Group 6, Mountain-View Village, Street Corner Town, South Wind District, Yuan Ding City, Xizhou.
A family was preparing a funeral.
Though the house was in a village, a concrete road had been built. Two and a half meters wide, it branched off the country road and stretched toward the house beside the bamboo grove like a jade ribbon in the sunlight, letting the family drive right up to their door.
There were even more cars coming and going today than at New Year.
Some distant relatives had long since left the village, or even the city, to work in the provincial capital or another province. They had all hurried back today. Their faces were unfamiliar to the young people receiving guests.
Perhaps, for those relatives, this visit would be their last. Even if they had to travel a thousand miles, they had to come this once.
In a few more years, their descendants would be strangers to one another too.
This was the last of their family ties.
The young people receiving guests struggled to recognize the arriving relatives and felt awkward, but there was little they could do. Some of the elders were such distant relations that they might have met them only once or twice as small children. So they followed custom, kneeling and bowing to each arrival without saying anything else.
The elders waited at the door.
According to Yi Nation's traditions, a funeral required a ritual master. Daoist families invited one from a nearby temple, Buddhist families from a nearby monastery. Those who believed in neither generally followed local custom and invited whichever most people in the area did. These days, many families invited no one at all.
The old gentleman had obtained a Daoist conversion certificate, so they needed a Daoist ritual master to conduct