"This photo is of the altar used during my grandfather's funeral in Taiwan in the summer of 1975. Normally altars are taken down forty-nine days after the person's death, because the altar was used by the family for paying respects to the recently deceased during the forty-nine-day period, when the spirit of the deceased is going through judgment. After this altar was taken down, my grandfather was considered one of our ancestors, and my family paid their respects to him along with the other ancestors."
Gloria Huang, April 2001