SOME CHINESE MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 595 



On the morning of the eighth day the priests usually depart, 

 and the family resumes, in some degree, its ordinary occupations. 

 Three times, at the new and the full moon, the married daughters 

 of the deceased each bring a pig's head and a large steamed cake, 

 and join their brothers in worship before the seat of the spirit in 

 their father's house. On the sixth day of the sixth Chinese month, 

 after the removal of the seat of the spirit, the sons buy one cock, 

 one water-melon, cakes, and incense, and offer them to their father's 

 spirit, that being the day on which he, having been judged before 

 ten courts in hades, crosses its narrow bridge and passes into a re- 

 gion decreed to him according to his deserts. The cock wakens 

 him, and is afterward presented by him to the keeper of the 

 bridge ; the melon and cakes are distributed on the route, and 

 the incense is burned in ceremonious respect to the deceased. 

 After the first hundred days the dead parent receives offerings of 

 food, with the burning of incense and spirit-money, about ten 

 times a year, including always his birthday and the anniversary 

 of his death 



White is, in a general way, the color of mourning. Sons, dur- 

 ing the first three days, wear the tunic wrong side out, and on one 

 side of the body only. After that time they wear, like other 

 mourners, garments of unbleached hempen cloth, except on the 

 seventh day, when they and their wives wear sackcloth tunics, 

 usually hired from a shop at which coffins are sold. The sons do 

 not shave their heads for one hundred days, and they wear mourn- 

 ing for twenty-seven months, during which time they can not 

 legally marry. Daughters and daughters-in-law put off mourning 

 at the end of one year, when they resume their golden head-orna- 

 ments and don some bit of red. 



The burial of the encoffined body is sometimes deferred for 

 many years, awaiting the death of a spouse, or the favorable de- 

 cision of a geomancer concerning a site for a tomb. As the pros- 

 perity of every man's descendants is thought to depend upon his 

 being laid in a spot having such relationship to wind and water 

 as will afford him undisturbed repose, the selection of a place of 

 interment is sometimes diflficult, and there are men who make 

 their living by searching out good places for graves. 



The grave being prepared, friends are informed of the burial, 

 and they assemble at the appointed time to follow the coffin to the 

 hills. The coflin is covered with a red pall. Two lanterns are tied 

 together with a red cord, and arranged so as to hang one on either 

 side of the coffin ; and there may be as many pairs of lanterns as 

 there are married couples among the descendants of the deceased. 

 Small bags, with a red and a green side, are also hung upon the 

 coffin, one for each member of the mourning household. The bags 

 contain linen thread, cotton-rolls, peas, rice, hemp-seed, and coins^ 



