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The Day of the Duck  by Mo Rui Qiu
W e were on our way to a friend’s village to observe the local
Ghost festival. Then, I saw a live duck hitching a ride on an old
man’s bicycle. The man had just been to town to buy joss sticks and the duck. How does a duck ride a bicycle? I was sure you’d want to know, so I quickly got my camera to provide you evidence of this curious thing. Then, the old man started yelling at me. He was concerned about why I wanted to take his picture. When I assured him that I was mainly interested in the duck’s picture, he let me take a close up of the duck, blissfully swinging from the bike handlebars. Did the duck have any clue that his hours were numbered? On this holiday, “killing the duck” is considered a main event.
Pix
An unknowing duck rides on the bike!

White Rice
Ghost festival is the day to give ancestors new outfits.
White Rice
Many sacrificed ducks offered before the shrine.

A while later, we arrived at our friend’s house, where she and her family were preparing for the rituals. We watched her light joss sticks and place them in front of the ancestral altar, on both sides of the doorway, and at the bottom of the stairway leading to their house. Their duck had already met its end, and was set out in front of the ancestral altar.

Next, our friend was arranging outfits of paper clothes on the floor. The red outfits belonged to the deceased village leaders. The black outfits belonged to male ancestors, while the blue, purple, fuchsia, and yellow outfits were for female ancestors. Onto each outfit, she pasted a list of the ancestor’s names for whom the clothes were intended. Meanwhile, her son had a pile of gold and silver squares that he was pasting onto larger pieces of white paper. They rolled up the white paper into a roll and folded the ends inwards so it looked sort of like the ancient Chinese gold blocks.

She gathered one of the red paper outfits, the duck, some flat steamed sticky rice sweets, liquor, three pairs of chopsticks, and three porcelain spoons into a basket. We followed her outside and encountered a stream of other village women carrying platters, baskets, and trays with similar collections of things. They were all going to the shrine for the local deity. There, even more trays and baskets were sprawled out with offerings of duck, liquor and sticky rice. The women took turns to go in and burn their red outfits inside the shrine. They believe that after burning the paper outfit, it will go to the spirits of the deceased village leaders. Next, she got the second red paper outfit and went to another shrine to repeat the same pattern.

After returning to her home, she got a metal bucket and sat down in front of the family altar. One by one, she burned the remaining paper outfits. Since those clothes were intended for deceased relatives, they needed to be burned inside the house and not outside. She burned up the rolls of white paper, which represent gold, in order to make sure the ancestors have enough money to cover their expenses.

Though her husband did not participate in these rituals, he was busy doing something else: preparing a delectable lunch! They invited us to join them for the meal, which we were glad to do. On our way home, we didn’t see any ducks riding bicycles…perhaps they had all been sacrificed earlier in the day.