84-year-old man from China spends 20,000 yuan (over P160k) to hold his own funeral 'for fun'
An eighty-four-year-old man from China thought one day about how would people care if he died, so he decided to hold his own funeral to find out.
The man, surnamed Zhang, held his staged funeral in his village in the province of Anhui on February 27, according to South China Morning Post.
One of the villagers told Jimu News that he was approached by by Zhang earlier in February to ask for help in planning his fake funeral. Although he found it strange, he agreed to help the man.
“He said that he would like to see the scene of his funeral before he passed away,” the villager told the portal.
Other villagers found it “worth commemorating,” further fueling Zhang’s desire to hold his staged funeral.
On the morning of his “funeral,” Zhang prepared a “thank you feast” for more than a hundred of locals who agreed to help him execute his plan.
They went on to proceed to a three-hour funeral procession, where Zhang was sitting on top of a red coffin placed at the back of a moving truck, waving and smiling to people as they passed by around the village. They are followed by a group of locals in tricycles and motorcycles.
According to Zhang, he got the idea when he purchased a coffin in preparation for his death sometime in the future. He has been living alone since his children have been busy with their own lives in different cities, and his wife passed away two years ago.
“I did not tell my children or my friends and relatives about the funeral. All the attendees were local villagers,” he said.
He spent 20,000 yuan (over P160,000) for the staged funeral, but says it’s worth it because he had fun.
On the other hand, the displeased local authorities decided to conduct their investigation on the matter, saying that Zhang disrespected “social customs around mourning and death.”