À part un autel et une importante procession, on avait souvent des feux d’artifice qui accompagnait le tout. Ceux-çi avaient pour but d’effrayer les mauvais esprits mais plus souvent qu’autrement, ce sont les chevaux de la procession qui se cabraient. Dès l’arrivée au cimetière, on entassait dans une pile tout les vêtements, la literie et les objets ayant appartenu au défunt et on les brûlaient. Comme tout funéraille dans la culture asiatique, on y faisait un offrande de nourriture et d’un porc grillé. La nourriture, souvent laissé à la nature, faisait l’objet de pillage de clochards dans les environ des cimetières de Santa Cruz.
Le plus fascinant aspect des funérailles chinoises étaient le fait qu’on enterrait toujours le mort à la verticale… pour économiser sur la grandeur du terrain acheté au cimetière. C’est tout dire!
Source: Lydon, Sandy “Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region”, p. 261-266, 1985.
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At the time, Chinese funerals were an affair to remember. The more important was the person in the Chinese community, the bigger was the funeral.
Beside an altar and an important procession, there were often firecrackers that came with it. Those were there to frighten the evil spirits but more often than never, it was the horses used to pull the hearse that got spooked. At the cemetery arrival, we would gather in a pile all the clothing, bedding and belongings of the dead and burned them. Like any Asian funerals, we often did food offering and a roast pork for the dead one. The food, left for the God and nature, would often be stolen by Santa Cruz homeless who lived in the cemetery neighborhood.
The most fascination aspect of those funerals was the fact that we always buried Chinese at the vertical… to save up on the cemetery plot. Unbelievable!
Source: Lydon, Sandy “Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region”, p. 261-266, 1985.
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