How To Stop Fearing Death – A Career Week Talk

Reported by:
Ong Chen Xi Jr2Z(2)

     Death is a taboo subject, but funeral director Yung Tan is here to tell you otherwise. On the 2nd of August, the Counseling Department organized a talk over Zoom video platform in conjunction with the Kuen Cheng Career Week. The speaker in question, Yung Tan, a co-founder of the funeral home Yi Yuan, was there to talk about his undertaking job. Also a former independent Chinese high school student himself, he graduated from the National Taiwan Normal University with a major in Counselling and Psychology, and currently has accomplished more than 7 years of undertaking experience.

Yung Tan

The Yi Yuan funeral home

     Firstly, Yung Tan talked about what a funeral director’s job entails. He explained that they are the planners and communicators of a funeral, or as he likes to put it: someone who holds the umbrella for a family in the rain. Confused as to what path he wanted to take after graduation, he decided to travel the world to better understand himself. In the end, after working in a mortuary as a therapist, he decided to become a funeral director.

Yung Tan when he was in America

     Yung Tan then went more into depth about funerals. According to him, funeral homes have entered a new era. While old funeral homes only focus on preparing coffins, modern ones are shifting to more varied forms of services. 

Old-style funeral homes (Photographer: Ricky Lim)

     Yung Tan explained that these modern funerals can be split into five stages: planning (缘), undertaking (殓) – preparing the dead body for the service, ceremony (殡), burial (葬), and continuation (续) – which involves counseling the grieving families and giving advice on any rituals or taboos that come with funerals. These five stages form a cycle. 

     In addition, he also believed that while death is seen as a negative thing, it is also a valuable life experience, especially for young children who haven’t fully grasped the concept of death yet. Funerals, meanwhile, are like an invisible bridge to the afterlife that can mend lost relationships and allow us to bid farewell to our loved ones.

The five-stage cycle of modern funerals

     Next, Yung Tan talked about his company Yi Yuan, which was co-founded by him and his friend Alan Koh in 2020. It is commonly said that when we are born and when we die, we are in a state of nothingness, or zero. However, he doesn’t believe that this symbol “0” should symbolise nothingness. Instead, it should represent completion, like a circle. Hence, the company name is Yi Yuan (一圆), which is Chinese for “a circle”.

     According to Yung Tan, the core value of Yi Yuan is that everyone deserves their own method of saying goodbye that reflects their passions and experiences so that the mourners can connect with the deceased on a deeper level. Since traditional practices usually don’t achieve this purpose, Yi Yuan has modernised their designs and used more meaningful decorations. For instance, dead flowers being used give them another purpose, symbolising the belief that death is not the final stage in life. 

Yi Yuan’s modern funeral designs

     But for anyone who still prefers traditional funerals, rest assured because Yi Yuan also does those. At the same time, however, they include some characteristics of modern design like clean lines such that it still stands out from the rest. Personally, Yung Tan prefers to have his funeral be held in nature as a homecoming of sorts.

     To talk about these designs, Yung Tan shared a story with the audience. He had received a call from a mother whose 4-year-old daughter had unfortunately died of illness due to a walking disability. She requested that the funeral be held in her daughter’s room. Though it was inefficient to do so since the family lived in a hotel, after some negotiations they eventually agreed. The funeral was decorated with her favourite toys and photos, but one thing that stood out among them was a swing, which she loved to ride since she couldn’t walk.

     To end his speech, Yung Tan explained that the most important part of being a funeral director is not to prioritize money. Instead, he believes that their main goal is to be attentive to a grieving family’s needs and try their best to help them.

     After that, Yung Tan held a Q&A session. Many questions about ghost encounters were asked, but he refused to answer any of them. After all, this wasn’t the main point of his speech. However, he did accept questions about collecting and preparing bodies for their funerals. For example, due to the pandemic, some families have unfortunately been unable to hold funerals or even see their loved ones for the last time. 

     With that, the talk came to an end. While it does discuss a sensitive topic, it is still important and Yung Tan hopes that we can stop fearing death and learn to view it in a different light.