CHINESE FUNERAL

I came across a bit of a hoopla one morning in Pingyao as I made my way towards the center of town and the old City Tower. What I usually do in a situation like that is just sit back and observe, but it actually took a while before I realized that it was a funeral procession that I was seeing. For one, the upbeat and lively music threw me off. Crammed off to the side of the narrow street there was a band set up, plugged into an ear-splitting sound system. There was a keyboardist, a guy hammering away on an electric drumkit, a couple of dudes playing symbols, and a few others playing funny looking wind instruments into microphones. It was quite the ensemble. The guy in the background in the picture on the right was playing some kind of high-pitched reeded horn instrument, he seemed to be the leader of the group and his melody carried the tune. It's moments like that that make me I wish I were an ethnomusicologist! The music provided the soundtrack for a procession of vehicles that passed under the City Tower. I later found out that the guy with the interesting headdress in the upper left picture was the son of the man who had passed away. He was facilitating the arrangement of huge bouquets of fake flowers that were being placed on trucks as they drove by.  I followed the parade away from the town center, it was long, and eventually snaked it's way towards the city walls and exited town at the lower west gate. Away from the loud and peppy music, the march felt a little more somber, more like a funeral.  It was a sad day in Pingyao, but I was happy to be alive.