Editor’s note: Han Yun’s family has a long tradition of serving as “daliao,” the local name given to funeral celebrants in China’s northern city of Tianjin. The role involves handling the remains, arranging bespoke ceremonies, and assisting grieving relatives. In her book, “The Blossom Fell: A Daliao’s Notes on Life and Death,” Han recounts nine stories drawn from her experiences and reflects on transformations in local funeral customs over the past 40 years. The following is an excerpt.

You will often hear someone say, “In life, everything except birth and death is a small matter.” But I would say that even birth and death are small matters. I have my reasons — I was born into a family that handles funerals; both my father and grandfather were daliao, the local name for those who preside over funerals.

It’s no exaggeration to say that funerals were both the buffet and playground of my childhood. Whenever someone in the neighborhood passed away, my father would take me along, holding my hand as if we were just paying a friendly visit next door.

From an early age, I watched one body after another being carried away — corpses kept me company as I grew up. While my neighborhood friends played with marbles and slingshots, I played with offerings to be burned for the dead.

A few times, out of sheer boredom, I secretly took the cloth that covered a corpse’s face, wrapped it in a handful of ash, and waved it around the courtyard. The ashes swirled through the air like great gray-black snowflakes.

The adults at funerals were always busy, and no one paid me much attention. So I would study those motionless bodies. I’d ask my father: “Why is the person lying there always asleep? Why is everyone crying? When will they wake up?”

I still remember what my father said: “When you go to a friend’s house to play, and you get tired and it’s getting dark, don’t you come home? They’re not sleeping — they’ve gone home.”

My father was my teacher in the ways of the daliao. In this line of work, your master is very important, as funerals are a serious matter. There is no room for carelessness; a funeral celebrant’s character and reputation are essential.

In the 1970s, my grandfather and father were the best daliao in our area. There were two reasons for this: first, our family didn’t charge for our services; second, we treated the deceased as if they were members of our own family. We gave the dead full care, dignity, and respect.

My father was a reserved person, but whenever someone passed away, during the funeral celebrations, he would transform. With a sweep of his hand, he’d call out: “Children, kneel. Good. Start crying. Good. Stop crying.”

With the mourners in heavy, white clothes, when they knelt, the ground became a great white expanse. My father would be at the front, pointing here and there. The only other people I ever saw with that kind of magical ability were symphony conductors.

End of tradition

On Feb. 25, 1998, the Standing Committee of the Tianjin Municipal People’s Congress (Editor’s note: The regional legislature) passed a set of regulations that specifically aimed at “eliminating outdated funeral customs and promoting civilized and frugal funerals.”

Tianjin’s funeral culture changed. Although families could still place wreaths at their doors and set up green mourning tents, they were no longer allowed to set off firecrackers during funeral processions, and the large paper effigies carried along the way had to be reduced to miniature models.

The three-day funerals of my childhood, once bustling like a marketplace, were no more. Funerals in the past were lively and grand. When an elder approaching 100 years old passed away, people in Tianjin saw it as a natural death following a long life — it was a festive occasion. Relatives from several generations gathered in cheerful commotion. Everyone came to bid this “star of longevity” farewell, to thank them for a lifetime of devotion and hard work, and to seek their blessings and protection — hoping for the same long life and peaceful end. A funeral rich in ritual and a grand wedding are not so different: both allow those who take part to see hope and to cherish life.

From what I’ve observed, when a funeral is carried out perfectly, you can see a sort of clarity in the eyes of the bereaved family — a clarity that seems to have been washed clean by death. Listening to them talk to the departed at the wake or while burning offerings, you hear phrases like: “Now that you’re on the other side, don’t deny yourself good food. Drink a little less, and buy whatever you like.” And they never forget to add, “Please watch over us from heaven. Keep our family safe and peaceful — and help us earn a bit more money.”

It’s as if the deceased has transformed from an ordinary person into a god. Perhaps this is what it means when people call death “sacred.”

Of all the changes in funeral customs, what saddened my father most was how people’s warmth toward one another faded. In the past, when a neighbor died, everyone came to help. Now, in high-rise apartment buildings, there’s even an unwritten rule that a body cannot be transported in an elevator. Corpses must be carried floor by floor by porters. Sometimes you see red cloth strips tied to door handles along the way, a tradition to ward off evil spirits.

A daliao serves the living and is deeply aware of their responsibility. A good daliao must be many things: psychological counselor, comedian, first aid responder, and family mediator.

Although every master has a different style, their outfits have hardly changed in 40 years. No matter the season, a daliao will wear black or other dark colors — never a mask or gloves. Alone they might not draw attention, but when a group of them stands in a row, they look like characters from a gangster movie.

Ritual living

To this day, Tianjin still maintains the custom of transporting the deceased straight from their home to the crematorium. Many people are curious about when a daliao first arrives at a family’s home.

“Daliao, you’ve come.” The deceased’s relatives nod, but they never shake our hands. The daliao lowers his head in a slight bow and says, “Please accept my condolences.” He must be polite, but smiling is strictly forbidden.

After greetings are exchanged, the daliao follows the family inside to see the person who is near death or has passed away. Once we confirm the identity, we wash and dress the body. The daliao then bows and says a few words to the deceased — with warmth as if greeting an old friend — before placing the body in the coffin.

My father would use the gentle voice he had usually only when he was drunk, as if coaxing a child to sleep. “This life hasn’t been easy, has it?” he’d say. “That’s alright. Let everything go. I’m the funeral celebrant, here to help you.”

Once a person has passed, some relatives are extremely fearful of the body. Only when they see the daliao do they begin to relax. We’re there to comfort the living. Throughout the funeral ceremony, we tell people to carry their sorrow and longing for their loved one, and to live on with courage.

Outside almost every store selling funerary goods in Tianjin is a sign that reads, “One-stop funeral service,” followed by a phone number. The daliao at the end of the line are on standby 24 hours a day — a phone will never ring more than three times before it’s answered. Many even sleep in their clothes, making sure they’re ready to respond the moment they are called.

New generation

In recent years, daliao have been getting younger — some are just past 20, barely out of school. They enter this profession by choice, carrying on a “one-stop” funerary tradition that has been passed down for thousands of years: washing and dressing the body, setting up a spirit hall, organizing a farewell, transporting the remains by hearse, cremating and placing the ashes in a box, and finally interring that box in a grave.

Daliao today handle far more funerals than in the 1970s and ’80s. Each year there are more deaths from traffic accidents, suicides, and cancer. The deceased are also getting younger.

Frequent contact with death makes young funeral celebrants seem more mature than most their age. To deal with death every day requires not just courage but also compassion. After only a few months as a daliao, your outlook begins to change. Only, they don’t become depressed — on the contrary, they laugh more, live more openly, and no longer get tangled up in small things.

Like me, younger daliao enjoy reflecting. During funerals, they will talk with the family, and their favorite question to ask is what kind of person the departed was.

My father once said, “After you’ve seen enough death, you start to understand how to live.” The optimists of Tianjin have it right: Eat, drink, and be merry.

Daliao often meet to chat — three generations, raising their glasses together in lively company. Many of my funeral stories come from these gatherings. Listening to the older daliao recall their early days is like hearing war stories told in peacetime.

Cremation was introduced in Tianjin in 1956. When families secretly buried their deceased, a daliao would visit their home to persuade them to cremate — and he’d often get beaten for it. During government demolition and relocation projects, fights would break out among relatives — sometimes they would try to pry open the coffin and remove the body. The daliao would have to throw themselves on the coffin and hold on tight until the police arrived.

When a child’s parents died in a traffic accident shortly before Chinese New Year, a daliao fulfilled the mother’s dying wish by dressing as Pleasant Goat (from the Chinese animated series “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf”) and setting off fireworks with the child on New Year’s Eve.

For daliao, death isn’t about sending someone out of this world, but about helping their loved ones make it through the ordeal.

No matter how many funerals a daliao handles, every deceased person leaves an impression, often appearing again in our dreams. The daliao don’t believe in much else — only that good people are rewarded with good in return.

I remember one spring, when all the daliao gathered to attend the funeral of an old master. He had spent most of his life conducting funerals. In his own words: “I came to understand life and death a long time ago. Usually it’s me sending others off, but this time it’s finally your turn to see me on my way. It’s time I got into the coffin and had a proper rest. And when I get over there and meet the people whose funerals I once conducted, I’ll be sure to ask them whether they were satisfied with my service.”

On the day of his memorial, it began to rain. The ashes from the cremation chamber were still as warm as a living body. All of us daliao, holding umbrellas, scattered petals from fading spring flowers across every corner of the crematorium grounds.

“The Blossom Fell: A Daliao’s Notes on Life and Death” was published in September by People’s Literature Publishing House. This excerpt is republished here with permission.

Translator: Sophia Charles; editors: Wang Juyi and Hao Qibao.

(Header image: VCG)