This is a story about my mother. While she was born into a traditional agricultural society, she is not traditional at all. She is a lesbian and a Taoist priest that leads “Din Tao" parades at funerals. She enjoys smoking, playing poker cards, and collecting pictures of scantily dressed women printed on betel nut boxes.
When I was seven years old, I found out that my mother is attracted to women. Now my seven-year-old niece has also asked, “Auntie, is grandma a boy or a girl?"
My answer is so long that I decided to make a documentary for my niece.
Note: According to folk religion (mostly based on Taoism) in Taiwan, people turn into ghosts when they die. The deceased good people will be taken to the Pure Land of the Buddha Amitabha in the West, while villains will be condemned to hell and tried. The “Kan Mong" singing-dance parade, a kind of “small play" in traditional Chinese Opera, is performed at funerals. At funerals, “red-head priests" would use religious instruments to evoke the gods, who would then lead the deceased through the inferno to the Pure Land.
