Public Mourning

The only thing I know about the mourning practices of Yancheng people is that the return of the deceased's ghost is involved somehow.

Also, enough flowers to block your doorway for a week.

That, and that for a short time, shop owners will put up flowers and pictures and whatnot in their shop to honor their loved ones. Sometimes their grief is so intense, it flows out into the street, like so:

Taken from my office window on the 9th floor, back in July.

See all those silver-foil circles (you might need to enlarge the photo) lined-up across the left-side of the street? They're used as memorial decorations, with concentric circles of fake flowers on the other side. The mourners essentially barricaded themselves behind the Chinese version of a wreath.

At the cemetery.

To say Chinese people love a good spectacle is like saying 90s-era Simpsons episodes were awesome---a massive understatement.

 Millennial episodes of The Simpsons -- the other reason for the Libyan uprising.

But the barricade and the crowd it inevitably drew was blocking traffic.

First came a couple "traffic cops," the impotent security guards of China's roads.
An actual police officer or two (underneath the #2) arrived second, with a band of muscle-in-black (to the right of the #2).
And third, they called in back-up, which arrived in the form of a cop car and two full police vans.

As the men-in-black assembled, and I eagerly switched to video to capture the showdown.

A whole bunch of nothing!

They got into formation, approached, and... stood around waiting. Eventually, the people were convinced to move their "protest" out of the street and the stormtroopers exited the scene. 

It was all so peaceful and anticlimactic.