Lion and Dragon in Northern China

by Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston

"Statement showing cause why Chang Ying-mu's graveyard is unpropitiously situated and will cause misfortunes and early deaths; and why the site now selected will be the source of a constant flow of happiness. As regards the present site: firstly, all along the front of the graveyard there is a gully as deep as the height of two men. This is unlucky. The deep gully presses against the tombs like a wall, obstructing the passage of benign influences. This has a disastrous effect on the women of the family, who will have excessive difficulty in childbirth. Secondly, a small stream of water trickles from the graveyard and after flowing a distance of half a li it vanishes in the sand. The result of this on the family is that children are born as weaklings and die in infancy. Thirdly, another stream of water flows away to the north-east. This carries off all the wealth-making capabilities of the family and the good qualities of sons and grandsons. As regards the proposed new site: firstly, there are hills on the south-west, their direction being from east to west. Their formation so controls the courses of four streams that they all unite at the eastern corner of this site. Just as these streams of water come together and cannot again separate, so will riches and honours flow from various quarters and finally unite in the hands of the family that has its graveyard in this fortunate locality. Secondly, the ceaseless flow of water has formed a long sandbank, four feet high, on the southern and south-eastern sides of the site. Just as the water brings down innumerable grains of sand and piles them up near the point where the waters meet, so will the family that buries its dead here be blessed with countless male descendants."

Fêng-shui is not a branch of knowledge that deserves encouragement, so I informed the professor that the explanations given in this illuminating document were interesting but unconvincing, and that if he did not withdraw from British territory within three days he would be sent to gaol as a rogue and vagabond. He forthwith returned to his native district and the graveyard of the Chang family remained undisturbed.

An incident of this kind affords proof, if such were necessary, that in keeping up the cult of ancestors and in devoting care and expense to the maintenance of the family tombs the Chinese are not actuated solely by feelings of filial piety and reverence for the dead. On the other hand it is equally clear from abundant evidence that self-interest and a desire for material prosperity are very far from being the sole source of ancestral worship. Some foreign critics have tried to show that it springs not from love and filial piety but from a dread of the ancestral spirits and a desire to propitiate them. This view, which has been condemned as erroneous by those who are themselves ancestor-worshippers, is certainly a mistaken one. If, indeed, the average ancestor-worshipping Chinese did not suppose that some material benefit would accrue to him from carrying out the prescribed rites he would doubtless show a flagging zeal in their perpetuation. Even the average European, perhaps, would grow a little weary of well-doing if he were informed on unimpeachable authority that in future the promised rewards of virtuous conduct were to be withheld both on earth and in heaven and that a crown of glory was not for him. The average man, all the world over, is apt to show impatience if he is asked to be virtuous for the sole sake of virtue. Had the ancestral cult been founded on nothing but pure love, reverence and altruism, it might have been kept barely alive from generation to generation by a few of those rare and exalted souls who seem incapable of self-seeking, but it would never have attained universal observance throughout China; had it, on the other hand, been founded on nothing but fear, selfishness and desire for material gain, it might have become popular with the masses but it could never have earned, as it has earned, the enthusiastic approval of the noblest minds and loftiest characters that China has produced. Probably it is the very mingling of motives that has caused the cult of ancestors to take such deep root in the hearts of the people that it is to-day by far the most potent religious and social force to be found in the Empire.

At the present day and for very many centuries past the cult of ancestors and the dutiful upkeep of the ancestral tombs have been regarded as inseparably combined: but it was not so always. If the ancient Book of Rites (Li Chi) is to be trusted, Confucius for many years of adult life did not know where his father's grave was, and apparently it was only on his mother's death that he took the trouble to find out. The same book, which dates from the first and second centuries B.C., also narrates a story of how Confucius's disciples reported to him that the tumulus over his mother's grave had collapsed owing to a heavy rainfall; yet he merely remarked, with emotion, that "people did not repair tombs in the good old times,"—an enigmatical remark that has been variously interpreted.[204]

These stories probably originated from the well-ascertained fact that Confucius—like most of the Chinese philosophers and sages—was very strongly opposed to lavish expenditure on coffins, graves and funerals. Confucius's teaching on the subject seems to have been practical and reasonable. He taught that the bodies of the dead should be treated with every possible respect but that the material interests of the living must not be sacrificed in order to confer some unnecessary and doubtful boon upon the dead. Needless to say he was strenuously opposed to the barbarous customs of entombing the living with the dead and of widow-immolation, customs which seem to have been practised in China from the seventh century B.C. if not from much earlier times and which did not become altogether extinct till the seventeenth century of our era.[205]

But if Confucius did not lay overmuch stress on funerals and the preservation of tombs, he was emphatic on the subject of filial piety. The connection between Confucianism and ancestral worship must be dealt with when we are considering the subject of Religion: it is therefore unnecessary to enlarge upon this important subject at present, beyond pointing out that filial piety—on which ancestral worship is based—was regarded by Confucius and his school as "the fountain from which all other virtues spring and the starting-point of all education."[206]

There is a well-known Chinese tract called the "Twenty-four Examples of Filial Piety"[207] which consists of short anecdotes of sons who made themselves illustrious by the exercise of this chief of virtues. Some of the examples recorded are worthy of sincere admiration, but many of the filial performances are apt to strike an occidental reader as somewhat ridiculous. There is the famous story of Lao Lai-tzŭ, for instance, whose parents lived to such extreme old age that he was himself a toothless old man while they were both still alive. Conceiving it his duty to divert their attention from their weight of years and approaching end, he dressed himself up in the clothes of a child and danced and played about in his parents' presence with the object of making them think they were still a young married couple contemplating the innocent gambols of their infant son. Perhaps the most touching of these stories is that of Wang P'ou, whose mother happened to have an unconquerable dread of thunder and lightning. When she died she was buried in a mountain forest; and thereafter, when a violent thunderstorm occurred, Wang P'ou, heedless of the wind and rain, would hurry to her grave and throw himself to his knees. "I am here to protect you, dear mother," he would say; "do not be afraid."

If the stories in this well-known collection strike one as chiefly remarkable for their quaintness and simplicity, it should be remembered that they were primarily intended for the edification of the young, who might fail to understand the nobler modes in which filial piety can display itself. How numerous are the recorded examples of this virtue in China and how highly it is esteemed may be realised from the fact that a special chapter in the official Annals of every magisterial district is devoted to a summary of the most conspicuous local instances of filial piety that have come under the notice of the authorities. The official accounts of Weihaiwei and the neighbouring districts are not exceptional in this respect. This corner of the Empire may have produced few great scholars but it is certainly not without its roll of filial sons. The finest example from an occidental point of view is perhaps that of Huang Chao-hsüan, the brave boy who went out willingly to die by his father's side.[208] Most of the other cases are of a type that appeals but slightly to the Western mind.