The first three days after death, the spirit is supposed to visit the different temples, going, as it were, from official court to official court receiving judgment, and cards of merit or demerit to take with it, for the deeds done in the body. On the third day it returns to say farewell to the home, and then leaves for its long journey, and all this paper furniture is sent on ahead.
They continue forty-nine days of prayers by the priests, alternating three days by the Buddhists, three by the Lamas, and three by the Taoists, after which the Buddhists take their turn again. Everything else remains much as I have described it. The family, servants, everybody in mourning, and all business put aside to make way for this ceremony of mourning, mourning, mourning, when they ought to be rejoicing, for the poor old Princess had been a paralytic for years and was far better out of her misery.
The Princess frequently sent her cart for me during these days. Once when I was going through the court where there were vast quantities of things to be burned for the spirit, all made of paper, I noticed some that were so natural that I was unable to distinguish between them and the real things. Especially was this true of the furniture and flowers like that which had been in her apartments. There were great ebony chairs with fantastically marked marble seats, cabinets, and all the furniture necessary for her use. Among these things I noticed on the table a pack of cards and a set of dice, of which she had been very fond, and a chair like the one in which the eunuchs had carried the crippled old Princess about the court, and I said to the young Princess who accompanied me:
"You do not think your grandmother will require these things in the spirit world, do you?"
"Perhaps not," she replied, "but she enjoyed her cards and dice, and the chair was such a necessity, that, whether she needs them or not, it is a comfort to us to get and send her everything she liked while she lived, and it helps us bear our sorrows."
XIX
Chinese Princes and Officials
In any estimate of the forces which lead and control public opinion in China, everywhere from the knot of peasants in the hamlet to the highest officers of state and the Emperor himself, the literati, or educated class, must be given a prominent position. They form an immense body, increased each year by the government examinations. They are at the head of the social order. Every civil officer in the empire must be chosen from their number. They constitute the basis of an elaborate system of civil service, well equipped with checks and balances which, if corrected and brought into touch with modern life and thought, would easily command the admiration of the world.—Chester Holcomb in "The Real Chinese Question."