East meets West

"Strike up the music!"

As one of the few upscale establishments in Crane City, Starbucks had its own musical performances.

Most of its musicians weren't regulars, though. More often than not, they were students hired from Crane City University's music department.

Today, for instance, at the request of a customer named Xu Nayuyan, the café manager had gone out of his way to hire a few music students.

They were there to play songs that would set a romantic mood.

But now, these students, clutching their guitars and violins, were gazing admiringly at the Western band performing onstage.

This was a bona fide professional band brought in from overseas, complete with a trumpeter, a French horn player, and a trombonist.

Their rendition of "A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix" was utterly heartrending.

He Min sat nearby, cracking sunflower seeds and offering her verdict. "Not bad, but it's still missing something. I'll see if I can find a folk suona master. After they finish playing, the suona can really cement that mournful atmosphere. Hey, what do you think?"

Xu Nayuyan looked down at the swirling latte art in his coffee. Without adding any sugar, he copied the way He Min drank bottled water and downed it in one gulp.

"Not bad."

"Sigh, I don't even know whether he liked these instruments. I like them a lot, but right up until he left, he never told me what he liked." He Min's voice grew quiet again.

Xu Nayuyan wanted to comfort her, but he felt he had truly become a tongue-tied fool, unable to think of anything to say.

Listening to the mournful music onstage, looking at the huge funeral wreath beside them and the spirit money scattered across the floor, Xu Nayuyan suddenly felt that his assignment was no easy task.

He wondered what that dead fellow would think if he could see this.

"We're having a Western-style funeral, right?" Xu Nayuyan asked.

"A mix of Chinese and Western styles." He Min spat out a sunflower seed shell and began outlining her vision.

"Listen, he liked a lively atmosphere. We won't be taking part in that anonymous funeral the authorities are arranging. Let those reporters and officials mess around however they like. Our funeral has to be lively. The police station gave me a list of everyone he came into contact with after arriving in this city."

"I sent invitations to all of them. He was such a good person. I'm sure they'll all come."

Xu Nayuyan remembered the few "additional services" his superiors had instructed him to provide and felt he needed to make things clear again.

"All right. Do whatever you want with the main funeral. I won't get in your way. But I have a few requirements of my own, and I hope you won't interfere with those either," Xu Nayuyan said.

"I won't. Do whatever you like. It's your money anyway." He Min didn't particularly care.

She was determined to make this funeral a beautiful one.

She would send Zhang Youzhi off with a bang!

She had even planned out his seventh-day memorial and every annual Tomb-Sweeping Day!

Now that the woman before him had promised not to interfere anymore, Xu Nayuyan felt a little better. Following her example, he grabbed some sunflower seeds from the dish, dropped his affected air of elegance, and began cracking them with relish.

"Hey, do you think we should put up an opera stage?" He Min struck up another conversation.

"That... might not be such a good idea."

"Think about it. Everyone could watch an opera while eating the funeral banquet. What an atmosphere! We'll have them perform... perform 'Wujiapo.' He always said I was hopelessly lovesick, so I'll have them sing it for him. I think he'd be happy seeing it from down below." He Min stood firmly by her idea.

As she spoke, she even sang a passage.

"Aaah~ My wife~ Wang Baochuan~"

Xu Nayuyan nearly blacked out.

The main funeral venue was at the widest stretch of the Crane River, on what had once been a golf course. Although it was no longer in business, its lawns and scenery were still second to none.

It also offered a spectacular river view and the most expensive burial plots.

A large number of professionals from the White Jade Capital Company were setting up the funeral venue. Dressed in ordinary black clothes and wearing a hard hat, He Min directed them with a small flag in her hand.

"Yes, that's right. Put the arch up."

"Be careful over there. That gravestone cost a fortune. Don't drop it or knock it against anything."

"The crane! Where's the crane? What's with this pit? Fill it back in, quickly."

"The excavator ruined the lawn here. Take a patch of turf from somewhere else and repair it."

Since this was the only site suitable for the best possible funeral, negotiations between He Min and the authorities ultimately resulted in both sides agreeing to hold their funerals at the same location.

First would come the official funeral. A large number of reporters and relevant personnel would attend to go through the motions, and a few children would be arranged to lay flowers at Zhang Youzhi's oversized gravestone.

In the afternoon, after all those assorted people had cleared out, the real funeral would take place under He Min's direction. The city's most famous television host had been hired as the master of ceremonies, but not a single reporter would remain at the venue.

In accordance with Zhang Youzhi's final wishes, Xu Nayuyan had also added a Chinese-style funeral banquet to the Western-style funeral.

He Min had no objection to that, but they got into a major argument over the food to be served.

He Min insisted on following rural funeral banquet customs, while Xu Nayuyan insisted on serving primarily Western food.

He Min snapped at him, "The guests are cops, thugs, students, steamed bun shop owners, kids, thieves, homeless people, and opera performers. Who's supposed to eat all that coffee and dessert you're putting out?"

Xu Nayuyan refused to back down. "And you think anyone will eat those pork knuckles you're serving?"

Neither would budge, so they eventually decided to serve their own dishes separately.

The banquet wasn't the only thing they disagreed over.

They clashed fiercely over everything from the funeral proceedings to the handling of the remains.

Xu Nayuyan insisted on following the established procedure. According to Zhang Youzhi's list of final wishes, he was to be cremated first, then have his ashes scattered into the Crane River. A few pieces of clothing in the coffin would suffice for the ceremonial burial.

He Min disagreed. She insisted that his body be frozen and sealed in the coffin, then buried in the earth to be slowly reclaimed by nature.

"Being burned hurts so much! Why don't you try jumping into a furnace that's over a thousand degrees?" He Min protested tearfully.

"Dead people can't feel pain."

"You've never died. How do you know whether it hurts?"

Xu Nayuyan felt a headache coming on.

But the cremation had to happen. The two began trying to seize possession of Zhang Youzhi's remains. He Min went back to the He River Group and brought a group of employees armed with brooms and sticks, confronting Xu Nayuyan and a group of White Jade Capital employees. They nearly came to blows.

In the end, Number Two had to step in with Zhang Youzhi's final letter and barely managed to settle the matter.

"Cremation!"

A furnace over a thousand degrees-He Min couldn't bear to imagine how agonizing that would be. But there was nothing she could do, so she had to compromise.

Fortunately, despite all their squabbling,

the preparations for this one-of-a-kind funeral were finally complete.

They would cremate him tonight and scatter his ashes, bury the coffin tomorrow, then erect that custom-made, enormous gravestone over the grave. That would be the end of it.

Really, there was no need to go to all this trouble. As Zhang Youzhi had put it:

Why sleep so long while alive, when death brings eternal rest?