Traditional mortician Nguyen Quyen, 48, is very famous in the central region for his techniques of making up and preserving dead bodies.
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| Traditional mortician Nguyen Quyen. |
In Hue City, dead people are often kept at home for seven to ten days before they are buried. It’s Quyen’s job to keep them dry and smelling sweet.
Elderly people in Hue praise Quyen as the ‘best of the best’ who do this job in the old imperial capital.
A unique trade
The people of Hue consider that ‘alive, we rely on our muscles; dead, we rely on our bones.’ It is their custom to wait a week or more before burying their loved ones, to allow visitors to pay their respects to the dead.
A VietNamNet reporter met Quyen at his home on his third try. “Such a pity! I wasn’t able to see you for several days,” Quyen explained, “because so many people have died recently. I and my team have been very busy”!
He said that his work, khâm liá»m (literally, ‘laying someone in a coffin), is a complicated and lengthy procedure to ensure peace for the dead.
The corpse must be placed in a room lighted by oil lamps, and covered by a sedge mat. Quyen and other craftsmen like him will carefully perform each task: combing the hair, washing the face and the body, perfectly clean; then coating the inside of the coffin with a mixture of gasoline and cha phà , a resin taken from a forest tree. Next, he will paste red paper into the coffin and scatter a layer of aloe wood ash onto its bottom.
Then the mortician’s team will transfer the body into the coffin. One will support the head, another the legs of the dead while four others hold two pieces of white cloth to lower the body into the coffin. If the family of the dead wants to put gold, silver or other keepsakes into the coffin, they must be wrapped in paper.
Quyen has done this job for 25 years. His family have been morticians for four generations.
Quyen followed his father and uncles to funerals from the time he was 13. He quickly learnt his trade and was able do it alone when he was 23.
The first corpse Quyen cleaned and laid into a coffin was his grandfather’s, because before the old man died, he told Quyen: “When I am dead, you must lay me down in the coffin!”
A well-paid but thankless job
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Each precinct of Hue city has one or two establishments that perform mortuary services in the traditional way. Quyen’s now In addition, there are several groups of people who do this job.
Quyen’s been a mortician for nearly 25 years. He recently opened his own funeral service company, Hien Duc. This company provides kham liem, exhumation and other services related to the dead. Hien now has a big house and three vehicles used in the business.
Quyen recalled his most memorable case: “Ten years ago, a man who suffered from critical cirrhosis was killed by a car accident. The victim’s family invited many people to put him into coffin but they all refused because it was too horrible. They insisted that I come; after several entreaties, I accepted. I had to pick up handfuls of meat and pieces of bones to put into the coffin.”
According to Quyen, kham liem services are rarely performed for accident victims, paralytic people and especially those who have died of AIDS, whose bodies typically are very smelly and ulcerated.
In many cases, Quynh has had to rejoin the heads, arms and legs of the dead to ease the pain of the deceased person’s family. In one case, he used a coconut to replace the missing head of a dead man, with the agreement of the family.
The price for preparing the body for burial is at least 500,000 dong. It is higher for special cases, such as those who have died of accidents or diseases.
“We don’t take much money from poor families,” explained a Hien Duc worker, Le Van Khai. “This is honest work. We treat all dead bodies the same!”
“But even so, people often avoid us” added Quyen. “Before we home, we have to wash carefully.”
He said that many people are repelled by his craft, but though he experiences prejudice, he won’t abandon it. He needs the income, and he’s performing an essential service, Quyen says.
Nguyen Binh
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