The funeral spanned two days-one for the ceremonies and another for the cremation. On the first day, we went to the hall to prepare everything before the guests arrived. The hall was already decorated beautifully with flower wreaths that people had sent in honor of my grandfather. The seven wreaths from his children and his wife lined the area immediately in front of my grandfather's portrait, in addition to the big brass container where sticks of incense, now to be my grandfather's food, were continuously burning. As soon as my grandmother saw my grandfather's picture, immortalized behind that protective line of flowers, she collapsed into tears.
Once we had all arrived (the six children and all the grandchildren who had traveled back from the States, Vietnam and Canada), the people at the funeral home helped us into the appropriate attire, which varied depending on your sex and relation to my grandfather. The difference between "inside" and "outside" was very much emphasized. Being the child of my grandfather's daughter, I was an "outside grandchild" along with the children of my aunts. My cousins who shared the same last name as my grandfather were the "inside grandchildren," and their clothes not only had a different pattern but were also made of better material. Likewise, my father and my uncles (the husbands of my grandfather's daughters) were "outsiders," whereas my aunts (the wives of my grandfather's sons) were "insiders."
After having dressed, we began to fold paper money. We each received a stack of little square sheets of paper that had squares of gold or silver in the middle and we folded them into what looked like ingots. This was the "downtime job," what everyone did when they had a free moment. Some of our relatives who came later in the night helped us fold too, and by the end of the day we had seven huge sacks (that looked like sacks of rice) to burn. (Burning is the only way to get things to people in the other world.)
In addition to folding money, we filled tons of little envelopes. There were two kinds, one called kut-yee and the other tuet-hao. The kut-yee were each filled with one tissue, one Sugus candy (H.K. version of Starburst), and one dollar coin. These were given to the guests and to the workers from the floral shop who brought in the wreaths. The tuet-hao, given to all the guests who were going to the cremation the next day, were filled with a little fir twig, a piece of red string and a two-dollar coin. Since we had to make so many of them, my cousins and I set up an assembly line and raced to see who would be the one to hold up the entire line.
The guests started coming around 6 p.m. When they came in, we asked them to sign their names in the guestbook and then we gave them a kut-yee. The emcee then announced, "Yau hak dou. (We have guests.) Ching seung chin hang lai. (Please come forward and bow.)" He instructed the guests to bow three times and then receive thanks from the family, who were standing to one side ("family" only included the six children, the spouses of my uncles and the eldest "inside" grandson).
After the guests had been there for a while, some of the ceremonies began. There was the "crossing of the bridge," where the entire family (including us, although there was a very specific formation whereby the eldest grandson came first, holding a lantern to "light" the way) circled around two huge paper bridges three times while a man chanted. This was to help him cross the bridge to the other world. At the beginning and end of every ceremony we did three collective bows and offered incense. We stood in rows and the children would kowtow while the rest of the family bowed.
The entire funeral was very ritualistic; everything was done exactly according to tradition. I felt like these rituals were there to numb the pain and sorrow, in a way, since when you make yourself busy with all the preparations you sometimes are able to forget the grief, even if it's only for a moment. Despite the detachedness of it all, though, there were some personal touches here and there. In addition to burning paper money, Chinese people usually burn paper likenesses of things the deceased had enjoyed. For my grandfather, we had a summer house made, complete with a maid, a little TV, fridge, mirror, sofa, bed and potted plants in the garden. The most important, though, was his mahjong table, since that was his single favorite hobby. We not only burned him a mahjong table, but also three little men to play with him, a little table with two cups and a lamp complete with a three-legged plug. One can only comfort oneself with the thought that his life in the other world will be as enjoyable as the one he had here.