Outside, a man dressed in red and yellow robes is chanting and burning paper money to the accompaniment of traditional instruments. He looks like a monk, albeit one in a rather showy costume, though it turns out he, too, is an actor, though not from Mao's troupe.
A huge community meal is under way, as is traditional, cooked in a tent erected outside a housing complex, dwarfed by modern, six-story apartment blocks. Down the road, skyscrapers are going up. The funeral is transplanting old traditions into the middle of a modern Chinese community.
As the mourners take their places at the 10 tables, loaded down with dishes of chili-laden food, a small child defecates on the ground just feet away.
"We need a proper mourner because young people don't know how to cry anymore," explains Xu Xinwei, niece of the deceased man, Zhang Tujin. He was 67 years old and died of heart failure. A hardscrabble farmer, Zhang was hauling sacks of potatoes right up until the day before his death.
Now, his family sits at one table, wearing white — the color of mourning in China — sackcloth on their heads.
"We paid for a whole package for the funeral service," explains his daughter, Zhang Yingshu. "Because he worked hard his entire life, we definitely need to remember him."
As the meal winds down, people start to move into a large tent that has been erected especially for the occasion. They pull up green plastic stools and wait, the mood building to the kind of expectant tension in a big-screen cinema before the start of the latest blockbuster movie.
A Final, Dramatic and Tearful Farewell
As the ceremony starts, the strains of "The Internationale" ring out, and Zhang Tujin's family walks slowly forward to stand around his coffin. Now dressed in white satin, Dingding Mao begins her eulogy, her face serious despite her incongruous bouncy ponytails.
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