In Vietnam, there is a powerful sense of importance carried within the belief of life after death. This can be seen in the way family members create shrines and pray for those who have passed away, in order to help their ancestors live calmly in the afterlife.
In some areas of the world, as human beings become flustered by contemporary troubles, people have developed a tendency to move through life astonishingly fast. When death comes, many lose an irreplaceable fragment of their lives, yet ceremonies surrounding death can feel rushed, too.
By holding on to a variety of cultural and religious customs, traditional Vietnamese funerals capture the longevity of human connection. In the following photo series from Flickr user manhai, we see the poignancy of a Hanoian funeral held around a hundred years ago. But what is perhaps more striking is that so many of these customs live on in modern-day Vietnam.
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[Photos via Flickr user Manhhai]
