A teary President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), along with other dignitaries, visited Taipei’s Second Funeral Parlor yesterday to pay his respects to the victims of Wednesday’s TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 crash.
City authorities constructed a temporary mourning hall at the funeral parlor on Wednesday as a space for services for the victims.
Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國), Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), who also serves as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman, were among the dignitaries who visited the hall, lighting incense, bowing to the dead and expressing condolences to relatives of the deceased.
Photo: CNA
Like Ma, they did not make any statements to the media during their visits.
The space around the hall teemed with religious volunteers from the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation.
Next to the entrance stood a simple booth to provide holy water and prayer beads for mourners, while an army of hundreds of elderly volunteers in neat yellow, gold and blue uniforms — who had descended upon the funeral parlor by noon, leaving only a long, narrow corridor open for entrants to the hall — made the surrounding space reverberate with chants of the Buddist blessing Amitabha.
Representatives of the Buddha’s Light International Association and other religious organizations were also present, filing into the hall in shifts to pay their respects.
Family members of the dead arrived throughout the day to identify bodies, before heading to the accident site to “call back the souls” of their loved ones.
Family members, accompanied by a Taoist priest, hoisted funeral banners and clothing belonging to the deceased by the riverside, to call upon their souls to return with them to the mourning hall.
According to traditional folk beliefs, such rituals are necessary to prevent the souls of the deceased from becoming ghosts that would haunt the accident site.
Taipei’s Department of Civil Affairs, which is responsible for the funeral parlor, said that the temporary mourning hall would remain in place until all funeral rites for the deceased are completed.
The death toll from the crash stood at 31 as of last night. Twelve people aboard the plane were still missing.
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