CHAPTER XVIWHEN 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 hardwoodof 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 hetold 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 borderedby 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 lifein 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.