Personal Dork Assistant

Respects

Landed at 10:15, got in at around 11, and went to bed at 12 after getting the Airport Base Station up and running. Good old Apple plug-and-play. Had to get up at 6am. That's fine, none of us could sleep anyway with the jet lag, even if the time difference was nominally in our favor. Had to get up early to drive to the mortuary in ZhuDong (竹東), the old family village. It was an hour on the new #3 Freeway, in our convoy of German cars. Passed by many neon-lit betel-nut booths (complete with betel-nut-beauties inside, Sam thought they were prostitutes from his experiences in the Amsterdam red-light district), and ugly semi-rural concrete construction along the way. Lit some incense and viewed the body. I suppose I can say the standard refrains like how peaceful he looked, as if he were sleeping, etc., etc. In truth, he looked quite dead. It happens to everybody.

That was only the start of the ceremonies. Everyone put on black robes and the monks came in to start the chanting. There were much bowing, some kneeling, and more incense than you can shake a stick at. Couldn't follow the sing-song and the chanting, it being in Taiwanese and all, but I do listen to Gregorian chant, and this was pretty much the Buddhist equivalent except they had an electric organ and a percussion section. I could put myself in the right frame of mind and appreciate the cultural significance, even if I'm only barely connected to the traditions involved.

There were three altars. One was for remembrance, with a picture of the deceased and wreaths from all and sundry. One was the spiritual altar, with brocaded tapestries of Buddha and holy spirits. The holy spirits have halos around them, not unlike the medieval saints. Sam thought maybe the Buddhist influenced the Christians, I figure that it was an affectation brought over by the Christian missionaries. And then there was the materialist altar, with all the paper goods and possessions ready to be blessed and sent off to the afterlife via fire. I didn't know if grandfather liked karaoke, but he's getting a KTV machine in the great beyond.

The prayers went in one-hour shifts. Various distant relatives came by to pay their respects for various lengths of time. Broke for lunch after the monks blessed the catered (vegetarian) meal, making sure to leave a bowl of rice for the deceased. The various faux-meat soy products were surprisingly tasty, though mostly because of lots of oil and a good pinch of MSG. It was time to get hard-core after lunch. We hired five monks to recite ten volumes' worth of sutras. We were doing three volumes today. Couldn't do anything other than sit there stupidly for the first volume. They finally gave us a copy of the sutras to follow along for the second volume, which wasn't much help either, since they were going so damn fast, in Taiwanese, using obscure characters I don't recognize, in a religion that I've never gotten into. Still, I got into the rhythm of the chanting, and even the Taiwanese pronunciation kinda made sense after a while. Sam caught some page turns, too, when I was totally lost.

We were pretty much with it through the third volume, even though the monks cranking it up a notch to TurboChantExtreme++. It was Buddhism by osmosis, as I had to get into a Zen state to keep up, which made the flood of characters in the archaic phrasing almost make sense. Fun to see the parallels between the Buddhist teachings and the Christian scriptures. Praise to the great and powerful god, with the promises of redemption for doing good, and punishment for doing bad. Of course, that's a superficial description of every damn religion, so nothing deep there. Volume 3 was kinda fun, though, as it was outlining the gruesome punishments in store for you in Hell for committing various crimes. For example, if you provide poisons for abortion, you are doomed to end up in Hell as a lump of meat, with no arms, legs, eyes, nose, or ears. Birds will come and peck at your flesh and cause excruciating, unrelenting pain forever and ever. And you thought the Christian Coalition was hard-core.

All the time on my feet and the bowing were exhausting, and everyone was glad for the ceremony to finish. They are doing five more volumes tomorrow, but thankfully there will be another batch of cousins here to pick up the slack then. Two more volumes on the day after that, plus more ceremonies that we'll all have to show up for. In the good old days, when the entire extended family was in the same village instead of spread out all over the planet, we'd be doing this for three days and three nights, so we're getting off easy.