Chapter 39: Scattering flowers around the coffin (Part 1)

June 18, 2023Ai Hrist

The sudden turn of events made the audience in the live broadcast room confused.

Soon, many Guizhou viewers who knew about this funeral custom spontaneously popularized science in the live broadcast room, and with the help of the director team, they quickly found relevant information from the big data and inserted it into the live broadcast room.

It turns out that in Guizhou Province, whenever the elders with high status in the family die, the descendants of the younger generations will perform the ceremony of wrapping around the coffin at the funeral.

There were slight differences in customs across the province, but the two items of “scattering flowers around the coffin” were roughly the same.

The former was ‘wrap around the coffin’.

On the day before the deceased was buried, the Taoist Master nearby was invited to perform a coffin-sealing ceremony on the coffin.

After sealing the coffin, the Taoist Master will be in front, and then let the juniors in the family line up in order from the oldest to the youngest, forming a circle around the coffin of the deceased.

Under the leadership of the Taoist Master, the juniors began to circle the coffin.

Or walked around while shaking a bell in their hand, accompanied by wailing and mourning songs.

Or let the eldest son and the second son hold the soul-calling banner and hold the spirit tablet in both hands, while the other filial sons and grandsons offer a stick of incense, and salute to the dead elders in the coffin every time they go around to the coffin.

In some places, there were three or five circles, while in some places, it can be circled twelve times.

This tradition was to express the reluctance and respect of the younger generations for the deceased, as well as the meaning of mourning.

Then the other one was “Scattering flowers around”.

After the ceremony of the descendants encircling the coffin, relatives, and friends who came to the funeral will sit around the coffin and listen to the ceremony of scattering flowers by the Taoist Master.

Under normal circumstances, the content sung in the process was to praise the deeds of the deceased or to bless their reincarnation.

[I’m a native of Guizhou Province, and I’ve heard a little bit about this custom, but it’s a ceremony only for burials. Now many people choose cremation, and funerals are not as weird as before. I’ve never seen people surround a coffin.]

[Respect the culture and etiquette of various places, but I still want to ask, isn’t it really scary to cry around the coffin in the middle of the night? I’m afraid I’m the kind who can pass out just by looking at it…]

[This is the first time I heard about this kind of funeral ceremony, and it feels quite novel.]

[So what did this younger brother do?]

Hearing Gu Zhisang mention the rituals performed at the funeral, Xiao Xi pursed her lips and said:

“My grandfather’s funeral is indeed done according to the most traditional way. He has never been out of the village in his life. He is very old and has a high status in the village. When we returned, half of the village went to worship at the funeral banquet that was held for 3 days.”

She turned her head to stare at her younger brother, and said coldly, “Say it yourself, what good did you do?!”

Xiao Cheng hesitated, feeling a little guilty.

He didn’t like his grandfather since he was a child, and he was reluctant to go to the funeral, so he did something that made him feel a little guilty.

But that matter was so secretive that he was sure no one but himself would know.

On the one hand, he was ashamed to say it in front of the camera, on the other hand, he still has unrealistic fantasies:

Maybe this contestant was just cheating, after all, how could she even know about that?!

Xiao Cheng said: “I didn’t do anything, sister. At the funeral, you didn’t let me laugh or make me cold-faced. I pretended to be crying and worshiping people. Didn’t you watch me the whole time? So what can I do?”

“Are you still stubborn? The master told you to reflect on yourself!”

Seeing her younger brother with a stiff neck and a stiff mouth, Xiao Xi became anxious and angry.

At this moment, Gu Zhisang spoke. She didn’t directly expose Xiao Cheng, but looked at the faces of the two siblings and said: “I see that the foreheads and faces of your siblings are flat. Connecting the Tianting point to the Biancheng point. This area of the forehead shows the fortune palace. While in terms of the twelve palaces on the face, it shows the Parent’s Palace.”

“Your second palace is flat and empty, and there is no obvious parental line, which means that both of your parents died when you were very young. This also caused you to be in a bad situation when you were young, and you didn’t enjoy any good fortune.”

The siblings didn’t expect her to suddenly mention her parents, and their expressions were stunned.

Gu Zhisang stretched out her fingertips, then tapped her inner temple and said:

“Have you ever heard people say that your hair is thick and messy here?”

“Some people often say that…” Xiao Xi nodded and said: “My brother and I both had a low hairline since childhood, and there is a circle of fine fluff like lanugo. My brother’s short hair mixed it, so it’s not that obvious. While me, when my long hair is tied, the fluff in this circle is particularly obvious, and sometimes it looks a bit messy when the hair is fried, I don’t like it.”

Gu Zhisang’s lips twitched, then said: “That place is Tiancang, also known as the Migration Palace.”

“Your brothers and sisters have a lot of miscellaneous and uneven migration palaces, which means that when you were young, you often changed your place of residence, or were sent to others and lost your home. This is also the saddest experience in your heart, so it is embodied in your migration palace. “

“It is precisely because of these experiences that your siblings have left your hometowns and hated going back to that place to see those relatives. Am I right?”

After a long silence, Xiao Xi smiled wryly and said: “Although I don’t know what Master Gu is trying to do for bringing up these past events, you are right.”

“Our family was quite rich when we were young. My parents rented a shop in the county to open a noodle restaurant. Although they didn’t buy a house in the county, we didn’t have to worry about food and drink. They were the most respectable among several relatives of the same clan. “

In Xiao Xi’s memory, she and her younger brother had pocket money of two or three yuan every day, and they were the children with the newest clothes and snacks when they returned to the village during the holidays.

However, everything ended in an accident.

“When I was 9 years old and my younger brother was 5 years old, my parents had an accident when they went out to buy goods, and both died. Since then, our two children have been taken back home by the elders of the same clan, and we took turns to live at the houses of those uncles and aunts.”

“We live in this family for 3 months and lived in that family for half a year. I don’t need to say what kind of life we lived under the supervision of others. After all, it depends on the faces of those elders. Later, when I graduated from high school, I took my younger brother away from there.”

When Xiao Xi said it, her expression was cold. It was obvious that she had deep conflicts with her relatives over there.

She suddenly thought of something, and suddenly turned her head to look at her younger brother: “You, you didn’t do anything disrespectful at the grandfather’s funeral because of what happened before, right?”

This time Xiao Cheng pursed his lips and said nothing.