Immortalising Frank

Dai was sweating hard carrying the box up the hill, although it could not have been heavy. He kept it clasped close to his chest, leading the procession. Coming level with him, I saw it was not sweat but tears that were trickling down his cheeks.

"This is the last time I carry Frank," he said, turning to me, the grief so raw I was afraid to touch. "You will carry him in your heart now."

He nodded. For someone for whom the afterlife exists only by extension through the life of one's children, it was not much of a consolation.

That much I had learned here.

Less than an hour before I was already out of my depth. As the 30 or so guests assembled in his apartment, Dai had lit a stick of incense, announcing he wanted to say a few words, then disappeared abruptly into the solarium from whence issued a stream of mumbled sentences. Then he reappeared. "I talk with Frank," he announced to the group. "Some of the ashes buried in his big plant, so I talk with him there." We peered into the sun-porch to find the bundle of incense smoking heavily beneath a large potted cheese-plant.

"Thank God, the plant is doing well," my companion whispered.

Immortality is that fragile in China.

At the grave site there was a simple ceremony. One of Frank's friends explained why it had taken two years between his death and now to bury him. His dying as a foreigner, intestate and without family had led to almost insurmountable obstacles. After the body had been cremated, the ashes had remained with Dai in their shared apartment.

By the time we sat down to the meal which rounded off the ceremony, Dai had regained his composure. Near its end, he rose to make a speech, repeating facts we all knew. "Frank was my teacher," he explained to a room full of Frank's former students. "He taught me English. Before, I was a poor farmer's son. Frank taught me how to become a gentleman." Now, he wanted us to know, he could make a living teaching English. Frank was with him at this moment, he felt, and Frank was happy.

Seated, Dai said: "I tell you why Frank is happy." He leaned towards us as if in conspiracy.

"Last week I went to Anhui," he said in a low voice. "To Huangshan – the Yellow Mountain." For a moment he paused, then reconsidered. "I brought Frank." He gestured towards the pocket in his jacket. "Some of the ashes. Here. To show him the mountain. I climb to top of Lotus Peak. There I cried a lot. Frank promised to take me sometime, but he die first. So I take him. To show him the Yellow Mountain." He paused. "Now he is happy." Then, followed by our incredulous looks, he got up from the table to join the others, gathering their coats for the trip home.

"It is most improper, you know," one of the Chinese mourners remarked tartly, as the car sped back towards Beijing. "Dai did not do a correct thing. One is only allowed to take the ashes of someone if they are your own father. Not otherwise."

He frowned hard at the impiety. And then again at our enlightened smiles. Exactly. In that one gesture, Dai had ensured, in Chinese terms, Frank's immortality. Frank had gained the son he never had. And Dai had symbolically claimed Frank forever as his own father – the generous teacher who had made a gentleman out of a farmer's son.

Jerusha McCormack is a visiting professor at the foreign university in Beijing