A rite to help the soul of a recently deceased person to be reincarnated involves a Taoist to perform physically enduring feats on top of a pile of tables. Xu Wenwen meets one of the few remaining practitioners of this daring ritual.

The ideas about where the soul goes after a person's death vary in different cultures, and in some areas of China's eastern Zhejiang Province it is believed that the soul of one who dies unnaturally goes to hell and cannot be reincarnated, unless a Taoist rite Fan Jiu Lou is performed to help release it.

Fan Jiu Lou, which literally means "turning over the nine-story tower," is an elaborate ritual that climaxes with a display of acrobatics performed by a skilled Taoist atop a high "nine-story" platform.

The platform consists of nine "Eight-Immortal" tables (a big square table with four equal sides, which can accommodate eight people), a square wooden table, stacked one on top of the other to a height of about 12 meters and tied securely to two tree trunks.

The Taoist, without any safety measures, chants incantations and performs martial arts movements at the top of the tower in order to free the soul from purgatory.

According to Jiang Yuqian, an official from the Hangzhou Intangible Cultural Heritage Center, the religious rite used to be one part of Mulian Drama before becoming an individual ritual.

Mulian Drama features a series of chapters about the Chinese legend Lady Meng Jiang.

Lady Meng Jiang was a legendary character during the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) who went to the Great Wall in search of her husband, a conscripted laborer. When she learned that he had died of hunger and exhaustion while building the Great Wall, she cried so much that she caused the Great Wall to collapse. In the drama, Meng Jiang raised a platform as high as the heaven so her voice could be transferred to the gods.

The custom of raising a platform to free the soul as depicted in the drama spread in China. The tradition remains in villages in Xiaoshan, Shaoxing and Dongyang in Zhejiang Province.

Only specially trained Taoists can handle the risky and demanding job. Qian Xiaozhan from Xiaoshan, is the only performer of Fan Jiu Lou in Hangzhou and one of the few remaining in Zhejiang Province.

The 42-year-old Taoist was listed as a descendant of the ritual on the country's Intangible Cultural Heritage list three years ago.

Qian's business is fairly good even though superstition does not sell as well as it did in olden times. He performs the ritual, mostly in Xiaoshan, Fuyang and Shaoxing, sometimes up to a total of 20 times a month. Each performance earns Qian 2,000 yuan (US$308).

I recently witnessed Qian practicing the entire Fan Jiu Lou process at a village in Xiaoshan for someone who had died in a car accident.

Similar to many Chinese events, the prelude of the ceremony began with a banquet to treat the Taoist, a local wind and percussion ensemble as the Taoist's accompaniment, family members and some neighbors.

Welcome ceremony

After the meal, Qian and the deceased's family prepared the welcoming ceremony, including laying out oblations, joss sticks and candles on a table, drawing magic characters on paper and some eggs dyed red and green.

Around 1:30pm, the local wind and percussion ensemble played for the guests. The band accompanied the ritual from the beginning to the end.

Qian who had changed into a Taoist robe sounded a black ox horn three times to mark the welcoming ceremony, then the ensemble struck up.

The artist then chanted the names of all sorts of Buddhas and Taoist immortals, with the deceased's son standing beside him. At the end of every passage, signaling he had invited some Buddhas and immortals, he and the deceased's son bowed.

At the end, Qian burned the paper which has magic characters written on it and bowed. The ceremony lasted for 20 minutes as he invited so many Buddhas and immortals.

When the ceremony ended, Qian went outdoors to perform the Fan Jiu Lou.

The nine tables had been already set up on flat ground in the village by Qian and his assistant in the morning.

Qian took off the robe and changed into a tight-fitting kung fu suit. He first performed the Chuan Zun part of the ritual to pray for safety and success that requires the Taoist to leap through a barrel three times. The diameter of the barrel's bottom, the narrowest part of it, is no more than 50 centimeters, but jumping through it was a piece of cake for Qian.

He then wielded a sword with a ribbon hanging from it to tell the ghost "I'm going to release you," and started to turn over to the second table, and then the fourth, sixth, eighth and the ninth.

It is called "turning over the nine-story tower" not "climbing up the nine-story tower" because the Taoist, standing with his back facing the tables and holding the brim of the second table with an underhand grip, pulls himself up and turns onto the upper side of the second table.

The highlight arrived when Qian reached the top. He performed a handstand, a headstand and other physical feats. The tower became higher when Qian's assistant added two more smaller tables with their legs bonded together. Qian repeated the risky acrobatic movements on the smaller platform.

Many of the actions were done four times in four directions, and the band provided musical accompaniment throughout.

Ritual role-play

When the acrobatic part was over, Qian changed into a woman's costume and acted as an old lady holding a white-feathered cock. Dressing up as an old lady is said to commemorate Liu Qi'niang, the woman who founded the Mulian Drama, while the cock signifies when the soul is free.

The family then united to rotate a long rope loop, which passed through a bamboo tube at the top of the tower of tables.

The bamboo tube contained a list of all the family members of the deceased, and each person on the list was required to pass and rotate the rope loop, insuring the part of the rope he or she touched passed through the bamboo tube.

The rotation of the loop also symbolizes the soul "being lifted" from hell to the human world and that it is able to be reincarnated.

In the rite, people know the soul is free when the rooster crows.

Finally, the family burnt a pile of paper-made replica money, which in Chinese tradition is burned as an offering to the dead, and Qian turned down the tower from the ninth table to the seventh, fifth, third and the first. The whole procedure on the top of the tower lasted around one hour, and no safety measures were taken. Undoubtedly, it is not a task for those who aren't strong or brave enough.

Qian wasn't trained in the Fan Jiu Lou ritual until he was 22 years old, although he had practiced kung fu since the age of 14 and was capable of climbing any tree trunk.

He has hurt himself many times in training and once badly cut his foot while practicing the Chuan Zun part of the ritual but Qian says he has never failed in a real performance.

Qian has a very strong waist and arms, but he is getting old. "I will quit in 10 years," he says and has even been learning cookery as an alternative career.

He does not have an apprentice, but he teaches his son (his school of Taoism allows marriage) Fan Jiu Lou as he believes his son "has to inherit the techniques" from him.

Yet he is not willing to have his son engage in the actual ritual performance as "it is dangerous."