This
Japanese-style
house with a
hot spring
costs
US$2,100 and
is one of
the many
paper
designs on
offer at
Skea Design.
The company
specializes
in
custom-made
products
that will be
burned at
funerals.
(Staff
photo/Chen
Mei-ling)<P>
|
This Japanese-style
house with a hot spring
costs US$2,100 and is
one of the many paper
designs on offer at Skea
Design. The company
specializes in
custom-made products
that will be burned at
funerals. (Staff
photo/Chen Mei-ling)<P>
Publication
Date：11/29/2007
Section：Panorama
By June Tsai
Palm trees and comfortable beach chairs, a fully furnished
two-floor Japanese-style
house with spa, a health
club equipped with the
latest equipment, a high-end
box of assorted cosmetics,
plates full of sushi and
other tasty foods are just
some aspects of the modern
lifestyle that can be found
on the display shelves at
Skea Design. However, there
are no life-sized products
for sale in this
Taipei-based shop. Each
paper design has been made
miniature and is destined to
be consumed on the funeral
pyre.
With its hip name and a
variety of products on
offer, at first glance, Skea
Design could easily pass for
just another boutique
satisfying the fleeting
demands of Taipei's youth,
but the young design team
takes pride in setting foot
in the hallowed ground of a
Chinese tradition dating
back thousands of years. "We
believe what we are making
with our own hands will be
used by our relatives and
friends in another world,"
the company's director, Yean
Han, said Nov. 9.
At Chinese funerals,
miniature houses and all
manner of other items
pertaining to daily life are
burned as offerings to the
recently departed, as
Chinese people believe that
in this way the deceased
will get to use the objects
in the afterlife. "The
theory behind the practice
is that we should treat the
dead in the same way as we
treat the living," George
Chen, director of De-Yuan
Funeral Service Co., said
Nov. 12.
He explained that the
core principle of organizing
a funeral according to
traditional beliefs was to
"avoid impending trouble and
seek good luck." Therefore,
he said, a funeral director
needs to help find an
auspicious day for
ceremonies to take place.
And to avoid otherworldly
trouble, it is vital that
salt and rice grains be
thrown on the coffin
whenever it is moved. "Every
action is linked to
something," Chen said, "It
is a highly complicated
operation."
It is no surprise that
current funeral practices
have become so complex
because they are the
culmination of thousands of
years of Buddhist, Confucian
and Taoist rituals, he
pointed out, adding that
burning paper effigies is
one practice that has
remained the same, even if
other customs have changed
over the centuries.
According to Chen, the
practice of burning paper
figures can be traced all
the way back to the Tang
dynasty of ancient China
between 618 and 907 A.D.
Despite their importance
to any funeral rite, over
the years, however, the
design and personality of
paper objects seem to have
been sacrificed for size and
mediocrity. "Many paper
houses designed for burning
today are made in
standardized forms and come
from factories in China or
other Southeast Asia
countries," Han said. "They
are just for showing off at
funerals, so are usually
oversized objects with
completely wrong
proportions," the
28-year-old added.
If size is the only thing
that matters, Han said, "The
ritual of burning will be a
dead one." It is the
attention to detail that is
more important than
enormity, she said,
elaborating, "We put our
mind and attentiveness into
the making of the objects
because we believe that the
dead will use them. Those
who come to us share the
same belief and attitude."
Han also pointed out that as
burning large effigies is
not environmentally
friendly, Skea Design
insists on using materials
that create as little
pollution as possible.
It all started, Han
recalled, when her
grandfather passed away in
2006. Her family was not at
all satisfied with the paper
houses on offer, so Han and
her friends decided to make
one instead. It took them
two days and two nights to
find the right paper, draw
up designs and, finally,
construct the kind of
Japanese-style house that
her grandfather had always
dreamed of living in. The
finished product delighted
Han's grandmother, lighting
up her sad face, she said.
"We discovered this to be
a meaningful thing to do.
The death of a loved one is
a sad event, yet what we are
doing brings comfort to the
dead, as well as the
living," Han said,
recounting her initiation of
stepping into a business
that she had no experience
in.
After only one month of
opening, the design house
had a sales volume
equivalent to what a regular
salesman might accumulate in
a whole year, with orders
coming from as far away as
California. One of Skea's
latest products--an iPhone
look-alike with a
Chinese-language
interface--was so lifelike
that it caused many bloggers
to suspect it was a copy of
the real thing. "Web surfers
finally realized what our
products are intended for
and that we are not
manufacturing cheap copies
of brand names," Han said.
She described how the
team invited customers to
take part in the process of
manufacturing by remembering
things about the departed,
the kind of houses or food
they liked, for example. In
this way, Han believed,
people can have a proper
avenue for their grief. "We
are serious in creating our
own brand and serving people
who continue to care for
those they have survived,"
she added.
Some people may suggest
that adding brightness and
humor to the grim
circumstances of a funeral
is unorthodox, yet Skea
Design believes it is doing
noble work by catering to
sincere individuals who
believe there is a special
and personal way to build a
connection with a loved one
who has passed away.
With this sense of belief
driving the business
forward, the design team set
out to take its ideas to a
greater audience via the
Internet. A good example of
the responsibility the
company takes in offering
its service is in the
section concerning aborted
fetuses. Skea Design's
website advocates a
responsible way of life, but
should a baby be aborted,
the team advises that it be
honored in the same way as
any departed loved one.
Excessive feelings of fear
and guilt only allow
unscrupulous monks to take
advantage of such grief, the
website warns. "Fortunately,
we haven't received many
orders for our baby sets,"
Han said.
Unethical "holy" men and
unprofessional funeral
operators are just two of
the problems that the
government is trying to
combat, said Chen, who has a
master's degree from the
Department of Life-and-Death
Studies at Nanhua University
in Chiayi County.
According to local media,
Taiwan's Council of Labor
Affairs will introduce a
certification system for
funeral directors by
November next year. The
system is expected to
establish a stricter sense
of professionalism in the
industry and weed out those
unfit to serve the public,
Chen said.
"Although most people
providing funeral services
come from the lower levels
of society, they still do
business in an upright way,"
he said, lamenting that the
low income associated with
funeral businesses has
indeed prompted some to
exploit grieving
individuals, however.
Chen said that Taiwan
currently lags behind other
developed countries, such as
the United States, in
recognizing and promoting
the professionalism of
funeral services. "The
United States introduced a
system to certify funeral
undertakers in the 1940s,
when people started to be
referred to as funeral
directors." A similar
certification system in
Taiwan could increase the
standard of services
offered, he hoped, and, in
the long run, help the
public have a more favorable
impression of those who
permanently have one foot in
this world and the other in
the next.
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