Stripping when you are gone...

No, it's not something that I did when my fiance went back hometown for a couple days or something. It's just something I found on the Yahoo! news.

So I was doing my usual work, when I came across a funny name for a place in China -> Donghai. I was amused at how vulgar it sounded in Cantonese, but it was really Mandarin, pronounced doong-high, meaning "eastern ocean". So I googled up "donghai china", and found the following article on the top of the search result:

Wed Aug 23, 11:09 AM ET
Police crack down on striptease funerals...
BEIJING (Reuters) - Striptease send-offs at funerals may become a thing of the past in east China after five people were arrested for organizing the intimate farewells, state media reported on Wednesday.

Police swooped last week after two groups of strippers gave "obscene performances" at a farmer's funeral in Donghai County, Jiangsu province, Xinhua news agency said.

The disrobing served a higher purpose, the report noted.

"Striptease used to be a common practice at funerals in Donghai's rural areas to allure viewers," it said. "Local villagers believe that the more people who attend the funeral, the more the dead person is honored."

Wealthy families often employed two troupes of performers to attract a crowd. Two hundred showed up at last week's funeral.

Five strippers were detained and local officials "issued notices concerning funeral management," Xinhua said.

Now village officials must submit plans for funerals within 12 hours after a villager dies. And residents can report "funeral misdeeds" on a hotline, the report said.

Read original article at Yahoo! news


So now Donghai is not only that a name for a county in China and the name for a strait between the Pacific Ocean and China, it's a place where you have strippers at funerals. I don't know how long this has been going on, but this act has made this village now synonymous with strippers in the eyes of the world.

Now, being a chinese myself, I could understand the drawing-big-crowd-at-funeral part. In fact, we had marching bands and mini parades strolling the main streets led by the hearse and a Taoist priest. But isn't this a going a tad bit too much? So for all those of you who still think the East is still exotic, virgin, and unattached from modern civilisation and culture - think again.

I'm busy now, but I have a lot to say about this, so I'll be back to update this entry.

Oh by the way, I did get back on track finding its location and here it is...