CHINESE FUNERALS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 8323, 10 November 1887, Page 3

CHINESE FUNERALS.

Chinese funerals are by no means frequent in this country, and thus tho mystic rites by which they are marked have naturally piqued public curiosity. But the Celestial interred at Southsea recently was not the first man-o’-war’s man of tho Chineses fleet now lying at Spithead to be buried in English soil. If we are informed aright several pig-tailed tars died at Newcastle-on-Tyne during the building of the Chih Yuan and the Ching Yuan, and the quaint, services conducted there over the corpses attracted so many astonished spectators that at the southern watering-place the ceremony took place before nine in the morning, so as to avoid an inconvenient press of gaping onlookers. But, of course, tho übiquitous reporter was present, and even his unpicturesque description of the singular scene has probably made many newspaper readers anxious to know more about the superstitions connected with the dead in China, especially as it is not unlikely that the bodies of these interesting strangers may at no distant date be transferred to the Flowery Land itself. Englishmen are solicitous when they die to have their bones deposited near surroundings that were dear to them in life, so it is no wonder that the Chinese think their souls will be easier when their remains lie in their own beloved Empire. But there would seem to lie uo Western parallel for tho Celestial custom of carefully reversing the direction of a body before patting it into a coffin. Tho same cannot be said of their prejudice for being buried in their best clothes, as there are home instances ou record of intending or actual brides being interred in their wedding garments, and not so many years ago a court milliner left strict injunctions that her body should he enfolded in point lace. To go back a couple of centuries, Margaret Cojjsitts was buried ur,

Cuxton churchyard, Kent, in 1683, ordered that her body should be attired in scarlet satin, put in a mahogany coffin, having a loose lid, and placed upon trestles in a vault under a pyramidal monument, the glass doors of the vault being covered with green silk curtains. In China the general rule is to select silk, crape, or the finest cotton for grave clothes, care being taken to put two or more articles of dress on the upper than on the lower part of a corpse. Thus no less an authority on Celestial customs and traditions than Dr N. B. Dennis says a body .will be provided with three jackets and one pair of trousers, five jackets and three pairs of trousers, and so on, the rich being buried in as many as nine upper garments. The corpse is then bound with long strips of cloth, two of which must be white and one red. After swathing, the ends are tied in an “ auspicious knot,” and aa many of these knots are tied at various places on the body as the material used will allow. In China, candles are kept burning round the coffin after the body lias been laid out, “to light the spirit of the dead upon his way,” and a similar practice has not yet died out in less “ civilised ” countries. But a superstition peculiar to the Flowery Land is that if two “ cash ” be placed in the sleeve of a dead man and then shaken out, the result of the “toss” will indicate the feeling of the departed. If both turn up obverse or reverse, the corpse is satisfied; but if one be obverse and the other reverse the signification is that something has been wrongly done. After the interment these “ cash ” are tossed up to discover the wishes of the deceased as to family arrangements and the respect paid to his manes. It would be interesting to learn whether these methods of divination were adopted at Spithead before and after the funeral. Like Scotland, China has its superstition as to “watching spirits,” and the unwillingness of the Chinese to help one in absolute peril of life is explained by a belief that the last man dead always acts as watchman of the purgatory into which, according to Oriental tradition, the spirit of the departed first enters, and from which he can only be relieved by the arrival of a fresh soul. For purposes of international comparison in this respect a strange story is told of a Highland parish. An old man and an old woman—dwelling in the same township, but not bn terms of friendship (the lady, Kate Euadh, being more noted for antipathies than attachments), were approaching the “ silent land.” The good man’s friends began to clip his nails—an office performed just as a person is dying. But aware that his amiable neighbour was also on the verge of the grave, he roused himself to a last effort, and exclaimed: “Stop, stop; you know not what use I may have for all my nails in compelling Kate Euadh to keep Faire Chlaidth in place of doing it myself.” The Chinese custom of watching the dead until the coffin is removed for interment is one not altogether unknown in England, and just as it is thought up north to be very ominous for a cat or a dog to pass over a corpse, so in the Celestial Empire it is believed that if a pregnant female animal pass over the dead-person, the corpse will rise up and pursue those nearest to it, and if it overtakes anyone will strangle him. The sailor buried on Friday had been overnight brought ashore, and placed in the town mortuary. Was this to prevent any animal on board passing over the corpse, and was it watched there through the night with lighted candles? In China the incense stick is straight, as emblematical of the “ straight road ” which the spirit of the deceased ought to travel. Those were doubtless incense sticks used at the Southsea grave, and were lit, so that the spirit might not lose its way. Dr Dennis points out that the idea of furnishing the dead with food,, arms, clothing, and money is not peculiar to the Chinese. The Aymara Indians supply the dead with food and clothing, horses are sacrificed at the funerals of, Ecd Indians, and dogs used to be at those of the Aztecs, while camels formed the funeral sacrifices of the Bedouins. The economical Chinese bum paper models of money, animals, and boats, and there is a suggestive reminder of the Stygian ferry in the use of paper junks. The relations of a deceased Chinaman adopt as mourning white hempen cloth seven days after the death, and on the sixtieth day the family place on a table plates containing offerings of food, accompanied by incense. Beside these is a washbowl full of water, and by the floating half of a duck’s egg will be put a paper and bamboo duck, astride of which is a paper human image, the image personifying the deceased, the duck the means of transport, and the egg-shell a boat. Directly the coffin was lowered at Southsea, some of the Chinese seamen scattered earth into the grave, but in China this is done by sons of the deceased, if he has any, the earth having been previously put into the lap of their sackcloth mourning garments. A lucky place for a grave is one that is free from water and white ants, and commanding a good view. In epigrammatic style Mr Wingrove Cook describes China aa a country where “ the roses have no fragrance, the women no petticoats, the labourer no Sabbath, and the magistrate no sense of honour ; where the place of honour is on the left hand, the seat of intellect in the stomach; where to take off the hat is an insolent gesture, and to wear white garments is to put yourself in mourning.” But white for mourning was not always an anachronism, according to Western ideas, as Henry YITI. wore white mourning for Anne Boleyn, and in Langley’s translation of Plutarch we read, “ The white colour was thought fittest for the ded, because it is clere, pure and sincer, and leaste defiled.” The Chinese have a superstitious dislike to disturb a grave, but so had and still have the English, though in the case of the Celestials buried in our soil the scruples of surviving relatives may be eased by the fact that they are conveying the bodies to the Flowery Land. The Chinese idea of purchasing a coffin before death has been followed in this country and in Germany by eccentric persons, and droll stories are told of Yorkshire people who kept their coffins ready for uso. -Oner of these, we are reminded, relates to a man with a projecting Eoman nose, who had a place cut away in the coffinlid to fit that prominent feature; and another case was that of an old lady who had two holes made in the side of hers to let his Satanic Majesty have free egress should he happen to get inside. When we are smiling at Chinese superstitions we may usefully inquire—What would John Chinaman say to these oddities ? They, like ourselves, regard certain hours of the twenty-four as more fatal than others. One authority says that recorded statistics in England give them as from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. (maximum), 11 p.m. to 13 p.m., and 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.; but the Chinese hold that noon and npdnight are the two most fatal periods.