When at summer’s beginning the grimly-grinning Reaper came for Our Lady Cellar Door of Fangjia, she bluntly bade him stay his scythe, glug down some grog, nod his head-bone along to a banger or two and amend his schedule forthwith. Yet now the game old dame of Dongcheng at last lies ailing in her alley-side sepulchre and her end looms precipitously. A shiny-suited bureaucrat beatifically extends two fingers and slides the lids down over her eyes with all the tenderness of gentle Amalthea, foster-mother of Zeus. At his signal, a workman brings his shovel down upon the Lady’s noggin and her brains spill out through a hole in her skull. Thus does the Brick Death, that accursed plague upon the hutongs, bear another limp victim away in its voracious maw; so is another tombstone laid to pave the road forward to a lifeless mall-and-dormitory dystopia.

But never mind, for there are bargains to be had and for there’s a funeral to enjoy. The liquidation process has by now begun and opportunist asset-strippers are entreated to form an orderly swarm. Everything must go, so any prize that can be prised off gunge-encrusted wall or floor may be borne away for a song and a penny. The payment of last disrespects is to begin at Vespers upon the eventide of Saturday September 2nd, when all Cellar Doorknobs are called to congregate in cathartic commemorative communion at a Liquid Last Supper.

Of course, even amid the orgiastic access of grief, it behooves all weeping, wallowing, wan-faced wailers to observe the funerary rites in all propriety. Therefore, please drink copiously and irresponsibly, and abide by the relevant Confucian injunctions. To wit, make certain to urinate regularly on the walls of neighbouring houses, to keep imbibing until yonder is the morning seen to blink, to wobble home battered on your bicycle, and to remain sequestered in bedbound mourning for the rest of your miserable life.