[189] Tylor, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 117.
CHAPTER XI
FAMILY GRAVEYARDS
Not the most unobservant visitor to China can fail to notice the ubiquity of graveyards. In Western countries one is usually obliged to ask the way to a cemetery; in China one finds the way by merely walking in any direction one pleases. Nowhere so vividly as in China does one realise that not only the path of glory but every other kind of path leads but to a grave. The sight is sometimes a melancholy one; as dreary as some of the city churchyards in England are the vast cemeteries for the poor that cover the bare hillsides in the neighbourhood of many great Chinese cities. The omega-shaped tombs of south China are apt, moreover, to appal one by their vastness and too often by the barren cheerlessness of their surroundings. But there is nothing dismal in the family graveyards that dot the valleys of the country districts in the north. Indeed, in a region like the north-eastern extremity of Shantung, where there is of course no tropical vegetation and where timber is scarce, the wooded graveyards form one of the pleasantest features in every landscape. If while walking across the fields of the Weihaiwei Territory one comes across a thick plantation of trees—such as the fir and the Chinese oak, which is never leafless—one is sure to find that it marks the last resting-place of a family or a clan that inhabits or once inhabited some village not far away. The plantation is surrounded by no wall or fence of any kind; such would be a useless precaution, for no one—except an occasional rascal who "fears neither God nor man"—will knowingly injure a funereal tree or otherwise violate the sanctity of the home of the dead. At the first glance the tombs may not be visible, for the tree branches are almost interlaced, and in summer-time nearly every grave has its own canopy of foliage; moreover, instead of the omega or horse-shoe tombs of the south we find only little hillocks and unpretentious gravestones.
A Chinese grave in Weihaiwei is not indeed very different in appearance—looked at from afar—from a grave in Europe; though instead of the long mound in front of an inscribed stone we find in Weihaiwei a circular or sometimes oval-shaped mound behind the stone, which is an upright whitish block with very little ornamentation. The inscription usually contains nothing more (in modern times) than names and dates and position in the family. The names of husband and wife are inscribed on the same stone—for the two are always buried in the same grave, the wife's coffin being placed on the right of the husband's.[190] On the stone are frequently carved the names of the surviving members of the family by whom it has been erected. These are always persons in the direct line of descent; or, if the deceased left no heirs of his body, his adopted son. The translation of a typical inscription will be found on the next page.
It is not customary to erect a tombstone soon after a burial; the mound is sufficient to indicate to the family the exact position of the grave, and all necessary dates and names are carefully entered on the pedigree-scroll or inscribed on the ancestral tablets. In front of each grave will often be seen a small stone altar or pedestal or a stone incense-jar. Here are offered up the ancestral sacrifices at the festivals of Ch'ing-Ming and the first of the tenth moon.[191] At one extremity of the graveyard will often be found a large upright stone slab on which is engraved in deep bold characters the name of the family to which all the tombs belong. The inscription is as simple as possible, usually consisting of four Chinese characters. Chou Shih Tsu Ying[192]—to take an example—may be rendered
THE ANCESTRAL GRAVEYARD OF THE CHOU FAMILY.
THE IMPERIAL CH'ING DYNASTY
THE TOMB
OF
A MEMBER OF THE YAO FAMILY, AN ELDEST
SON, WHOSE PERSONAL NAME WAS
SHIH-JUN
AND OF
HIS WIFE
A DAUGHTER OF THE WANG FAMILY
This stone is erected on the twelfth day of the second
month of the first year of Hsüan T'ung (March
3, 1909) by Yao Fêng-lai, a son, Yao Yüeh-i, a
grandson, and Yao Wan-nien, a great-grandson