Lion and Dragon in Northern China

by Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston

A practical reason for this proceeding at once suggests itself if it has happened that the couple were childless and were the owners of property. It then becomes necessary for the elders of the clan to select an heir; and as an adopted heir—who must be a "spare" son of a relative—is obliged to separate himself from his own branch of the clan and to regard the dead man and his wife for the future as his proper parents, matters must be so arranged that he can become possessor of his adoptive father's spirit-tablet. As the dead man's spirit is not supposed to take up its abode in the tablet until he has been interred with the proper rites in the family graveyard, it is necessary, if his body is missing, to evoke and inter its spiritual representative. If this were not done, the adopted heir would be unable to carry on the ancestral rites except in an irregular way, and this might lead to serious legal difficulties later on in the event of another member of the clan disputing the genuineness of the adoption and heirship.

A point worth noting in connection with ancestral worship and adoption is that (in this part of China at least) the mere fact of childlessness does not necessarily lead a man to adopt a son: it is childlessness combined with the ownership of property that induces him to do so. We will suppose that a man has obtained his share of the family inheritance; that it is too small to support him; that he has sold it to relatives and with the cash proceeds has gone abroad to make a living; that he returns as an old man, childless and penniless: this man will in all probability show no desire to adopt a son, nor indeed is it likely that he could succeed in doing so if he wished it. The ancestral worship will not suffer by his childless death provided he has brothers and nephews to perpetuate the family sacra. Even if it happens that he is actually the last of his house and that his death will bring the ancestral cult of his line to an abrupt conclusion, it is not likely that, for the sole purpose of carrying on the sacra, the last of the line will bestir himself to go through the formalities necessary for the adoption of a son. The fact is that the possession of property—especially landed property—is regarded in practice as an inseparable condition of the continuation of the ancestral rites. This theory is often expressed in the formula mei-yü ch'an-yeh mei-yü shên-chu—"no ancestral property, no ancestral tablets." If the spirits of the deceased ancestors have been so regardless of the interests of their descendants that they have allowed the family property to pass into the hands of strangers, it is thought that they have only themselves to blame if for them the smoke of incense no longer curls heavenward from the domestic altars. Indeed, there is a vague idea that as the family line dwindles and finally becomes extinct on the material plane, so on the spiritual plane the ancestral ghosts gradually fade away either into non-existence or into a state of Nirvana-like quiescence.

A childless old man who has property is in China, as in the West, the object of the most tender solicitude on the part of brothers and cousins with large families. They are continually impressing upon him the gravity of his offence in not providing for the succession and for the suitable disposal of his property, and unceasingly urge the claims of this nephew or that to formal adoption. If the old man has chosen a boy or young man for whom he happens to have affection, and if the choice meets with general approval, then every one is happy, and an adoption deed is drawn up and attested by all the near relatives. But if his choice falls on one who is considered to be too distant a connection for adoption, or if the elders of the clan for some other reason object to the proposal, then the old man is in a difficulty, for he is not entirely a free agent in the matter. He might get an adoption deed drawn up without consulting any one, but if it were not properly attested by his relatives it would be treated by them as null and void. Adoption, no less than the sale of land, is an affair not of the individual but of the family.

Disputes of this kind are the not infrequent cause of lawsuits. An old man once complained before me that though the youth he wished to adopt belonged to the proper generation (that is, the generation immediately junior to that of the adopter) and was not an only son, and though both the youth and his father had agreed to the adoption, yet the other relatives had held aloof when they were invited to sign the adoption deed, and had absolutely refused to take any part in the proceedings. This implied, of course, that when the time came they would refuse to recognise the legality of the adoption. He therefore besought me to compel or persuade the obstinate relatives to come to a more reasonable frame of mind. "I am now eighty-one years old"—so ran the preamble of his petition—"and I do not know how long I have to live. When morning dawns I cannot be sure that I shall see the evening; in another day my eyes may be closed for ever; and if I die with the bitter knowledge that for me there will be no ancestral sacrifices, then, indeed, miserable shall I be down in the Yellow Springs [of death]." It is of course impossible to decide such cases without taking into full account the nature of the objections raised by the relatives: they are often selfish, but as a rule they are not baseless or frivolous.

Ancestral spirits are regarded as beneficent beings who never causelessly use their mysterious powers to injure the living; but if their descendants lead evil lives, or neglect the family sacrifices, or treat the sacred rules of filial piety with contempt, then the spirits will in all probability exercise the parental prerogatives of punishment. The power of a father in China to castigate his son is theoretically as absolute in the case of a grown-up son as in the case of one who is still a child: similarly it is supposed that the father does not, by the mere accident of death, divest himself of his patriarchal rights of administering justice and inflicting punishment on his sons and grandsons. Provided a man carefully observes the traditional ceremonies and leads a good life according to the accepted ethics of his race, he knows that he has nothing to fear from the souls of his ancestors.

But there are in China various classes of ghosts who are supposed to be highly malevolent and to constitute no small danger to the community. There are, for example, the ghosts whose tempers have been soured by calamity and misfortune; those whose bodies have not been buried; those who were drowned at sea; those who ended their mortal lives by unjustifiable suicide and haunt the place where they died until they can, by ghostly suggestions, prevail on one of their earthly neighbours to follow their example;[227] those who died before accomplishing a vow or completing an act of vengeance: these and many others are ghosts or evil spirits which the wise man who walks warily through life will do his best to avoid.

The curious and cruel superstition which sometimes prevents a Chinese from helping a drowning comrade even when he could save the man without danger to himself has its origin in a fear that he will incur the deadly hostility of a spirit that demands the toll of a human life. It is even thought in some places that by saving your friend you may be condemning yourself to be his future substitute. This superstition has existed in many parts of the world—from Ireland to the Solomon Islands.[228] It need hardly be said that educated opinion in China is altogether opposed to the heartless abandonment of drowning men: the superstition is an active force only in a few localities, and only to a minute extent, if at all, may it be said to exist in Weihaiwei.