Berlin school teaches Taiwanese perspectives on death

Berlin, May 1 (CNA) A Berlin high school is setting out to teach Taiwanese perspectives on life and death by incorporating literature and film from the island into its ethics and philosophy curriculum.

At Europäisches Gymnasium Bertha-von-Suttner, a class of ninth-grade students watched the Taiwanese 2023 film "Marry My Dead Body" (關於我和鬼變成家人的那件事), in which a police officer picks up a red envelope only to unexpectedly end up married to a gay ghost.

Teacher Monika Li told CNA recently that the film was intended to introduce students to Taiwanese beliefs surrounding gods and ghosts, a central theme of the life-and-death curriculum she co-designed with her colleague Lisanne Fritsch.

Taiwanese perspectives on life and death differ greatly from those in Germany, she said, noting that people in Taiwan do not shy away from discussing ghosts and spirits in everyday life and can even approach death with humor.

By contrast, death is often viewed as a private and difficult topic to discuss in German society, said Li, whose husband is Taiwanese.

According to Li, she was inspired to create the curriculum by an interaction in a Chinese-language class she was teaching.

As she introduced students to Taiwan's Earth God (土地公) tradition, one usually quiet student suddenly shared a personal experience involving the death of a family member, Li recalled.

"The student told me that his grandmother passed away around the time he was born, but he has always felt that she is still with him," Li said, adding that the student had never shared his feelings before out of fear that people might think he was strange.

Yet after being introduced to Taiwan's culture of gods, ghosts and spirits in class, he felt a sense of being understood, Li said, leading her to wonder if Taiwanese culture could help students reexamine the subject of death.

Teaching materials

The curriculum Li and Fritsch jointly designed is titled "Das Jenseits im Diesseits," meaning "the afterlife in this world" in English.

Over the course of a semester, students are led to explore Taiwan's varied beliefs surrounding ghosts and spirits across different ethnic groups, and urban and rural communities through the novel "Under Mt. Dawu" (大武山下) by Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) and the film "Marry My Dead Body" directed by Cheng Wei-hao (程偉豪).

Speaking of the materials they use, Li, who also translated "Under Mt. Dawu" into German, said the novel is rich in folklore and ghost stories mainly from the rural communities and Indigenous villages of Pingtung in southern Taiwan.

To present a broader picture of Taiwanese culture, she also included "Marry My Dead Body," which is set in an urban environment. "A work that tells a compelling story is, in itself, an excellent tool for cross-cultural teaching," she said.