High cost of dieing
One of the neat little things I like about living here is the tombs. I know, I'm weird. Be that as it may, the burial situation here is quite different from back home. Back home if you want to get buried, you have to buy a plot at one of the local graveyards. Here, it seems that any bit of vacant land is open for negotiation. I first discovered this on our fourth or fifth hike. We were headed up the mountain and all of a sudden I see these marble things. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that they were tombs. Since then I've found that the hillsides here are dotted with these things. (I've also ran across a trio situated in someone's backyard, but I think that's the exception.) I don't know if people are actually buried within them or they only house people's ashes. Anyway, like I said, I think they're neat. Whether it's because they tend to be shaped like the monitor I bought with my Mac ci, or just the random nature of their placement, I don't know.
One thing I never considered, however, is how the things get there. Back home, graves are nicely arranged in rows with roadways built through the memorial park. Here, although there is one hill that seems to be dedicated to tombs, graves tend to be scattered about, with foot trails being one's only access to the site. The full implications of that were revealed to me on this morning's hike. We ventured up Man Jiao Hou mountain, making our way through Man Jiao village. (The translation of the mountain's name is "behind Man Jiao mountain".) As we stepped onto the trail we had to walk around a number of slabs of granite. Graves in the making, I noticed. I didn't think much about it until a couple of minutes later when we saw one of those pieces going up the hill. Well, the piece itself wasn't ambulating. It was being carried by six or so guys. Each pair had a length of thick bamboo across their shoulders with the stone suspended from it by chains. We changed our hike to avoid them, and when we came back down, the guys were still at work. We had to jump up onto a rice paddy to give them the right of way. The guys on the left side were walking along the narrow path, the poor guys on the right had to slog through the drainage ditch alongside. When I considered how high up i've found tombstones, I had to marvel at how dedicated some folks are to their dearly departed. I mean, I've read about venerating the ancestors and all that, but I had to see these guys breaking their backs to haul hundreds of pounds of granite up the hill in order for it to become real to my American mind.
Anyway, I have at times thought how nice it would be to be buried up in one of the pine groves in one of those fancy Chinese tombs. (Not that I will actually care, once my time comes.) But after seeing what a burden it would be for the living, I think I may just go back to my original plan of hiding my corpse in the yard waste bin.
posted by John @ 7:56 AM
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