SOME CHINESE MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 589 



SOME CHINESE MORTUARY CUSTOMS.* 

 bt adele m. field e. 



WHEN the Chinese wish to declare the extreme vexatiousness 

 of any piece of work, they say, " It is more trouble than a 

 funeral " ; the obsequies of a parent being reckoned the most mad- 

 dening affair in human experience. 



Infants are buried summarily, without coffins, and the young 

 are interred with few rites ; but the funerals of the aged, of both 

 sexes, are elaborate in proportion to the number of the descend- 

 ants and to their wealth. When a childless married man dies, his 

 widow may perform all the duties of a son toward him, may re- 

 main in his house^ and may adopt children to rear as his heirs 

 and as worshipers of the family manes. If his widow purposes 

 marrying again, a young male relative may, with the consent of 

 senior members of the clan, undertake the services expected from 

 a son, and may inherit the estate of the deceased. 



When one is about to die, he is removed from his couch to a 

 bench or to a mat on the floor, because of a belief that he who dies 

 in bed will carry the bedstead as a burden into the other world. 

 He is washed in a new pot, in warm water in which a bundle 

 of incense-sticks is merged. After the washing, the pot and the 

 water are thrown away together. He is then arrayed in a full 

 suit of new clothing, that he may appear in hades at his best. He 

 breathes his last in the main room, before the largest door of the 

 house, that the departing soul may easily find its way out into the 

 air. A sheet of spirit-money, brown paper having a patch of gild- 

 ing on one surface, is laid over the upturned face, because it is 

 said that, if the eyes are left uncovered, the corpse may count the 

 rows of tiles in the roof, and that in such case the family could 

 never build a more spacious domicile. 



The sons unbraid their queues, and by this dishevelment indi- 

 cate the confusion of the household. They also take off their 

 tunics, turn one half sidewise over the other half, and put them 

 on again in such a way as to clothe only a moiety of the body. 

 The left shoulder is made bare if it be the father, and the right 

 shoulder if it be the mother, who has died. Thus the son shows 

 that he is denuded of his usual protection, on the one hand or the 

 other, the left ranking above the right in Chinese etiquette. If he 

 be orphaned, he goes naked to the waist in any weather. He also 

 girds himself with a wadded garment twisted into a rope. This 

 cumbrous girdle expresses the fact that he has been obliged to 



* The author writes from her own observations at Swatow, but does not mean to 

 be understood as implying that all the customs described are general throughout the em- 

 pire. — Editor. 



