That. In China, the professional mourning business is booming. Unemployed actors sobly attend funeral ceremonies to mourn their deaths, support their loved ones and, sometimes, dedicate a eulogy to them.
Because. Families hire them to make it appear that the deceased had relatives who appreciated him very much, especially because today young people do not usually express their grief in public settings.
As the funeral ceremony begins, Hu bursts into tears.. He did not know the deceased at all, a farmer who died at the age of 67 from heart failure, but he has tears in his eyes. She looks very distressed, broken with pain.. Dressed in a pristine white suit, the same one traditionally worn by mourning relatives at many funerals in China, Hu finds it difficult to deliver her eulogy because her voice is torn by sobs.
“You were a good man, a good husband, a good father and a good grandfather,” he says, microphone in hand, as he crawls along the ground until he reaches the coffin.. “We never thought you'd be gone so soon. You have left this world full of love. “You were like a tall tree that protected your children from the wind and rain.”
After her words, the woman, again in tears, approaches the relatives of the deceased and grabs the widow's hands, who thanks her for supporting the family in those sad moments.. “Young people don't know how to cry anymore, that's why we needed the right mourner,” the widow whispers to him.
Hu Xinglian is a fifty-something actress who gets paid to cry at strangers' funerals. She is a professional mourner in Chongqing, a city in southwestern China.. He has been doing that job for a decade and has earned more money than in his time acting in the theater.. For half an hour at a funeral, he takes more than 250 euros. Her performance package includes a full kusang, which literally means crying and screaming.. “Our entry into the world is extraordinarily dramatic and loud, so our exit from this world must also be the same,” he says.
Without a doubt, Hu's work is one of the strangest. But researchers say references to these professional mourners are found in ancient Chinese writings even during the Han dynasty, more than 2,000 years ago.. Unemployed actors are usually those hired by families. Some only go to cry, even in a group to make it seem like the deceased had friends who appreciated him very much.. Others, in addition to forcing crying, put on a whole sound and visual spectacle. Everyone present knows that it is an act, but the tears have to be felt and the pain seem authentic.
Performing at funerals across the northern province of Shanxi is Li Silin, a 53-year-old singer and actor. He is hired to perform melodramatic dirges at ceremonies honoring the dead. He does this while crying and contorting his entire body, always with a face of agony.
In Fujian, in the southeast, thirty-year-old Chen Shuqiang operates, saying that now the business is booming and that families especially demand young women as mourners.. “They like it when we make a lot of noise and look very hurt.”. “We usually throw ourselves on the ground in front of the coffin and try to grab it when the pallbearers carry it away,” he says.
The problem with this job is that, in a society as superstitious as China's, there are many who do not want to hang out with people who are so close to the dead all day.. Some professional mourners say that they are never invited to joyful celebrations such as weddings and are even left out at family dinners for fear that their presence will spread bad luck.
