Tombs.
Like all people of Tartar origin, one of the most remarkable characteristics of the Chinese is their reverence for the dead, or as it is usually called, their ancestral worship. In consequence of this, their tombs are not only objects of care, but have frequently more ornament bestowed upon them than graces the dwellings of the living.
Their tombs are of different kinds; often merely conical mounds of earth, with a circle of stones round their base, like those of the Etruscans or ancient Greeks, as may be seen from the woodcut (No. [385]) borrowed from Fortune’s ‘China’—which would serve equally well for a restoration of those of Tarquinia or Vulci. More generally they are of a hemispherical shape, surmounted with a spire, not unlike the Indian and Ceylonese examples, but still with a physiognomy peculiarly Chinese. The most common arrangement is that of a horseshoe-shaped platform, cut out of the side of a hill. It consequently has a high back, in which is the entrance to the tomb, and slopes off to nothing at the entrance to the horseshoe, where the wall generally terminates with two lions or dragons, or some fantastic ornament common to Chinese architecture. When the tomb is situated, as is generally the case, on a hillside, this arrangement is not only appropriate, but elegant. When the same thing is imitated on a plain, it is singularly misplaced and unintelligible. Many of the tombs are built of granite, finely polished, and carved with a profusion of labour that makes us regret that the people who can employ the most durable materials with such facility should have so great a predilection for ephemeral wooden structures.
385. Chinese Grave. (From Fortune’s ‘Wanderings in China.’)
386. Chinese Tomb. (From Fortune’s ‘Wanderings in China.’)
When the rock is suitable for the purpose, which, however, seems to be rarely the case in China, their tombs are cut in the rock, as in Etruria and elsewhere; and tombs of the class just described seem to be a device for converting an ordinary hillside into a substitute for the more appropriate situation.