Bereaved parents yesterday held a posthumous ghost wedding in Greater Taichung’s Dongshih District (東勢) for their beloved daughter and son, a young couple killed last week by a mudslide caused by torrential rain.
With a Chinese love song playing in the background, the parents of Su Cheng-hung (蘇正紘) and Teng Hsin-ning (鄧心寧) bore witness to the couple’s love in a wedding ceremony held at a mortuary designed to bring their spirits together for eternity.
Su, a conscientious forest ranger at the Dongshih Forest District Office, was at work at Chiayang forestry station on Monday last week, where Teng was visiting him, when a landslide caused by heavy rains in the mountains of Lishan (梨山) smashed into the station and buried them.
Photo: Hsieh Feng-chiu, Taipei Times
Despite being rushed to a hospital, the couple were soon pronounced dead.
Prior to the marriage ceremony, Su’s family asked the forest district office to issue an “order of task release,” which was burned and passed on to Su in the afterlife, telling him to “stand down” and go home.
The posthumous wedding ceremony, presided over by Forestry Bureau director-general Lee Tao-sheng (李桃生) and officiated by the fathers of the deceased was almost identical to a normal wedding.
A range of traditional items were prepared, including gift money, 16 boxes of wedding cakes, golden necklaces and new clothes.
The main difference with a ghost wedding was that a paper mache mansion is burned as a gift to the couple as was a composite -wedding -photograph made by Su’s colleagues.
Holding back their tears, Su’s parents, Su Ming-hsien (蘇明賢) and Ho Yu-tzu (何佑慈), said they had long regarded Teng as their daughter-in-law.
“They were both born on 16th day of the fourth month of the lunar calendar, with [Su] Cheng-hung being three years older than [Teng.] We hope that they follow hand-in-hand in the footsteps of Buddha and live happily ever after in heaven,” they said.
Su Cheng-hung’s high school and college classmate, Hsieh Kuang-pu (謝光普), also addressed the ceremony and shared with the attendees how the couple met and fell in love.
“They met at school because of their passion for sports. They started a long-distance relationship after [Su] Cheng-hung graduated from college and started his military service. Only after [Teng] Hsin-ning was admitted to a postgraduate program at National Chung Hsing University did they get to spend more time together,’’ Hsieh said.
“I hope they have a wonderful life in the next world,” he said.
Translated by Stacy Hsu, Staff Writer
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
A magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 2:23pm today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was 5.4 kilometers northeast of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 34.9 km, according to the CWA. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was the highest in Hualien County, where it measured 2 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 1 in Yilan county, Taichung, Nantou County, Changhua County and Yunlin County, the CWA said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
‘WORSE THAN COMMUNISTS’: President William Lai has cracked down on his political enemies and has attempted to exterminate all opposition forces, the chairman said The legislature would motion for a presidential recall after May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday at a protest themed “against green communists and dictatorship” in Taipei. Taiwan is supposed to be a peaceful homeland where people are united, but President William Lai (賴清德) has been polarizing and tearing apart society since his inauguration, Chu said. Lai must show his commitment to his job, otherwise a referendum could be initiated to recall him, he said. Democracy means the rule of the people, not the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), but Lai has failed to fulfill his
OFF-TARGET: More than 30,000 participants were expected to take part in the Games next month, but only 6,550 foreign and 19,400 Taiwanese athletes have registered Taipei city councilors yesterday blasted the organizers of next month’s World Masters Games over sudden timetable and venue changes, which they said have caused thousands of participants to back out of the international sporting event, among other organizational issues. They also cited visa delays and political interference by China as reasons many foreign athletes are requesting refunds for the event, to be held from May 17 to 30. Jointly organized by the Taipei and New Taipei City governments, the games have been rocked by numerous controversies since preparations began in 2020. Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) said yesterday that new measures by