IT'S NO GREAT surprise to hear that Mayme Chan May-ling entered her chosen profession by accident. She did not grow up with a burning ambition to become a make-up artist to the dead; Chan started out as a nurse at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital, caring for the terminally ill.
Make-up artists for the dead have always been scarce. In the 1960s, Chan became friends with the late Kwong Kam-chee, who was the first Chinese member of the profession in Hong Kong. Kwong needed a holiday stand-in and, over hours of mahjong, persuaded Chan to help out.
The next thing Chan knew, she was wearing plastic gloves and learning the mysterious art at Kwong's funeral parlour each night after her hospital shifts. 'It wasn't that difficult. I was already used to facing death,' recalls Chan.
Her hospital-ward experiences had taught her to not be emotionally affected by patients' suffering, even when they were dying. Nonetheless, Chan says attending to a dead body was spookier than she expected. 'When I was alone, making-up my first body, I had to leave all the lights on in the building - just in case anything creepy happened,' she admits.
After her first attempt, Chan felt it was more rewarding helping the dead than the living. 'There is not much you can do for those on the verge of dying. You can only watch them pass away,' she says. 'They are only at peace once they have drawn their last breath.'
But by dressing up the dead and making them look, in many cases, better than in life, Chan says she performs a valuable service. And it's a service she's built into a career: Chan now runs her own funeral parlour. 'Death is irreversible, but at the same time it's a new beginning,' she explains. 'I feel as if I've performed a good deed when the deceased look their best, groomed and smart - they are ready to move on.'