China’s crackdown on funeral strippers
The bizarre tradition of hiring exotic dancers to attract mourners has been described as a ‘toxin for public morality’ by Chinese authorities
TO the casual observer it looks like a hell of a party. In a town in rural China a crowd gathers as actors, singers and acrobats perform. There is noise, excitement, celebration and on a stage scantily clad women dance a striptease as the crowd cheers and laughs.
You might be forgiven for assuming this is some kind of stag party or an exuberant way of seeing in the Chinese New Year but you’d be wrong. On a backdrop behind the strippers is an image of an elderly resident, with a text beneath reading: “We offer profound condolences for the death of this man.”
According to chinese tradition, funerals are not seen as an occasion for grieving but rather as a chance for the community to mark the deceased’s journey into the afterlife in style.
Big crowds are a sign of honouring the dead and a funeral party with raucous entertainment is considered a symbol of good fortune for those relatives still living. But it seems that for the Chinese government the raucousness is going too far.
The Chinese ministry of culture has announced plans to eliminate the “bizarre” custom of hiring strippers at funerals, describing the practice as “obscene and vulgar”, a “toxin for public morality” and vowing to “crack down on stripping”.
They are focusing their campaign on 19 cities across the Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu and Hebei provinces and have set up hotlines for concerned citizens in exchange for cash rewards. A crackdown in 2015 saw one “dance ensemble” fined around £5,700 for a two-and-a-half hour performance at the funeral of an elderly man in the city of Handan in the Hebei province.
BUT it seems that the idea of erotic entertainment as a way of easing one’s passage into the afterlife is only growing more popular – and more spectacular. In Taiwan last month it was reported how the funeral of politician Tung Hsiang, 76, not only featured dancing and a band but also a procession of 50 jeeps – with a pole dancer writhing on top of each.
In 2016 footage emerged on YouTube of several bikini-clad strippers at a funeral, gyrating around the coffin of a man identified only as Mr Jian, at one stage even draping themselves seductively over his casket.
According to professor Marc Moskowitz, who made the documentary Dancing For The Dead, such sights are increasingly de rigueur at funerals. “Women will sing and dance, usually in bikinis,” TOP GEAR: Dancers perform during a funeral procession in Chiayi City he says. “Sometimes they will take off all their clothes.”
The practice of providing entertainment for mourners extends back to the 17th-century Qing Dynasty when funerals were seen as an opportunity to honour the deceased’s life. Everett Zhang, assistant professor of east Asian studies at Princeton University, explains: “In China when the person who dies is very old this kind of occasion becomes purely a celebration.”
It followed that the greater the number of guests present at a funeral meant the greater the honour for the deceased and so in a bid to ensure as big a turnout as possible grieving families would often lay on a show for them. But while employing actors, singers and drummers all became standard practice commentators noticed in the 1990s that striptease increasingly began to feature among the entertainment.
While some believe it originated at the funerals of brash gangsters wishing to flaunt their flashy lifestyles even after their deaths, before being taken on by “ordinary” people, others insist that there are more deep-rooted cultural and even religious reasons for the practice.
“In some local cultures dancing with erotic elements can be used to convey the deceased’s wishes of being blessed with many children,” Professor Huang Jianxing of Fujian Normal University’s sociology and history department said in a report for official state newspaper Global Times. Media professor Kuang Haiyan added: “According to the interpretation of cultural anthropology the fete is originated from the worship of reproduction.
“Therefore the erotic performance at the funeral is just a cultural atavism. From the perspective of folklore rituals such as the Chinese New Year are the critical time for people to lay down their life and embrace the death. That’s the moment for them to release their passion at the funeral.”
It is also more prevalent in rural working-class communities, with experts split as to why this might be. While some believe it is because – cut-off from the sophistication of the big cities the people in such communities are more prone to cling on to ideas such as fertility rituals and “the worship of reproduction” – others claim that it is the toxic influence of the West that is to blame.
“Having exotic performances of this nature at funerals highlights the trappings of modern life in China whereby vanity and snobbery prevail over traditions,” said the Xinhua News Agency, the official press agency of the republic.
Whatever the reason it may soon be that the only sight more eye-opening than that of a stripper at a funeral is that of a mourner reporting it to the police.