Thursday, August 24, 2006

Funeral strippers



I've written about Japanese rural funerals, but it seems a certain type of Chinese rural funeral has rather a lot more going for it. In some parts of the backwoods of that country, it is customary to have strippers at funerals! The authorities don't like it and have set up a "funeral misdeeds" hotline to put a stop to all the lewdness.

Funeral Stripping also seems to be part of the Taiwanese mourning scene and has prompted much scholarly headscratching.

(Incidentally, the photo above is actually of a Taiwanese wedding stripper but, hey, whoever said I was accurate?)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

All very strange!!
On the topic of strange local customs but not in any way relating to funerals, or indeed stripping, I thought that you might like this one courtesy of last Friday's Guardian Diary:

'As ever we are indebted to the news service of Iceland's Western Fjords, Baejarins Bestu, for the news that the remote Strandir region will this weekend host the island's fourth annual ram-groping contest. As in previous years, this prestigious competition is divided into two categories, "one for experienced, and another for inexperienced gropers", who must rate five rams "in order of excellence". The winning contestants are those who come closest to the ranking established earlier, and in complete secrecy, by a group of local experts. We have, we confess a number of questions in relation to this important item, such as what contstitutes excellence in a ram, and how precisely one goes about ascertaining it. But we are much reasurred by Baejardis Bestu's promise that Iceleandic meat soup will be served, along with a cake buffet.'

Come to think of it, this might provide an alternative to the troublesome strippers for realising the all important goal of getting peopel to attend the funeral - well at least the meat soup and cakes might do the trick!