The Chinese government suddenly has its hands full with an unlikely form of funeral entertainment: Strippers. The Wall Street Journal explains the motivation behind the phenomenon, which should definitely be called mournography:
According to a statement from the Ministry of Culture on Thursday, the government plans to work closely with the police to eliminate such performances, which are held with the goal of drawing more mourners.
That’ll do it. But the government is now trying to crack down on such performances after photos from a funeral in the city of Handan circulated online, drawing widespread attention to the practice. In a separate incident earlier this year, six performers offered an “erotic dance” at a funeral and the person responsible was fined the equivalent of $13,000 and detained for 15 days for what the government called “corrupting the social atmosphere.”
Despite the recent uproar, this isn’t a new thing in China:
The government has been trying to fight the country’s funereal stripper scourge for some time now. In 2006, the state-run broadcaster China Central Television’s leading investigative news show Jiaodian Fangtan aired an exposé on the practice of scantily clad women making appearances at memorial services in Donghai in eastern China’s Jiangsu province.
As the Journal notes, this is even more of a tradition in other parts of the region. In Taiwan, for instance, the practice of hiring strippers for funerals goes back decades.