Funeral Culture in Guizhou

When we went to the countryside of Bijie, Guizhou, to repair the highway, we rented a farmhouse and lived in a village surrounded by dozens of farm families.

When you arrive at a new place, you like to unconsciously compare it with the original place you have lived and look for differences.

I found that this place is often dead, and often there are mournful music, fluttering streamers, gongs, drums and firecrackers, which make people feel a lot of discomfort.

Usually strings, but found that people here generally long life, more than eighty, and even more than ninety years old people everywhere. Most of them have eyes and ears, strong body, life can take care of themselves, and can accept us as outsiders.

After a long time, I realized that my feeling is wrong, this place is not often dead, but their funeral culture is different from other places I have traveled.

Here the funeral time is long, less a few days, long more than ten days, or even more than twenty days, that is why you often hear the noise of the funeral, giving people a feeling of frequent death.

Bijie, Guizhou, this place, can not say that the thin support thick burial, the old man's support is also still dedicated, but thick burial is not comparable to other places.

They attach great importance to the funeral. Weddings, house building, children full moon and other happy events, if something can not go, can be entrusted to people on the favor, but the funeral must be personally present, but also have the conditions to be personally present, more than ten days, even if the distance can be rushed, even if the busy can also find the time to the deceased in front of the spirit of the hall to burn a pillar of incense, kowtow to the three.

The old man is critically ill, as usual, not in the hospital, believe that the death in the home. Seeing that the old man has no hope of resurrection, will notify friends and relatives to say goodbye to the dying, these days, can come to most of them will come to visit. See the old man syndrome only one or two days of life, the funeral began to organize, the door to build a shed, borrow tables and chairs and benches, ready to burn paper and firecrackers, and we there than, it seems too acute, urging more than retained, so that outsiders are not accustomed to.

Mourning time is long, is a characteristic of some places in Guizhou. Summer ten days, winter is longer. Funeral time long and short, check the economic strength of the children, we do not want to lose their share, and then have to insist on a few days of hardship, do not let the neighbors look down on.

To say that the expenditure, and other places than three days of mourning, it does not have to be a lot of big, do not sing opera, super monks, Taoist priests are not much, firecrackers are not stupid to put, the next of kin to eat veggies, hundreds of guests to eat brindled, a down, five, eight million enough.

There is a custom, I saw for the first time, the welcome to the guests ready to a foot long stick, handed to the guests who came to offer condolences, the guests bowed on the stick forward to the spirit of the hall, a team of guests team bowing, spectacular and sad.

The most humane custom, the deceased into the ground, the funeral does not end, but also held three days. The worship of the deceased continues, and most of the energy is used to accompany the families of the deceased, say some words of relief, to reduce the sadness and loneliness of the living caused by the abrupt end of the funeral.

Hundreds of miles of different customs. The funeral in Guizhou has characteristics.