What constitute a Hmong funeral?
Here is my lay man understanding....

Over the weekend, we had an elder man in Melbourne passes away and the
family has the funeral from Saturday morning to Monday afternoon.

In Oz, during such gathering, there are Hmong from all over Oz to
attend the funeral, even some live in very far away... coz... the Oz
Hmong still feel the need to come together during this such tragic
situation.

As in any funeral, some people are doing their funeral duties, others
paly cars, whi;le some people like myself and many others just sit
around and chat - about any thing. During such chatting, with many
elders and many people from all over the country, one question pop
up: What constitute a Hmong funeral? What we can do - ie to modify
the funeral so it is still a Hmong funeral?

According to some elders who are practitioner in quab kev, kavxwm,
txiv qeej, hais xim ect... after much debate over many hours over the
weekend, let me sum up what every one has come to aaccept in principle
as what can be done to maintain as a Hmong funeral.

According to those Hmong practitioners and elders, as I took some
mental notes over the two days of debate), there are few practices
that cannot be changed while there are many practices that do not
contribute much to the funeral but just to fill-in the time (loog hnub
loog hmo).

(A) Things that cannot change:
1. Taw kev (quab Ke)
2. Qeej Tu Siav
3. Qeej Tsha Nees
4. Qeej Tshais, Qeej Su, Qeej Hmo (when indicated).
5. Qeej Tsa-Sawv Kev.
6. Qeej/Nruas
7. Hauv qhua (as required)

These are the SEVEN essential practices that MUST be practice to
complete the Hmong Funeral.

(B) Those practice that can be dropped/ Or OPTIONAL.
1. Qeej loog hnub loog hmo
2. Hais Xim can be optional OR IT CAN BE MODIFIED to last 2-3 hours
(with this muaj hais Txiv Xaiv or only some selected Txiv Xaiv). One
Hais Xim Practitioner said that most of the Txiv Xaiv during the night
is just ONE txiv xais with minor modification to direct to the
appropriate members sit around the table (Rooj Hais Xim). Zaj Txiv
Xais Foom Koob Hmoov may even need it, according to one practioner.
He added that the Foom Koob Hmoov txivxais may even be detrimental to
the family if they just take them in - including all the bad "foom".
You have to be able to diffeentiate the "BAD" from the "good" foom!
but in practice, most of the xyom cuab family members and kids do not
even know what is the "Foom Koob Hmoov" is all about. This is quite
true when I think back of my grandmother who died in Oz and we had the
full haiv Xim ect... and for the entire night, every one is just
exhausted but all of us, the young ones, know nothing of what is going
on.

So, if we do all in part A and a bit from part B, the entire Hmong
funeral is still a true Hmong funeral and it can take as short as 1
day or the most less than 24 hours. When my father died in Oz, the
funeral start from 5pm on Friday night and we finished the entire
funeral as per part A (above) with NO part B...by mid day on Saturday
and the process left the house to the cemetery at 12.30pm (almost 40km
to the cemetery) and the burial completed by 3pm on Saturday - a grand
total of 23 hours only.

What about "Tua Tsiaj"... any one who wanted to "tuaj nyuj", just use
money ntau ua nyub xwb los yeej tau. When our mother died in France,
our Oz family collect money and ntau ua ib tug nyuj form mum (as some
of you know how hard to find nyuj in around Paris!)

Npawg Yaweh et. al.... take it over from here... as you are the
expert.

Pao

On Jul 22, 6:00 am, All4One yahoo.com> wrote: