There's a bizarre custom of inviting strippers to funerals in China and Taiwan
This picture was taken in Taiwan last week, where 50 pole dancers helped give 76-year-old local politician Tung Hsiang a raucous send-off.
Footage showed the scantily-clad cavalcade stretching to around 200 vehicles, complete with a drumming band.
"He told us he wanted this through a dream two days before the funeral," his brother Tung Mao-hsiung told local television channel CTS.
It might seem a bizarre spectacle, but it is not unusual in Taiwan. The custom originated among gangsters, but entered the public consciousness in 1980 when local newspapers began covering the phenomenon of stripping at funerals, according to University of South Carolina professor Marc Moskowitz.
In a post for the China Policy Institute, he said the custom is usually found in working class communities. This is because Taiwan has outlawed the practice in cities and "middle class and the elite are more committed to conforming to global cultural norms."
Moskowitz, who made 2011 documentary "Dancing for the Dead: Funeral Strippers in Taiwan," said processions feature "electric flower cars," which are pick-up trucks that have been converted into stages. "Women will sing and dance, usually in bikinis or other skimpy attire. Sometimes, they will take off all of their clothes," he said.
Chinese government fights 'exotic performances'
Taiwanese events must be "hot and noisy," or renao, for them to be considered a success, Moskowitz said. In rural China, strippers are invited to funerals for a similar reason: To attract large crowds. A well-attended funeral is a signal of good fortune for the afterlife, according to a Wall Street Journal story on the phenomenon.
It is not popular with the Chinese government, however. In 2015, the government issued a statement announcing plans to crack down on the ritual. A report on Chinese news agency Xinhua said: "Having exotic performances of this nature at funerals highlights the trappings of modern life in China, whereby vanity and snobbery prevail over traditions."
The government release detailed two cases in the Hebei and Jiangsu provinces of China, in which the funeral organisers were punished with fines and short prison sentences. The funeral in Hebei featured burlesque dancers, the Red Rose Song and Dance Troupe, who did a striptease after the death of an elderly person.
But it would seem the government warning has not had the desired effect. The British press reported on a funeral strip show last year in China, where dancers gyrated around the coffin of a man known only as Mr Jian.