“The most important thing in life is to be buried well,” is an old Chinese adage that reflects the importance of funerals in traditional Chinese culture. Funerals are the most important life passage ritual, surpassing weddings and birthdays in priority, expense, and significance. For the Chinese, death means becoming either an ancestor who has a continued relationship with its family or a ghost that endangers society. In either case, the spirit or soul exists to have an interactive relationship with the living. Because ancestor reverence is the cornerstone of Chinese cultural belief and social structure, death rituals are of serious concern and are the most important of Chinese religious practices.
With death, a family member has the potential for becoming a beneficent ancestor, and funerals are the ritual means of accomplishing this transition. A well-disposed corpse will have a safe, peaceful spirit that will reward its family with good fortune for many generations. Corpse and spirit disposition are also community concerns because the improper disposal of the dead will produce an unhappy spirit that will cause havoc and bad luck for all. Such concern with spirit welfare and familial duty is expressed and judged by the funeral procured, particularly if the funeral is for one’s parents. A respectable funeral presentation to show filial duty, respect, and spirit concern becomes necessary to “save face” (Yang 1961:38, 44-53).
In Confucian China, the patrilineal family structure of descent through its males dictates the ritual procedures at funerals. Family members performed rites in the order of males first according to generational seniority. The eldest son or chief mourner started first, then the other sons, then the daughters-in-law, then the daughters. The eldest grandson was next, and so on. When an offering was made to the deceased, the family member, in a prostrated position, bowed three times, with the forehead touching the ground. The offering was concluded with a single bow. Today, many Chinese simply stand and bow from the waist with hand palms placed together in front (Kiong 1990:97; Kiong 1993:136; Yang 1961:39).
For the traditional Chinese, the family is revered, its order valued, and its continuity essential. As an enactment of familial loyalty, funerals are a family concern. Not only does the final disposition create an ancestor, the execution and largesse of the funeral are statements of the family’s social status and filial devotion. According to Confucianism, the physical act of performing the mortuary rituals is a necessary regimen that asserts the hierarchical family order, the obligations of its members, and the family’s social conformity to the group-centered culture (Yang 1961:44-45).
Coins (li shi or lucky money) are given to guests and helpers at various stages of the funeral in exchange for their exposure to the airs of death. The red color of the paper wrapping symbolizes life and is a prophylactic against death airs. Another coin to absorb the death airs is wrapped in white paper (the color of death) and is sometimes given together with the red-wrapped coin. In New York, only the white li shi, provided by the mortuary, is offered. These coins should be spent immediately, preferably on something sweet to remove the bitter taste of death and to transfer out the pollution (Crowder 2002:76-77, 212; Watson 1982:163).
Dispersing the Ritual Area and Eliminating Pollution
Anything associated with the funeral is destroyed or must be purified. Mourning clothes and funeral items are either burned or buried with the deceased. In the Cantonese villages of San Tin and Ha Tsuen, for instance, the termination of mourning on the 7th day after the burial is marked by a ceremony known as “putting on the red” in which the mourning family exchange their white clothes for red ones (Watson 1982:165-66). Rooms that have been occupied by the corpse are purified with smoke, rice, or salt. If a sacred cosmic space was created, the priest disperses it. Funeral guests make a detour on their way home to leave the death airs elsewhere. Like the mourning family, they might purify themselves by stepping over a fire or ritually washing themselves with water infused with purifying red pomegranate seeds or pomelo leaves before entering their homes (Schipper 1993:77; Thompson 1973:167-68; Watson 1982:164-66).
Taboos regarding death are taken seriously, even in the modern urban context. Mortuaries in American Chinatowns are virtually closed during Chinese New Year. This life-affirming festival is a time of renewal for everyone to make a fresh start. Any mention of or activity regarding death is bad luck and will cast a pall over the coming year. To go directly to someone’s home from a mortuary is inconsiderate. For the elderly especially, it is culturally inappropriate to ask them what type of funeral they would like or to show them something related to death. Even going to a florist and seeing a funeral wreath being assembled is considered bad luck, and to accidentally bump into it is worse. Some Chinese will make a detour to avoid passing a cemetery. Most will go to a funeral expecting to receive some good luck charm (red-wrapped money, a piece of red thread) or will carry something with them for protection (garlic or scallions wrapped with bamboo in a pomelo leaf or crucifixes) (Crowder 2002:397; Watson 1982).
Postburial Rites
One or three days after the burial, the family returns to the grave to thank the earth and make simple offerings. Mortuary rituals are held again 100 days or a year later. Offerings are made at the grave on anniversary dates of the deceased’s birth and death and at seasonal festivals such as ching ming, the spring grave-cleaning festival.
Ching Ming / Qing Ming
Throughout the month of April, everyone visits their family graves with
offerings. Participation ranges from private sacrifices to grand clan
ceremonies at the tombs of the founding ancestor and other illustrious
members. Its fall counterpart, chung yeung, is similar but smaller in
magnitude due to the less favorable weather.
Feast of Souls / Hungry Ghost Festival
At the Hungry Ghost or Feast of Souls Festival in August, many families burn paper goods for the comfort of their dead relatives. This community festival is society’s effort to appease and comfort orphan ghosts with food offerings, the burning of incense, and the reading of Buddhist scriptures (Gallin 1966:229-30; Li 1996:138-39; Overmeyer 1986:63-66, 87; Schipper 1993:37).
Conclusion
Traditional Chinese funerals are dynamic, sensory-inundating ritual performances that impress on the mourners the importance of the interrelationship between the living and the dead to the family order and of the need to sustain this order with reciprocating, cause-and-effect rituals. They engage the family in a collective pursuit that is demonstrative of their filial devotion, sense of social responsibility, and social status as a group.
The discourse of Chinese funerals continues to incorporate and define the deceased in group terms, structurally and morally, to an extent not found in the West. Funerals function to safely create an ancestor rather than to primarily memorialize the deceased and to comfort the living, as is typical in Western societies.
There is a Chinese saying that out of crisis comes opportunity. Death is a disruptive crisis that forces open a gap between the earthly existence and the spirit one that is bridged by rituals. Death is also the opportunity to transition a family member from a biological propagator to a spiritual benefactor. As the “white” affair that alternates with the “red” affair of birth, death creates the cyclical change that regenerates the life process.
Red and white, life and death,
are necessary complements of each other. Symbols of regeneration (the
symbols of nails, green, the rice measure) and the color red, for the
vitality of life, are always present at funerals to balance death by
instating its connection to the life, spiritual and physical, that will
continue from it. For the Chinese whose identity is group centered
around the family, death is a regenerative element to family perpetuity
rather than a final end.