CHAPTER XVIII
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES
Chinese Coffins
If I may say so, without appearing over-anxious to advertise my Irish ancestry, the most important event in a Chinaman’s life is his funeral.
A Chinese crowd is the culmination of human noise; and the Chinese are never so noisy as at a funeral. They have hearty appetites at all times, but they never eat so much as they do at a funeral feast. When I first lived in China I used to find it almost impossible to distinguish between a funeral procession and a marriage procession. In the centre of one the coffined corpse is borne on the shoulders of men. In the centre of the other similar men bear upon their shoulders the bride, who is in an enclosed sedan chair, and she is followed by her bridesmaids. But, to the casual observer, the two ends of the two processions are quite alike in every other respect. Tom-toms, red-clothed coolies carrying roasted pigs and other dainties, smaller coolies carrying cheap paper ornaments of a Mongolian theatrical type,—these are the invariable elements of both processions.
China, if you know it at all, is the easiest of the Oriental countries to write about; although it is very difficult to inform yourself about the Chinese, they are so bitterly exclusive. For any scrap of information you once obtain is necessarily exact. The versatile Japanese have a hundred modes of life; the conservative Chinese have one. The Indian peninsula is inhabited by a hundred distinct peoples; peoples of varying origins, speaking different languages, obeying differing laws, wearing dissimilar dress. These Indian tribes intermingle more or less; their country is so over-populated that they must. But they learn almost nothing from each other; they adopt nothing from each other. They so rarely intermarry that for the purposes of general writing I may say they never do it. The narrow prejudice or the magnificent conservatism (whichever it is) that has kept the petty Indian tribes distinctly separated from one another has kept the great unnumbered and almost numberless Chinese nation, a nation apart from all the rest of the human world. But, unlike the rigidly conservative Indians, the Chinese have taken a great many ideas from aliens. We must not think, because as a people they will not mingle with us nor admit us into their national heart, nor into their homes, nor into the bowels of their country, that they never learn anything from us. They have learned a great deal, they are learning, and they will learn. But what they adopt from us they so assimilate with their vividly characteristic national modes of thought and life, that that superficial mammal, the travelling European, never suspects that many of the conveniences of everyday Chinese life are adaptations of Aryan customs or of European tools.
The Chinese are to-day the most unique, the most ancient, and the most misunderstood people on the earth. I say the most ancient because they are the least changed from what they were long centuries ago. The least changed—they are not changed at all! The China of to-day is the China Marco Polo knew. In the thirteenth century commercial intercourse was frequent between China and Europe. A long caravan route extended from the southern provinces of China to Genoa. The men who took a year to go from their Chinese homes to the great Italian mart, taking with them their precious merchandise of silk and ivory, of tissue and of pearls, differed in almost no way from the men that of recent years have flocked to the Australian diggings and the Californian goldfields.
Europe has pierced its aggressive way into China. China, belching with its congested population, has overflowed into Europe. On the whole, we have, I think, been treated better in China than the Chinese have been treated here. We have often been very rude to Ah Foong. Nevertheless he has gained his point: he has earned enough money to return to the Celestial Empire, to live there in affluence, and to be buried there with éclat. And when he has left Europe he has taken with him something more than English gold. A few of us have been in China. (I am not speaking of the missionaries—I regard them as a people apart.) What have we gained in China? A strange experience (to me a pleasant one), a pound of perfumed tea and a bale of flowered crêpe, for both of which we have paid right handsomely. We have been treated in the main politely; but, sooner or later, most of us are bowed out of China, if not by the Emperor, why, then, by the climate.
The Chinese have, at least, three religions—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism; but the funeral rites of the three sects are almost, if not quite, identical. There are several reasons for this. The three religions are much alike, and are all largely founded upon Indian Buddhism. Moreover, religion is a very second-class affair indeed in China. The priests are not at all an honoured class; they are usually treated with open contumely. There are no religious dissensions in China, it is not a matter of enough importance. The priests of two sects often live together in the chummiest way. Filial devotion is the real religion of China. All China is one huge family, and the Emperor is the “Great Father.” By the way, “Great Father” is what the North American Indians call God; and the Chinese consider their Emperor a god. How we human atoms ring our petty changes on a few poor thoughts! There is one more reason why all Chinese funerals are greatly alike. China is a land of ceremonials, and the smallest details of those ceremonials are prescribed by the Leke or Book of Rites. To disobey the least rule of this great national manual is a crime, and a severely punished one.
In two respects only does one Chinese funeral differ from another. The first is in the amount of money spent, and the second is in the period after death at which burial takes place.
The first ambition of every Chinaman is to have a splendid coffin. A poor Chinaman will half starve himself and his family for years that he may daily hoard a few cash toward the sum needed for the purchase of the coveted casket. When the coffin is really bought, it is brought home with great ceremony. It is given the place of honour in the house, and is regarded as the most valuable piece of furniture in the establishment. Often a pious son will sell himself into slavery that he may buy and present to his father an exceptionally handsome coffin. Such acts of filial piety rarely go unrewarded by the Government. The obedience of children to parents is so much the central idea of Chinese life, and upon it so largely depends the safety of the Chinese Government, that that Government, being one of the most astute and painstaking in the world, misses no opportunity of strengthening the idea of filial obedience in the Chinese mind, either en masse or singly. Among the poorer classes it is customary to buy a very thick coffin. No self-respecting Chinese family (and the Chinese are the most self-respecting of all the nations) will bury a parent until they can do so with more or less Mongolian magnificence; hence, in China, death by no means implies immediate burial. When a Chinaman dies his neighbours come in and help the women of the family to make the shroud. The body is put in its coffin, then the funeral ceremonies begin, if there is money enough. If there is not, the coffin is put back in its place of honour until the family finances look up. That is something that occasionally takes time in Europe. In China money is acquired more slowly; the coffined body often awaits adequately-ceremonied burial for twenty or thirty years. I need not, I think, dwell upon the grave necessity under such circumstances for a very thick, air-tight coffin. Often a Chinese funeral entails the additional expense of a long journey. A Chinaman will leave his father unburied rather than inter him anywhere but in the tombs of his ancestors, which may be in the most distant part of China, for Ah Foong is rather a traveller.
The day of the death or the day after, the relatives not living in the house and the friends come to pay the last duties or respect to the deceased. When the visitors arrive they are shown into a room in which are all the women and children of the establishment. These latter set up a dismal howl, in which the visitors join, or to which they listen sympathetically. When the tympanum of even a Chinese ear begins to ache, the guests are ushered into another apartment, where the men of the house give them tea and refreshment. The refreshment varies according to the means of the family. In the house of the rich it is a dinner. After the visitors have drank and eaten they are bowed out by one of the kinsmen of the dead.
FOOCHOW SINGING GIRLS. Page 169.
The dinner of Chinese affluence, wherever, whyever it is served, consists of five courses—
1. A very rich thick soup.
2. Salad and meat.
3. Birds’ nests, sharks’ fins, and other very nourishing dishes.
4. Stews.
5. Fruits and sweetmeats.
The first four courses are eaten with chop-sticks, the last course is eaten with the fingers; and is not that the way that fruit always should be eaten? Everything in the first four courses is served superlatively hot. Except a Chinaman is starving he will not eat cooked food unless it is bubbling hot. I except sweetmeats; and yet he eats the most incredible quantities of ice. Wine is served with all the courses—served hot. It is not intoxicating, and has, to my palate, a very pleasant taste. I used to dine in America with some people who were just a bit mad on the temperance question. One day they gave me unfermented wine; it was an awful moment! But the Chinese dinner-giver knows the secret of keeping his guests free from the possible ill effects of alcohol without making himself ridiculous.
At a correct Chinese dinner the women look on from behind a trellis work. The Chinese hold that the seat of the human understanding is the stomach.
A well-conducted Chinese funeral is the most gorgeous sight in Asia. It may seem to us a little tinselly, but that is a mere matter of taste; but I, who make bold to like the Chinese, can’t claim that they have in all things a superabundance of taste.
At the front of the funeral procession walk the noisy, musicless musicians; then come men (they may be friends, they may be coolies) bearing the insignia of the dignity of the dead, if he had any. Next walk more men carrying figures of animals, idols, umbrellas, and blue and white streamers. After them come men carrying pans of perfume. Just before the coffin walk bonzes—Chinese priests. Over the coffin a canopy is usually carried. The casket is borne by about a score of men. Immediately after the coffin walk the children of the deceased. The eldest son comes first. He is dressed in canvas and leans heavily upon a stout stick. He is supposed to be too exhausted by grief and fasting to walk without the aid of this staff. The other children and relatives follow this chief mourner. They are clothed in white linen garments. White is the mourning colour of the Danes and of the Chinese. The women are carried in chairs in the Chinese funeral procession. They sob and wail at intervals and in unison.
A Chinese funeral procession always has a long way to go. The burying-places are invariably some distance from the town or village. Usually they are on a high place. Pines and cypresses are planted about them if possible. The dead are supposed to be pleased at having a pleasant situation for their graves. When a Chinese family has persistent bad luck it is usual for them to shift the bones of their ancestors to a more desirable place.
When the burying-place is reached the bonzes begin chanting a mass for the dead, and the coffin is put into the tomb. When the coffin is laid in its final position, a large, oblong, white marble table is placed before the tomb. On the middle of it is set a censor and two vases and two candlesticks, all of as exquisite workmanship as possible. Then they have a paper cremation; paper figures of men and horses, garments, and a score of other things are burned. These are supposed to undergo a material resurrection and to be useful to the dead in the Chinese heaven. The tomb is sealed up or closed, and an entertainment concludes the ceremony at the grave.
The forms of Chinese tombs vary somewhat, according to the province in which they are built, and very much according to the means of the relative who undertakes the expense. With the very poor the coffin is placed upon the ground, earth and lime are packed about it, and a rude grave is formed. With the rich a vault is built, in the form of a horse-shoe. If the dead was of note or position, the decorations of the grave and of the coffin are very elaborate. There are a thousand interesting things to be said about Chinese mourning, about the ceremonies commemorative of the dead, and about the funerals of the Chinese Royal Family. But they can’t be put into a paragraph, nor on to a page. So I leave them.
Chinese religion is so secondary an affair that it is inconsistent. Theoretically, some of them believe in immortality. In reality, I believe them to be the veriest materialists, quite devoid of a belief in an after-life. And yet they periodically carry food to the graves of their ancestors.
The Chinese are touchingly fanatic in their love of home. China is so over-productive of human life that a fearful number of the Chinese are uncomfortable from their birth till their death. That is the only reason that we sometimes see, as I did yesterday, a red-button mandarin on the streets of London, and the sole reason that half San Francisco’s soiled linen is washed by Chinamen. But wherever they go, they carry their coffins with them. They hope to die in China, but, if by accident or misfortune, they die in Europe, in America, or in Australia, their last prayer is that they may rest in a Chinese grave.