Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

The delightful sense of being alone vanishes, and you realize that that is an impossibility in China. You stand up disgusted, but with the feeling of amusement predominant, and one after another comes out of his hiding-place, where the black, piercing eyes have been scanning your every movement for the last ten minutes, and at least a dozen ungainly forms creep up to you and with smiling faces try to make friends with you.

Now, mighty and overwhelming though the living force of Chinese life may be, it is an undoubted fact that the dead and sleeping nation, as a religious factor, in many respects controls and dominates the living tides of men that impress us so vividly with their vast numbers. Even the casual traveller in China cannot help but be impressed with the way in which the graves of the dead thrust themselves upon the attention of the living. There is no getting away from them. The mountain sides very often are so thickly covered with them that one has to tread upon them if one would pass from one part to another. Every uncultivated spot on the lower levels has been eagerly seized upon as spaces where to bury the dead. Even the cultivated fields have been invaded by them, and mounds right in the centre of some diminutive rice or potato patches show how the little farm has been narrowed down in order to make room for some members of the family that have passed away. These graves thrust themselves up to the edge of the great roads, and seem to be prevented from grasping even them only by the incessant march of the countless feet that hurry along them from dawn till dark. The clearings and little hills outside the cities that cannot be used for cultivation are all seized upon as unprotected cemeteries for the dead, and the little mounds like tidal waves advance up to the very edge of the walls of the town, and are stayed in their progress only by these huge bulwarks.

But it is not simply by the signs that appeal to the eye that one gets an idea which is apt to appal one of the vast problem of the dead in China. In countless houses throughout the land, and more especially in those of the rich, one is astonished to find how many lie in their coffins, hermetically sealed, for weeks and months, without being buried. It is a most gruesome sight, and would give an Englishman the shivers to have the dead in the next room for many months and sometimes for years.

Now, it is an unquestionable fact that the “dead hand” is a most mighty and a most potent factor in the religious life of the people of China. All the gods and goddesses that are worshipped throughout the Empire are not believed to have the same influence over human life in sending misery or in bestowing happiness as the dead members of a family have in regard to their relatives that are still alive on the earth. A man, for example, dies. He was a poor worthless fellow when he left the earth, and his life was a constant record of failure and incapacity. He never accomplished anything, and he was a mere nonentity not only in society but also in his own home till the very last. All that is changed now, and as he lies in his tomb he has acquired a new power that, in conjunction with the unseen forces that are supposed to gather round the grave, will enable him to pour riches and power upon the home he has left.

The dead to-day all over China hold the living within their grip. They are believed in some mysterious way of having the ability to change the destinies of a family. They can raise it from poverty and meanness to wealth and to the most exalted position, but if they are neglected and offerings are not made to them at the regular seasons, they will take away houses and lands from it, and turn the members of it into beggars.

A man died in a certain village. He was so poor that a grave was dug for him by the roadside and he was buried with but the scantiest of ceremony. He had never shown any ability in the whole course of his life, and he seemed in no way different from the ordinary commonplace looking men that one meets in shoals anywhere.

The eldest son who buried him was a young man of exceptional ability. He was rough and overbearing in his manners and a very unpleasant man to have to oppose, but he had the keen passion of the trader, and seemed to know by instinct every phase of the market, and what it was safe for him to speculate in. As he had no capital of his own, he was compelled to begin his life at the very bottom and to work his way up. This he did with great success, so that in the course of time he amassed a considerable fortune, and his name was known as that of one of the merchant princes in the region in which he lived.

Now, this man’s steady rise from poverty to wealth was not put down to his own ability or to any skill that he had shown in the management of his business affairs, but almost entirely to the old father who lay buried at the crossroads. It was he, the son believed, that guided the golden stream that flowed into his life, and it was his mysterious hand that had so prospered the combinations which the son had made, that the firm was built up till it was distinguished for the magnitude of its transactions. So convinced was he of this that he would never allow the grave to be touched, and he would never have a stone put up to show to whom this common-looking, neglected mound of earth belonged. He was afraid lest careless hands should break the spell that hung around it, and perhaps annoy the old man so that the run of prosperity should be broken, and in anger he should send misfortune instead.

Countless instances could be given similar to the above, all illustrating the profound faith that the Chinese have in the power of the dead to influence the fortunes of the living either for weal or for woe. From this has arisen the most powerful cult, ancestor worship, that at present exists in China. Its root lies neither in reverence nor in affection for the dead, but in selfishness and in dread. The kindly ties and the tender affection that used to bind men together when they were in the world and to knit their hearts in a loving union seem to vanish, and the living are only oppressed with a sense of the mystery of the dead, and a fear lest they should do anything that might incur their displeasure and so bring misery upon the home.

Looked at from a sentimental point of view, ancestor worship seems to be very beautiful and very attractive, but it is not really so. The unselfish love that is the charm that binds the members of a family to each other, and the willingness to endure and suffer for each other, are entirely absent in the worship that the living offer to their dead friends. The bond that binds them now is a vague and a misty one, and exists solely because there are hopes that lands and houses and wealth may come in some mysterious way from the unseen land, and sorrow and pain and disaster may be driven from the home. It is no wonder that this worship has such a powerful hold on the faith and practice of the Chinese, when it is considered how much that men hold dear is involved in it. It is the greatest religious force in the land, and will survive in some form or other even when all the others that are at present recognized have passed away from the hearts of the people.