周二聚會 3/19
時間: 每周二晚上7:00~9:30
地點: 怡客咖啡 Ikari Coffee
新北市板橋區文化路2段311號
板南線江子翠捷運站2號出口旁
各位會員朋友們:
2013年3月19日將討論兩主題---
Topic1. 最會哭的女人
最會哭的女人
professional mourner (Allie Jaynes' report was featured on the BBC)
Crying on command isn't easy, but Liu Jun-Lin is hired to do it every day, at funerals for people she never knew. She's Taiwan's best-known professional mourner - a time-honoured tradition in her country that may be dying out.
Crying for a living is controversial, seen by some as the commercialisation of grief, but mourners like Liu say their profession has a long history in Taiwan, where according to tradition the deceased needs a big, loud send-off to cross smoothly into the afterlife.
"When a loved one dies, you grieve so much that when it finally comes time for the funeral, you don't have any tears left," says Liu.
"How are you going to suddenly switch your mood to show all that sorrow?"
Liu is there to help strike the right tone.
In earlier times, daughters often left home to work in other cities, and transport was limited, she explains. If someone in the family died, they often couldn't make it home in time for the funeral, so the family would hire what's known as a "filial daughter" to lead the family in mourning.
Traditional Taiwanese funerals are elaborate, combining sombre mourning with louder, up-tempo entertainment to fire up grieving spirits.
For the entertainment portion, 30-year-old Liu and her Filial Daughters Band wear bright costumes, and perform almost-acrobatic dance numbers. They do the splits, back-bends, and somersaults. Her brother, A Ji, plays along on traditional stringed instruments.
Later, Liu will change into a white hood and robe, and crawl to the coffin on her hands and knees. There, in time to her brother's organ playing, she performs her signature wail.
Liu's brother, A Ji, accompanies her at funerals
Her sounds are long and drawn out, somewhere between crying and singing. At home, she demonstrates a typical wail for me. "My dear father, your daughter misses you so much!" she cries. "Please, please come back!"
I ask Liu how she manages to manufacture tears at will. But she insists all her crying is real. "Every funeral you go to, you have to feel this family is your own family, so you have to put your own feelings in it," she says. "When I see so many people grieving, I get even sadder."
With her long eyelashes, dimples, and sing-song voice, Liu seems much younger than her 30 years. At home, she wears an orange jogging suit and sparkly nail polish. I'd sooner believe she was a nursery school teacher than a professional in the grief business.
Funeral director Lin Zhenzhang, who has worked alongside Liu for years, says that's a big part of her appeal.
"Traditionally, we think of this as a job for women a generation older," he says. "But Jun-Lin is so young and beautiful. That contrast makes people very curious."
Liu's grandmother and mother were both professional mourners.
As a young child, she would play outside the funeral homes while her mother worked. At home, she mimicked her mother and older sister as they rehearsed.
"I'd grab any object and pretend it was a microphone," she says. "Then I'd pretend there was a coffin and crawl to it."
Both of Liu's parents died when she was young, leaving her grandmother with three children to bring up, and a heavy burden of debt. So the grandmother pulled Liu and her older brother into the family trade. Liu was just 11 years old.
She had to get up before dawn each morning to rehearse, and often had to miss school for work. When she did go to class, other children would make fun of her job and the strange costumes she wore.
"They'd say, that's so weird, so ugly, you look so stupid!" she says. "I felt really inferior and thought other kids didn't like me."
Performing wasn't much easier. Stigmas around death make many people look down on mourners.
"Sometimes before we'd start the performance, the grieving family would be very sour when they talked to us," says Liu. "But after we performed, they'd cry and say thank you, thank you, thank you!"
That's when Liu realised the real purpose of her job. "This work can really help people release their anger, or help them say the things they're afraid to say out loud," she says. "For people who are afraid to cry, it helps too, because everyone cries together."
Mentored by her grandmother, a tiny woman in wire-framed glasses and a tight perm, Liu trained rigorously as a performer, and developed the shrewd business skills that have lifted her family from poverty to prosperity. Liu and her siblings each have their own house, and their company charges up to $600 (£380) for a performance.
But it's a business in decline, says Lin Zhenzhang, as the economic downturn and simpler modern tastes turn people away from lavish traditional funerals,
"The tradition of professional mourners is going to slowly be eliminated," he says. "So people like Jun-Lin are going to have to find a way to reinvent their profession, or find new sources of revenue."
This hasn't escaped Liu. That's why she has recruited some 20 female assistants. They're young, good-looking women in black and white uniforms, who help funeral directors with embalming and memorial services, and they've brought Liu a lot of attention.
Questions:
What you think about professional mourners?
What you think about undertaking business? Is funeral business in the hot trend?
What do you think about funeral homes in Taiwan?
How much does a funeral cost in Taiwan usually?
Do you know any funeral etiquette and taboos in Taiwan?
台灣最著名的職業哭喪人
奉命而哭不是一件容易的事情，但是每天都有人僱劉君琳（音譯）在她素不相識的人的葬禮上哭喪。 她是台灣最著名的職業哭喪人，在台灣這是由來已久的傳統，而這樣的傳統有可能面臨消失。
用哭喪來謀生是一件容易引起爭議的事情，在有些人看來這是商業化的哀傷。 但是據劉君琳這樣的哭喪人說，她們的職業在台灣由來已久，根據台灣傳統亡故之人需要用大聲的哭喪來把他們平安地送入到後世。
“當親人亡故之後你會非常悲傷，最終到了葬禮上你已經沒有眼淚了，”劉君琳說，“你怎樣才能做到把你的情緒一下子調到極度悲傷？”於是劉君琳會到場相助，以使葬禮有合適的氣氛。
她解釋說，從前女兒們常常會離家到其它城市裡去工作。 當時交通條件有限，如果家裡有人亡故，她們常常不能及時趕到家裡參加葬禮，於是家人會僱傭一些被稱為“孝女”的人在葬禮上引導家人。
傳統上台灣的葬禮是精心安排過的，陰沉的哀悼與喧嘩的快節奏娛樂結合在一起以送走悲傷的亡靈。
在娛樂部分，30歲的劉君琳和她的孝女樂隊穿著鮮亮的服裝，表演幾乎像雜技一般的舞蹈。 她們做著分叉、後彎和筋斗等動作，她的兄弟阿吉用傳統的弦樂器來伴奏。
稍後劉君琳會換上白色的喪袍，戴上頭罩爬到棺材邊上，這時在他兄弟樂器的伴奏下她開始她的招牌哭喪。
她的聲音綿長而竭力，有時遊走在哭泣和歌唱之間。 她在家里為我表演了一種典型的哭泣：“我親愛的爹爹啊，你女兒多麼想念你，”她哭喊道，“請你，請你回來吧！”
我問劉君琳她是怎樣做到製造眼淚的，她堅持說她所有的哭泣都是真實的。 “你去到每一個葬禮上，你會感到這家人家就是你自己的家人，所以你就會把自己的感情放進去，”她說，“當我看見有這樣多的人都很傷心，我就更傷心了。”
錄影中請微笑
"Smile, you're on camera!" This warning sign can be seen everywhere: supermarkets, hypermarkets, banks, and apartment buildings. Even in parks and alleys with no such signs, electronic eyes may be watching everything you do.
At present, Taiwanese police departments monitor more than 105,000 surveillance cameras in Taiwan. This includes more than 7,000 cameras installed by the public sector at over 3,000 locations, as well as cameras in banks and convenience stores like 7-Eleven. If the cameras in commercial buildings and neighborhoods were counted, the number would exceed one million, which averages nearly one for every 20 people.
Could it be that the heavily monitored world of George Orwell's 1984, written in the 1940s, with a plot about privacy being sacrificed in the name of national security, is playing out in our lives today? "It may be late by more than 20 years, but we are now entering the world of 1984," laments doctor, author, and Society of Wilderness chairman Lee Wei-wen.
By the end of this year, the National Police Agency (NPA) will have spent NT$1.15 billion installing some 2,000 cameras in crime hotspots around Taiwan. These hotspots include places where vehicle accidents frequently occur and in the recesses of underground walkways.
The eagerness of police departments to install cameras is due to their repeated success in cracking cases. For instance, in major crime cases, such as the rice bomber, the contaminated Wild Bull tonic incident, and the Nanhua Township double murder, cameras were instrumental in solving them.
According to the NPA, in 2008, cameras helped solve 6,361 criminal cases, an increase of 71 percent compared to 3,715 in 2007. Surveillance cameras have become an essential tool for the police in solving cases, and police reliance on cameras is growing steadily.
Questions:
Do you think being watched under surveillance cameras a good idea?
Are video surveillance cameras in public places a good idea ?
Why city governments love surveillance cameras?
Can surveillance cameras be successful in preventing crime?
Security cameras: an invasion of privacy or crime deterrent?
錄影中請微笑——無所不在的監視器
『錄影中請微笑』，在超市、賣場、銀行或大樓公寓，到處都看得到這樣的告示牌，甚至在沒有告示牌的公園或街頭巷尾，都可能有一雙電眼監視著你。
目前全台警察列管的監視器有 10 萬 5 千多台，其中包括公家單位在 3 千多處裝設的 7 千多支監視器，以及各銀行、7-11 等便利商店對外的監視器。若再加上企業大樓、鄰里自行裝設的監視器，台灣監視器數量應已破百萬台大關，平均約 20 人就可以『分』到一台。難道 1940 年代末英國作家喬治‧歐威爾名著《1984》中，以國家安全之名剝奪個人隱私的監控世界，已在現實生活中上演？『雖然晚了 20 多年，我們還是進入了《1984》的世界！』荒野保護協會秘書長、醫師作家李偉文如此感嘆。
到今年底，內政部警政署要執行完 11.5 億元的經費，在全台的『犯罪熱區』裝設約 2,000 支監視器。所謂『犯罪熱區』，指的是經常發生車禍的地點，或地下道等偏僻的角落。
警政單位熱中於裝設監視器，實在是因為近年監視器屢成破案的『關鍵』。如白米炸彈客、毒蠻牛事件、台南南化鄉魚池雙屍案等多起重大刑案的破案，監視器都居功厥偉。
根據警政署統計，2008 年台灣地區利用監視器而偵破的刑案有 6,361 件，較諸前一年 3,715 件，增幅達 71％。監視器已經是警察辦案不可或缺的利器，警察對於監視器的依賴度也與日俱增。
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