms (the proper term is Columbarium). My dad’s ashes will remain there until we bring him home to Chongqing, where we’ll spread his ashes across Jialing River, as per his wish.

The cameraman rushes ahead to get more footage. I sign some more papers. We put my dad’s urn in a little locker unit, making sure we don’t push the box all the way to the back so that it touches the wall. 

We lock the box, go back down the hill to the public restroom where we’re instructed to wash our hands and chant “干干净净来，干干净净走” which means cleanly we enter, cleanly we leave, but there’s no soap. For some reason I owe another 4400RMB, and then get into the car ready for lunch. We set off with a boom. Literally. 

At the gate, we set off firecrackers and step over three bundles of burning hay. I don’t question the purpose. I just do it if it’s good for my dad, even though he is the least spiritual person in my family and would have said “捏着鼻子哄眼睛” (plug your nose, fool your eyes) about all the funeral rites we just performed in his honor.

Oh Daddy (I’ve been calling him this with a Chinese accent since I was a kid), may you carry your sense of humor into your afterlife and beyond (can there be something beyond afterlife, an after-afterlife?!).