WHEN CHINESE WOMEN DIE
In a country where the worship of ancestors plays such an important part
in the religion, death has a greater meaning than it has for those of
Western lands. The Chinese spend far too much upon the ceremonies
connected with death, rich and poor alike vying with each other in the
elaborate arrangements for the disposal of their dead. I met not long
ago the funeral procession accompanying the body of a captain of labour
to his last resting-place. He was many times a millionaire, who began
life as a boatman. The sons boasted that they spent twenty thousand
dollars on his funeral. There were eight native bands in the procession,
led by the European band of Shanghai, twenty men carrying banners and
umbrellas, about fifty men carrying scrolls, on which were written the
name and rank of the deceased; there were over two hundred Buddhist
priests, dressed in their sackcloth robes, and the wailing mourners and
friends in their mourning clothes of white, followed in sedan-chairs and
carriages. The enormous coffin was covered with red embroidered satin
and carried by thirty chanting coolies. Within the home the walls were
covered with white, and there were long scrolls from friends telling of
their sympathy and of the greatness of the deceased family. At twenty
tables, seating eight each, feasting was carried on day and night for a
week.
In the summer-time there are hundreds of deaths, and the funerals of the
poor pass our house daily. They are very different from the elaborate
processions of the rich men. The coffins, instead of being made of the
finest teak or heaviest ebony, are nothing but plain, rough boxes, and
the mourners either are on wheelbarrows or they walk to the place of the
dead, the weeping wife being supported on each side by a friend, who
practically carries her as she stumbles along in her grief. Paper money
is always scattered in front of the corpse in order to pay his way into
the new world; and often one sees either a live rooster or an imitation
one standing on the coffin to bring back to his home one of the man’s
three souls.
The body is often kept months within the houses before a suitable day is
found by the necromancer on which to bury him, but because of the manner
of preparing for burial it is not insanitary to keep a corpse in the
house for a few months. The coffins are made of hardwood of four or five
inches in thickness. First a certain number of bags of lime are placed
in the bottom, varying according to the weight of the person; over that
is laid a wadded blanket, if of a rich family it is of silk and often
embroidered, if the person be poor it is only cotton; the body is laid
in the coffin, dressed in as handsome a suit of wadded clothing as is
consistent with the means of the family; the ancestral tablet is laid
upon the breast, paper money at the feet; he is covered with the blanket
and the coffin hermetically sealed. The coffin is the most precious
possession of the Chinese, and is often purchased years before death in
order that they may be sure of a dignified last resting-place.
We often hear stories told at women’s clubs of mothers who throw babies
within the “baby tower” to die. These baby towers are small, round
houses, situated on the outskirts of a city or a village for the purpose
of permitting the poor to dispose of their dead children without the
expense of a coffin or a funeral. The interior of the house is partially
filled with quicklime, and a small door opening on to a slanting chute
permits the poor mother to give her baby its final resting-place. I have
never heard of a case of a live baby being sent to these baby towers, as
I found that a mother’s heart is the same all over the world. My cook
came to me one morning with his eyes red from weeping. I asked him the
cause of his sorrow, and he told me that his three-months-old baby had
died the evening before. He had no money with which to pay for its
burial, so in the night, when the mother had at last fallen into a
sleep, he softly arose and, wrapping the tiny body in a blanket, had
laid it upon the table with twenty cents beside it in order that the
garbage-man who came in the early morning might take it to the baby
tower outside the city. I said to him: “But, cook, why did you not bury
it properly? Does not your wife feel very badly?” He shook his head
sorrowfully, and said: “Yes, she too muchee cry, but what can we do? We
must buy rice for live babies.” That is the great secret of the stoicism
of the Chinese race. They must buy rice for the living, and what often
seems to us as heartlessness and cruelty is simply the effect of the
great economic pressure in a land where millions are on the verge of
starvation, and where the lack of a day’s work means the lack of a day’s
food.
In times of great epidemics rich Chinese and the guilds or clubs of
different forms of industry, such as the Bankers’ Guild, the Tea Guild,
or the Goldsmiths’ Guild, provide coffins for the burial of the poor,
and in times of famine these same guilds are most generous to their less
fortunate brothers. Near Soochow is a tomb of a man who gave his entire
fortune to relieving the wants of the people of his province during a
time of famine. He is buried in the most picturesque spot in the hills,
the road to which is bordered by a great many enormous boulders that
rise straight up from the ground. The Chinese say that these stones
stood up to show their respect for the great man when his body was
carried to its last resting-place and that they are waiting his commands
to lie down again.
The dead are buried on the family estate; if there is not room for all,
a spot is leased from a neighbour. The interment is not beneath the
surface except in a few provinces; the coffin is set on the ground and
the dirt is heaped over it. Sometimes the fields are so thickly covered
with mounds that there is little room left for cultivation. Especially
is this so in the country around Shanghai, which looks to the casual
passer-by like one vast graveyard. Funeral expenses for parents are the
most sacred of obligations, and it is not uncommon for the sons to part
with everything they have in the world in order to render proper respect
to the memory of their parents. A son is supposed to mourn three years
for his father, during which time all occupation is to cease. In the
case of a son holding an important official position, he often has to
resign his post during the period of mourning, or else be called
unfilial. Strict mourning for the mother only lasts three months,
otherwise the same honour is paid her memory as given to the head of the
household.
When a woman is left a widow, she often vows that she will not remarry,
and she spends her life in pious acts that cause her village or her clan
at her death to erect a memorial to her honour. This is generally in the
form of an arch, built of stone and erected near her village. In the
country districts one can see many of these concrete evidences of the
respect which the Chinese have for loyal womanhood.