Dancing for the Dead

Hey there! Nice to see you and hearty thanks for clicking by. Slide on over to the coffee pot and pour yourself a healthy dose of life-extending Arabica juice. While you’re there, snag one of those scrumptious looking virtual doughnuts – double chocolate with Bavarian cream. Hold it above your head for a minute or so to let all the calories jump out. If anyone asks what you’re doing, tell ‘em straight. Chances are, they’ll never bother you again! Okay…now on to today’s witerature…

For years, many traditional funerals in Taiwan -- especially in rural areas or among working classes -- have included pop singers and bikinied dancers, supposedly to entertain the ghosts that will protect the deceased in the afterlife.

According to a recent documentary, some of the dancers until 20 years ago were strippers who did lap dances with funeral guests, until the government made such behavior illegal. Wait a minute, there, Bob… how old are these dancers now, eh?  Sounds as though they’ll be dancing at their own funerals soon!

Contemporary song-and-dance shows, like the traveling Electric Flower Car, is a wheeled, neon-lit platform upon which women strip down to their bare essentials. These shows supposedly appeal to "lower" gods who help cleanse the deceased of the more mundane vices such as gambling and prostitution (compared to the "higher" gods who focus on morality and righteousness).

Hey, no one knows for sure, right? So go for it. Appease all the gods, I say. Why take chances… though how a bunch of long-in-the-tooth strippers is going to do that is beyond me.

See ya!

Bob