day 72: 丁村 (dingcun) – 里村 (licun) = 12,2km

杨福生 (yang fusheng) had always been a very well-respected man, and head of 丁村 (dingcun) village for many years:

Many people came to his funeral, including one foreigner – me.

I asked the 杨-family whether it was okay if I stayed and took pictures, and they very kindly allowed me complete freedom.

Obviously I tried to make myself invisible again. But again, there’s no way.

In the process I took more than 400 pictures (I rarely shoot this much), and I have only been able to get rid of a very few of them.

I just wasn’t able to delete these pictures.

…

So here’s the set. It’s a lot, so I’m going to limit the text to captions for you.

…

The family is performing the rituals, dressed in white mourning dress:

There are prayers and food offerings:

Then the family’s friends start carrying the casket on its way out of town:

Outside of the courtyard, more prayers:

Then the casket has to cross the fire:

A risky process for the carriers:

The long march out into the hills begins:

All ritual items get carried along the way:

The men in the family lead the trek up into the hills:

…and a long trek it is:

…all the way up to the grave site:

The friends slowly lower the casket into the grave:

Figures of white cranes, amongst other things, are put into the grave with the casket:

Then the hole gets filled up, and the family watches in silence:

While the grave site slowly turns into a small mound, food offerings are placed in front of it, and a stack of all the other things used in the ceremonial process is being piled up and prepared for burning:

Only the family remains during this last fire:

…watching in silence as the flames eat all the things symbolizing this day, and eventually slowly die:

Then the small group slowly makes its way back down into the valley:

…leaving behind the site of the grave of 杨福生:

…a very well-respected man:

…

…

…

I had lunch with the family I was staying with, then played around with the neighbors a bit:

So I got off for a terribly late start and walked until late at night, listening to the same African song over and over again:

Even though my shoes were wet because I had forgotten to put on my gaiters before, and even though I couldn’t really see where I was going, even though it was cold like hell, it still felt somehow…

…magical.

Soundtrack: Salef Keita – “Ananaming”

—total: 1022,9km