Sam James, an adjunct professor in the Funeral Services program at Piedmont Technical College, recently spent an extended period in China, discussing funeral issues with the Chinese funeral association. The following is his account of his experiences.

Two Worlds with One Vision

By Sam James

“Are you happy?” he would ask as he looked at my very American face, standing at 6 foot 6 inches tall.  "Yes, Professor Zheng!” I would exclaim, affirming that all was well.  “Good.” His look of bewilderment and concern would change to a smile that extended from ear to ear. He would grab my arm and off to the next event we would go.

It had been several months since Zheng Tian Zhong and I had started communicating. I have worked since age 16 at Raymer Funeral Home, just outside of Charlotte, NC. Since that time, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and my associate’s degree in Funeral Services. In addition to working at the funeral home, I am now developing an online program and teaching those courses for the South Carolina College of Funeral Services. Because of my work with funeral education, Professor Zheng extended an invitation to come take part in his expo. It was an international conference sponsored by the Funeral Institute of Shanghai. The theme was education. It would certainly be an education. From there, the adventure began.

I had never been to Asia, so I took the opportunity to explore this whole new world. My college roommate was in Henan province teaching English in the university.  I met him and toured the country, from Beijing to Hong Kong and everywhere in between.  We took planes, trains and automobiles all around the country. I spent days with him teaching English and getting inside the lives of these young Chinese students. Their sweet nature was amazing to me. It was in the classroom, before I ever met a Chinese funeral director, that I was introduced to the Chinese desire to please. Drew and I would listen to their oral English. A mess up would often lead them to say, “I lose face.” And they would take their seat.

After a few weeks of touring and researching Chinese funeral customs in different parts of the country (which included visiting the National Funeral Director’s Association Asia Expo in Macau), it was time for me to put on my suit and tie and prepare to meet Professor Zheng. When I finally met Zheng Tian Zhong, a senior consultant with the group, I was so fascinated by his story.

He taught himself English underground during the Cultural Revolution, a time when knowing English would mean death.  Following Mao’s death, he went to medical school to become a surgeon. After becoming a surgeon, he became ill, battling stomach cancer and undergoing surgery. After his surgery, which ended his career in surgery, he began teaching medical school classes in places such as Iceland. He then worked with the German founder of plastinization and got interested in preserving bodies for long term for medical research. He brought the technology to China, where he would prepare entire bodies, instead of just parts of bodies as he had done in other countries. As he told me about his work in plastinization during breakfast one morning in my hotel, he pulled a Tupperware container out of his brief case. I assumed it was a snack—but no. It was a fetus. He informed me that it died in 1995. As I ate my scrambled eggs, the only western food in the buffet line that morning, he twirled the baby’s umbilical cord around on his thumb and told me more about his life. He later saw a need for embalming in China. “For the good of society,” he said, “You agree?”  I would affirm that his mission was a good one. After he worked to learn the embalming process for himself, he then went on to teach the Chinese how the process works, which includes bring embalmers like me here to teach technique and do lectures on the process.

I spent the next few days touring funeral homes, lecturing on embalming, watching them embalm and doing demonstrations. The embalming rooms looked more like factories than funeral homes.  There are three main funeral homes in Shanghai, two of which do over 25,000 calls per year and around 60 funerals per day. They are run by the government. As I would walk in, I would see a sea of bodies waiting on their funeral. I would pass room after room full of freezers, all filled with dead bodies. I probably saw more dead bodies in just a few days than I have seen in my years in the funeral home. They would take me out to a line of bodies and say, “Choose one to embalm.” Most of them had been dead for over a month. I was feeling as if they were just seeing what I could do—a test of the American way. They would ask me what I needed. An embalming machine would be nice. So, the room that was empty at the start was soon filled with every instrument I would ask them for and a brand new Dodge embalming machine, which had rarely been used. There was one choice in fluid. They made it themselves. When I would ask what it was, the answer was always the same—“Chinese medicine.” But, the Chinese medicine seemed to do an adequate job. Each body, all in poor shape because they had been dead so long, would require a six point injection.  Dozens of young Chinese people, mostly women, would stand around and watch as I had my nose to the grindstone, finding arteries, injecting and sewing. They would take pictures, ask questions and applaud for what they saw as a job well done.

I would spend about two hours on bodies I embalmed. Their demonstrations for me on their embalming would last at most ten minutes. There was no machine. There was no cutting. They would fill a syringe with the Chinese medicine and make three injections—one in the stomach, one in the chest and one in the eye, to the brain. They would stand back and admire their work. “That is all we need to do, the body only has to last seven days until the cremation occurs.” If I hear seven days in America, that means high-test fluid. Seven days is a long period for us. Not so for the Shanghai embalmers. They saw my detailed and time consuming method only necessary for ship-outs to other countries and bodies that would not be buried for a long time. Nobody knows what they consider a long time if seven days gets the quick treatment. I was happily surprised by all my experiences in the embalming room. The Chinese medicine worked better than expected and all of the tools needed were there. It was surprising that they had them, not knowing what many of them did.

So, it was time for the conference to begin. Professor Zheng and I moved to Pudong, the more business side of Shanghai, lined with skyscrapers. The start of the conference looked more like a United Nations meeting than a funeral expo, flags flying and dozens of nationalities represented. The expo was extremely organized, large and impressive. I commented on this to Professor Zheng and he asked me to be sure to let the Americans know how good it was. As speeches were given, many in English, the Chinese would put on their headsets to get the Chinese translation, gander at the power points and jot down notes on what was being said. As I looked around, I saw sponges, thirsty for whatever information they could get. After each lecture, there was a loud applause and kind words from the director of the conference on how much they had learned.  I spoke on the American Model of Education and the need for the Chinese to make their funeral directors and embalmers get an education. I told them about our regulatory agent and how we have a standardized test to insure that knowledgeable people are entering the profession. They seemed to take kindly to this notion.

At the expo, just as peddlers outside would tug on your jacket to buy their goods, so too they would tug on your jacket, lure you their way to look at their product. They would exchange “name cards” and tell you they hoped to be in contact with you soon. There was a lot of networking going on. Professor Zheng would take my arm and introduce me to “the most famous embalmer in China,” “the most famous cemetery owner in China,” etc.

Back at the large funeral home, out of which FIS (Funeral Institute of Shanghai) is based, conferences were being conducted on all kinds of funeral matters for their staff of around 400. One lecture included a discussion on the importance of grief counseling. The funeral directors seemed to be listening intently to the lectures, as they sought to help hurting people.

Professor Zheng was a good representation of the Chinese for me. He cared about loyalty and friendship. “I want you to be my friend, Mr. Sam James,” he would say again and again. “We will start corporation together, because we are friends.” His desire for me to be comfortable and happy was paramount in his mind. He would remind me that China had changed and was continuing to change. He would remind me that they had great freedom. He was happy that I had showed great trust in him. He was insulted by the fact that many Americans packed their bags with food out of fear that they would starve in China had they not.  As our taxi or van would pass through impoverished areas of town, he would seem embarrassed. “This area will be gone soon, China is changing,” he would claim. I would remind him that even the United States has poverty, he would nod and smile, feeling better about their situation and on we would go.

As I would walk around town at night with Professor Zheng, as I would dine with Chinese embalmers, and as I would sit in class with Drew’s Chinese Oral English students, I fell in love with the Chinese culture. Their desire for knowledge, their attitude over my well-being and their sweet nature were all evident to me.

China is a vastly different world. In the back, their embalming rooms appear to be factories, but as I walked through the areas where funerals were conducted, I would see families overtaken by grief. It was at that point I was reminded that we really are not all that different. Some things transcend all cultures, time and space. We may dispose of our dead differently, but the hurt we all feel when we lose someone we love is identical.

One morning at breakfast, Professor Zheng came running in and plopped down in front of me. “I read your book” (a book written last year on the history of funeral customs in America). “Now I know why you do what you do—because you want to help people, right?” he said.  “Yes, Professor,” I said. “Oh good, we are the same,” he explained with a grin on his face. “Are you still happy?” And in return I said, “I am very happy, Professor.”