Morticians Service

Wearing dark blue overalls and plastic gloves, Wang removes a blanket covering the newest arrival at a funeral home in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.A tag comes with the body showing its name, age and sex, but not the cause of death.It matters not, as Wang's 12-years on the job have given her a mortician's sixth sense for death -- she instantly knew it was a traffic accident.Gruesome as it is sounds, she spends three and a half hours washing the corpse, ensuring no blood or wounds are visible, stitching together the dead man's injuries, while providing funeral make-up and fully dressing the body. It is not a much sought after job.However, the 34-year-old woman with a medium build and girlish ponytail is proud of her job, believing it gives dignity to the dead.Though being a mortician is a good job in many places, talking about death is still taboo in Chinese tradition as people fear that any work related to death brings bad luck."People always ask me why I took such a job," Wang said. "But it was to atone for an early regret in my life."Wang was born in a small village in east China's Jiangsu Province where according to local custom unmarried girls were not allowed to witness the cremations of relatives.When her grandfather passed away, she never got a chance to say goodbye, despite begging her family to do so while in tears. It has haunted her ever since."I chose funeral services as my major when I applied for a college, without hesitation," she said.Wang became a mortician in a funeral home in Yuhang District of Hangzhou after graduation in 2006 and still remembers the first time she handled a dead body."Holding a razor, I just stood in front of the deceased. Time seemed to go so slowly," she said.Most of her classmates became masters of funeral ceremonies, managers at cemeteries or took up other jobs at funeral homes. She is the only mortician that directly handles corpses.As tomb-sweeping day, an occasion when Chinese honor their ancestors, ended last week, life and death re-emerged as a topic for discussion across the country."The general mindset ha... (Xinhua)