I was brought up in the British, stiff upper lip
style. Strong feelings aren’t something you display in public. So, you can
imagine that I was unprepared for the outpouring of public grief(悲伤) at a Chinese funeral.
My editorial team leader died recently after a short
illness. He was 31. The news was so unexpected that it left us all shocked and
upset. A female colleague burst into tears and cried piteously at her desk.
Somehow we got through the day's work. The next day was the funeral.
Our big boss stepped forward to deliver a eulogy(悼词) and was soon in tears. She carried on, in Chinese of
course, but at the end said in English: "There will be no more deadlines
for you in heaven." Next came a long-term colleague who also dissolved in
tears but carried on with her speech despite being almost overcome by emotion.
Then a close friend of the dead man paid tribute(哀悼),
weeping openly as he spoke. Sorrow is spreading. Me and women were now sobbing
uncontrollably. Finally, the man's mother, supported between two women,
addressed her son in his coffin. At one point, the mother almost collapsed and
had to be held up. We were invited to step forward to each lay a white rose on
the casket. Our dead colleague looked as if he was taking a nap. At the end of
the service I walked away from the funeral parlor stunned at the outpouring of
emotion.
In the UK, families grieve privately and then try to
hold it together and not break down at a funeral. Here in China it would seem
that grieving is a public affair. It strikes me that it is more cathartic to
cry your eyes out than try to keep it bottled up for fear of embarrassment,
which is what many of us do in the West.
Afterwards, a Chinese colleague told me that the
lamenting at the funeral had been restrained(克制) by
Chinese standards. In some rural areas, she said, people used to be paid to
mourn noisily. This struck me like something out of novel by Charles Dickens.
But we have all seen on TV scenes of grief-stricken people in Gaza and the West
Bank, in Afghanistan, Iraq and the relatives of victims of terrorist bombings
around the world. Chinese grief is no different. I realized that it's the
reserved British way of mourning that is out of step with the rest of the
world.
It was our newspaper's production day. We were bussed
back to the office to resume work. No more deadlines for our former colleague,
but we had to pull together to put the newspaper to print. The boss invited the
team to go out for dinner after work. We relaxed, smiled, joked. There was no
mention of the funeral or our poor colleague. Enough sorrow had been shed
already. We needed a break.
1.The underlined words “stiff upper lip style” in Paragraph
1 mean “________”.
A.cold-blooded B.warm-hearted C.light-hearted
D.self-controlled
2.At the funeral,
________.
A. five individuals made speeches
B. the boss’s speech was best thought of
C. the writer was astonished by the scene
D. everyone was crying out loudly
3.According to the writer, people in the West ________.
A. are not willing to be sad for the dead
B. cry their eyes out at the public funeral
C. prefer to control their sadness in public
D. have better way to express sadness
4.It is implied that ________.
A. Chinese express their sadness quite unlike other
peoples
B. the English might cry noisily for the dead in
Dickens’ time
C. victims of terrorist bombings should be greatly
honored
D. English funeral culture is more civilized than the
others
5.This passage talks mainly
about________.
A. an editor’s death
B. bad funeral customs
C. cultural differences
D. western ways of grief