ABOUT THE GRAVES OF CHINA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 10009, 21 December 1895, Page 2 (Supplement)

ABOUT THE GRAVES OF CHINA.

Tin- graves of China am overywhoro; not in the streets or the ladies' chamber?, of course, yet practically ovorywhero. I had not left the boundaries of European Shanghai when I began to notice queer mounds of grass-covered earth rising like hummocks and tiny hills among the rice-fields and in the open lots and wayside enclosures just beyond the thick of the city. Inquiring what they wero of the owner of the Swallow, I got this reply :—" Graves. China is called 'one vast cemetery,' you know." I did not know. As Frederic Remington once said, "On-3 cannot know everything on an ordinary salary." But I found out, for novor from that time on, in country or even on the edges of cities, did I miss the graves again, Tho face of all nature is pimpled with them. Wo farm is so small that it cannot afford at least one; no hill is so high (I speak of tho garden provinces of China) that it is not dotted with them to tho top. No city lacks them, within and without its walla; only the.compactesb parts of tho compact cities are without them. They vary in shape and form, as everything varies in China. Tho saying is that "in ton miles everything is different," and it certainly is so with the graves. Near Shanghai this eruption on the faco of nature took tho form of ehapeles mounds of earth, perhaps Cft long by 3ft wide, and 3ft or 4ft high. There tho coffins had been put on tho ground and covered over with dirt. Farther along, toward Soochow and the Grand Canal, tho graves wero brick affairs, round topped, and square at the ends. In tho other direction, at and near Cha-pu, on the coast, they wero often vaults of earth faced with stone, and surrounded by a horseshoe or brokon circle of earthwork. Some of these had three doorways, and looked liko triple bake-ovons. But down Cha-pu way many of the graven wero perfoct little houses of brick, with tile roofs, and oven with roofs whose corners were bent up in grand style. Thero are graveyards in China, family or village graveyards, that look like more disturbances of the earth, whero acres have been turned up into mounds or covered with brick ovens, and there are graveyards that are solemnly planted with rows of trees. But as a rule tlio farmers bury their dead in their rice or cotton fields, or among their mulberry trees, and the poor buy or leaso a resting-place for their departed upon tho acres of some wealthier man. I don't know whether it bo truo or not, but 1 was told that the graves are kept or Job alone until a change of dynasty occurs, whon thoy are razed, and China begins ovor again to pre-empt a great fraction of her surface for nor dead. If so, it is time for a chaugo of dynasty, because a var>t portion of the soil is lost to the farmers, who otherwise cultivate almost ovory foot of it. And tho graves are in all stages of rack and ruin ; and disorder.— Ralph, in Harper's j Magazine.