A death teahouse accompanied by cake and coffee

"everyone has his own pain, his own bravery. Enlighten each other and rescue each other. "

July 17, 2016, a sultry, cloudy day. A small comprehensive exhibition hall in Hutong in Beijing gathered 16 strangers who had never met before. "there were so many people that day that there was no room in the coffee shop, so we moved benches to form a circle in the hall on the first floor."

There is black tea and coffee in front of them. Throughout the afternoon, they discussed how to face death, how to practice death, and how to die calmly. This is the last death teahouse hosted by Huang Ziyi in Beijing. although it is about death, the atmosphere is relaxed and happy.

"do you want to be told in advance that you will be ready to die, or do you want to die suddenly?"

"how to say goodbye well?"

"do you approve of euthanasia?"

……

The event, called Death Caf é (death Caf é), originated from the concept of Bernard Kreta, a Swiss sociologist, and in 2011, Englishman Jon Underwood made it a reality. Death Caf é provides a platform for communication and collision, where people can drink coffee and cake with strangers and talk about death, which is taboo to many people.

Death Death Caf é has now held more than 3000 parties around the world and has evolved into a social alliance event, where people in any city or community can host their own caf é based on the information provided by Jon Underwood on the website. In some places, this form is also known as Open Death Conversation (Open death Dialogue).

In China, Death Caf é was renamed "death Tea House". Huang Ziyi, a 27-year-old girl, brought it to China two years ago and has held 16 shows so far. All the topics in the death teahouse revolve around death, there is no fixed theme, and participants are free to discuss and speak. "We will be a 'community' in the next hour or two, and we will have a wonderful communication together." this is Ziyi's expectation of the teahouse. She hopes that the topic of death can become a part of daily life, "a topic that can really be talked about in a place where birds and flowers are singing, drinking tea and eating snacks."

If you don't know death, how can you know life. Nowadays, more and more young people begin to discuss death openly and carry out self-education about death. Through the dialogue and listening in the death teahouse, some people still wonder, some people are desensitized to death, and some people achieve reconciliation with themselves.

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A death teahouse event in Berlin

Ziyi first felt death when he was 2 years old. At her grandmother's funeral, she was held in her parents' hands and looked at her grandmother's coffin, sobbing beside her.

In fact, the relationship with death has long existed in her name. "my mother was pregnant with a boy two years before I was born. Stillbirth may be the negligence of the hospital. Later, her parents explained her name like this: son, on behalf of son, Yi, is elegant heaven. She introduced herself in this way since she was a child, and when she was a child, she would bless her brother in heaven. It was not until she was 10 years old that she went to Berlin to live with her mother and slowly stopped introducing herself like this. In the same year, she really realized that she was going to die for the first time and was so scared that she cried in her aunt's arms. She talked to her parents about death, but didn't get an answer.

Slowly, her thoughts on death took the place of simple fear. "although I am afraid, I believe that everything in the world is one." The judgment of one's present situation and the understanding of world civilization can be absorbed and digested from the self-conscious senses, or through any pair of eyes 500 years ago or 500 years later.

She developed a strong interest in the soul, reading books, looking up information on the Internet, trying to understand death and life through the eyes of others. But the confusion still came unexpectedly.

In early 2014, Ziyi's friend's brother died. She felt helpless in the face of her friend's pain. Before that, she had talked to a high school friend about drugs, and after reading the analysis of the efficacy of drugs, she began to question the existence of the soul. "I always believed that there was a soul, and it would be the essence of my life's efforts. When I think about it later, it seems that our personalities, memories, and so on, all come from the 'random' combination of chemicals in the body. "

Ziyi is a little confused and "really wants to talk to people about this topic."

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Ziyi introduced the death teahouse

Two years ago, Ziyi learned from television reports that there was a death teahouse in London, after which she decided to set up her own teahouse.

The first attempt, the location is downstairs in the coffee shop, around a small wooden table, the weather is warm. "only three people attended, including me," one of them was a Norwegian musician Ziyi met on the street, and the other was her then boyfriend, a TV producer.

In Berlin, the death teahouse was held seven times, with participants from a variety of industries and the number of people gradually increasing.

The event is hosted by Ziyi. Starting with self-introduction, everyone has time to tell their own story, followed by a free discussion session. In the whole process, Ziyi also needs to adjust the atmosphere and rhythm. "sometimes the stories of chat will be more intense, especially cruel, or very sad." At this time, I usually listen to the story quietly and ask some details or related questions. I'd better have some small digressions and make a little joke. Hope to lighten the atmosphere or let the narrator turn his attention to other topics.

Many stories were unimaginable before they came to the death teahouse. Those strange and even absurd things really exist in the corner of a person's life, like a hidden undercurrent, and only at this moment of brief gathering will they converge into the ocean.

"A girl said that there was a powerful fortune-teller in her hometown, and she was right about the deathbed time of many people in the village. Her mother was there, too. These two years are approaching the time that the fortune-teller said, she lives every day in her mother's worry and gratitude for her mother's health, and tries her best to act coquettish when she meets her mother every day. "

"A young artist who plays the guitar and writes songs by himself has a female roommate in her twenties, very cute, but always depressed. In order to comfort her roommate, the artist wrote a song about suicide to share with her, but she committed suicide the next day. The song was still in the cassette when the body was found. "

When it comes to this story, Ziyi is a little heavy. "sometimes, you will feel so sad that there is even such a thing."

But the death teahouse is not a place to provide treatment. A girl once talked about her mother's death and told her a lot of details. She was so sad that no one had the heart to interrupt her. This kind of situation bothers Zi Yi. "I am not a professional counselor or psychiatrist. Although I have organized so many activities and accumulated some experience, I hope that friends who are in great psychological difficulties will seek professional help."

In Ziyi's mind, the participants in the death teahouse should be more like passers-by. The death teahouse is not to explore the end of death, but the beginning of the road, or a stop sign. "it's open and inviting. You just need to calm down and give yourself and others some time to think and talk about death. But in the end, you have to go back to your life and explore deeper, with the help of professional strength or by yourself.

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Death teahouse LOGO

Zi Yi will come to Beijing as "Journey to the East". After graduating from college, she wanted to go for a walk. After listening to the Tang Dynasty, Black Panther and No. 43 Baojia Street, she was full of reverie and expectation of Beijing. She likes Beijing and Berlin as spacious, "a lot of yuan, informal". After growing up in Berlin for so many years, she wants to see what China has become and where she is from.

In Beijing, she is known as the first person to bring the death teahouse to China. There are many curious people. 12 people came to the teahouse in Beijing for the first time, but the real activity was not so easy. "when doing activities in Beijing, many people introduce themselves with'I want to hear what everyone has to say, 'and I thought, Oh, my God, it's not a lecture, I'm going to give you some inspiration."

Ziyi has prepared an information kit for this, which contains her selected articles, introductions from some professional organizations, as well as magazines and philosophical bibliographies. In order to ensure the quality of the event, Ziyi has several guidelines: resolutely do not record; do not organize events to "collect" exciting or special stories; hold them in bright and spacious places; and adjust herself to a good state so that participants can open the chatterbox. At the same time, she wants to "keep running activities, improve herself, and become more professional."

This activity is purely public welfare, and Ziyi enjoys the whole process. I also designed the publicity posters for each event and enjoyed it. She asked herself to enrich her professional knowledge, make the discussion in depth when necessary, and learn some skills to host the conversation. Although the events in Beijing are different from those in Berlin, Ziyi regards each one as "unique".

The feedback from the participants became the driving force for her persistence, and they rated the death teahouse as "very meaningful and needed". Another motivation is to hear different voices. "everyone has his own pain, his own courage." Enlighten each other and rescue each other.

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The last death teahouse event in Beijing

The summer party on July 17, 2016 was Ziyi's last death teahouse in Beijing and her farewell party.

Many people came that day, including artists whose father suffered from cancer, 20-year-old college students who were curious about the activities, teachers and clothing designers with near-death experience, and editors who had been afraid of the death of relatives and friends after the death of relatives and friends, hoping to untie the knot.

At that activity, many people remember to talk about "calm": to live well means to walk calmly all the time. When the death teahouse was held for the 16th time in Beijing, Ziyi felt that she had to take her time.

This experience made her grow up, learn to persevere, and witnessed and recorded her life in Beijing. There were times of frustration and suffering, "but she still washed her face and came to do the event."

After so many activities, when it comes to the word "death teahouse", Zi Yi says that she pays more attention to the word "teahouse", while "death" is actually a private part.

After returning to Berlin, Ziyi continued to organize the death teahouse. "it's wonderful that people are always infected unintentionally and intentionally and influence each other," she said. Everything you do leaves a trail of choice. The traces left in other people's hearts let us live in each other's lives. In a way, this is immortality. "

(Huang Jiejie / tr. by Phil Newell)

Illustration / Central Committee