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
Alain Robert, known as the "French Spider-Man," praised Alex Honnold as exceptionally well-prepared after the US climber completed a free solo ascent of Taipei 101 yesterday. Robert said Honnold's ascent of the 508m-tall skyscraper in just more than one-and-a-half hours without using safety ropes or equipment was a remarkable achievement. "This is my life," he said in an interview conducted in French, adding that he liked the feeling of being "on the edge of danger." The 63-year-old Frenchman climbed Taipei 101 using ropes in December 2004, taking about four hours to reach the top. On a one-to-10 scale of difficulty, Robert said Taipei 101
Nipah virus infection is to be officially listed as a category 5 notifiable infectious disease in Taiwan in March, while clinical treatment guidelines are being formulated, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. With Nipah infections being reported in other countries and considering its relatively high fatality rate, the centers on Jan. 16 announced that it would be listed as a notifiable infectious disease to bolster the nation’s systematic early warning system and increase public awareness, the CDC said. Bangladesh reported four fatal cases last year in separate districts, with three linked to raw date palm sap consumption, CDC Epidemic Intelligence
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
US climber Alex Honnold left Taiwan this morning a day after completing a free-solo ascent of Taipei 101, a feat that drew cheers from onlookers and gained widespread international attention. Honnold yesterday scaled the 101-story skyscraper without a rope or safety harness. The climb — the highest urban free-solo ascent ever attempted — took just more than 90 minutes and was streamed live on Netflix. It was covered by major international news outlets including CNN, the New York Times, the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal. As Honnold prepared to leave Taiwan today, he attracted a crowd when he and his wife, Sanni,
RSS