Source of this article: Times Weekly Author: Wang Chenting
When the work was over, it was already two o'clock in the morning. On this day in mid-July, Chaquanling said goodbye to 15 deceased.
At the beginning of last year, she came to the county funeral home under Xiangyang, Hubei Province to be responsible for the body's anti-corrosion and plastic surgery. She is already very familiar with this job - she entered the industry at the age of 19, which is her fifth year as a funeralist.
There are no fixed holidays, and when you are busy, you often work for a day and a night. There is no "annual salary of one million" rumored online. If you do second or second, your monthly salary ranges from 7,000 to 9,000 yuan, but Xiaocha's opinion, this income is not low in a small county town.
In my spare time, Xiaocha loves sports and plays basketball, and he will stop and give a farewell ceremony for a dead fly.
In the recently popular movie " Life Events ", the funeralist is called "the person who grows stars". The first time Xiao Cha heard a similar title was when he went to eat hot pot on his holiday, the waiter mentioned it.
Source: Official Weibo of the movie "Big Events in Life"
"You are the guardian of the soul in the dark, and you are also the brightest star in the night sky. Your hands cast the beauty of the soul and put on gorgeous clothes for them. - To the beautician who most respected."
This small note, Xiaocha has been kept for a long time.
"Often when I eat, people ask me what I do, I will say directly, I am a funeralist. I don't think there is anything shameful about doing this industry, but after hearing it, others have all kinds of reactions. The first time I received such a note, I felt surprised and happy." Xiaocha told the Times Weekly reporter that he has gained a lot in this industry and has never considered changing careers.
movies have made people pay more attention to the funeral industry through tortuous stories, and have also aroused another discussion about "the funeral after death". But for a funeralist like Xiao Cha who faces death directly every day, using a farewell to help his family get out of grief and continue to live, this is Xiao Cha's understanding of death and respect for this profession.
What she gained was not only the awe of life and the cherishment of daily life, but also the comfort she gave herself inadvertently.
One table breakfast
Xiaocha is a basketball sports student, but because he is not tall enough and is worried that he does not have enough professional scores, he chose the single recruitment exam.
Compared with traditional popular majors such as kindergarten teachers, , nursing, etc., Xiaocha prefers "unpopular majors" with good employment and little competition. On the eve of the college entrance examination, grandma's departure made Xiao Cha notice the funeral industry. "I think this is a meaningful thing. I checked it online and I was very interested, so I applied for Changsha Civil Affairs Funeral College ."
Changsha Civil Affairs Funeral College, known as the "Whampoa Military Academy in the Funeral Industry", is the first higher education institution in China to open a modern funeral education major. If it is a unified college entrance examination, the score is about the second-tier line.
A few months before admission, the school’s teaching content was relatively simple, mainly including elegiac couplet writing, funeral applications, etc. Xiao Cha was studious enough. During her first winter vacation in college, she came to Wuzhou Funeral Home in Guangxi. She initially had an internship in the department where the body transport was transported, which became her first job in the industry.
This is also the first time that Xiao Cha has intensively contacted a large number of remains. "I learned in school and were theoretical, but after I really entered the industry, I felt different. There may be sixteen or seven bodies in more than a day, and five or six bodies when I was a little short. There are all kinds of causes of death, and I really realized the impermanence of life."
Xiaocha at work (left) (Photo source: provided by the interviewee)
A field trip was a young girl who died of illness. The girl's husband asked Xiaocha with red eyes, "Is cremation tens of thousands? The treatment has cost a lot of money, but I really have no money." Then he turned his back and wiped his tears.
Xiao Cha, who had just entered the industry, felt sad and called his father in the car. "Often my dad answered the phone and said, "Are you no money?" But that time he said, "I'm bullied outside and go home when I'm unhappy." When my dad said this, I couldn't help it and cried."
The master who brought Xiaocha didn't say anything at the time, but the next day he invited her to have a very sumptuous breakfast and ordered a large table of dishes.
Although it is an ordinary little thing, Xiao Cha still feels the warmth behind the cruel work. The first internship also strengthened Xiaocha's belief in continuing to move forward in this industry.
A football
"Life is really fragile. My father used to like to ride a bike after drinking some wine. I often told him what he encountered at work, but now he doesn't drink it anymore. Family and friends will be affected by me and cherish life more." Xiaocha told the Times Weekly reporter.
Four years in college, Xiaocha internships in various cities. "I have been exposed to cemetery management, cremation, body transportation, funeral services, anti-corrosion and plastic surgery, etc.." After staying in this industry for several years, Xiao Cha has a deeper understanding of life and this profession.
Source: Tuchuang Creative
"I thought at the time that our job was to let the deceased leave at the end. But later I felt that it was actually to let the deceased and the living feel satisfied and at ease."
transformation came from a boy's funeral. The boy was studying in college in Hangzhou and liked to play football, but died in an accident. His parents found it difficult to accept his son's sudden death.
"Our staff chatted slowly with his parents. His mother told us that she was very proud of her son and hated that he liked football so much, but she felt that his son loved playing football and made them proud. This was a very complicated emotion. Usually, a ceremony would be held before the burial. At that time, we arranged the venue as a football field, and then took a football to let the people who came to attend the funeral sign it. When his parents saw it, they couldn't hold it back at the beginning, but they still felt very relieved and happy because this was something my son really liked. I think the boy would be very happy too." Xiao Cha recalled.
She explained this emotion: "If I had a friend who likes playing football and died, you may think of him every time you see football, and it is very sad. But if you accept this, you may be able to recall him better, not just sad. Maybe you can do something meaningful with his dreams." The ending song of the movie "Big Events in Life" sang like this: "Every star in the sky is someone who has loved us. As long as you really believe, you are the person who planted stars."
Xiaocha is also willing to believe that he is the "person who planted stars".
They are closest to the stars, and everything they do for the deceased is to soothe sadness - not to declare the disappearance of a life, but to commemorate the existence of a life.
Farewell once
In addition to helping others to say goodbye, for Xiao Cha herself, the profession of funeralist can sometimes make up for her own regrets and say goodbye.
In March last year, Xiaocha joined the funeral home in Xiangyang County, Hubei Province. Due to funeral reform, this funeral home is the latest reconstruction and was officially opened on April 1, 2021. At that time, the county funeral home was still short of staff, so Xiao Cha took on the work of anti-corrosion and plastic surgery on the body.
Xiaocha at work (Photo source: provided by the interviewee)
On May, Xiaocha received a WeChat message from his father, saying that his grandmother had passed away. "I really wanted to go back at that time. I didn't have a direct train. I was optimistic about the transfer route. Let's take a turn to Wuhan." The train takes more than 20 hours from Xiangyang to my hometown Dali . Although it may not be possible for the funeral, Xiao Cha still wants to go back.
However, the funeral home has just opened less than a month ago and other colleagues can't do stitches. The funeral home transported an elderly man who died in a car accident and needed Xiao Cha to help with the body.
"I really have no choice, I can't go back. But it's a coincidence that the grandmother I sent that day was the same year of birth and even month as my grandmother. The moment I touched her hands, the cocoons left by farm work were hard and rough, exactly the same as my grandmother's. It was the feeling of holding my hands home when she was a child." Xiao Cha said, "I helped her do stitching and rinsing, it was like washing her grandmother, and wearing her grandmother."
, through more than two thousand kilometers, the shadow of grandmother seemed to overlap with the old lady in front of her, allowing Xiao Cha to help him complete the last journey.
Before leaving home to work in Xiangyang, Xiao Cha stayed in his hometown for more than a month. "I bought a piece of clothing for my grandma with my salary, which was a very ordinary coat, but she wore it every day. When someone asked who bought it, she would say with great pride that I bought it for her. On the day I went to the train station to get to Xiangyang, she also wore that dress and walked a long way to see me off. I hugged my grandma and told her that she would bring back everything she wanted next time."
Xiaocha said goodbye to grandma from afar, and she felt no regrets. In her opinion, life is composed of regrets, and regrets make us cherish life itself more.
People seem to be pursuing the so-called decency throughout their lives until death comes. The subsequent events are completed by close relatives and funeralists, either grand or simple, all sincere and the highest respect for life of mankind. Death is not the opposite of life, but is forever a part of life.
Like all funeralists, Xiaocha takes both ends and takes life to the next new world.
