Village Life in China: A Study in SociologySmith, Arthur H.
General
Village Life in China: A Study in Sociology
Smith, Arthur H.
China -- Social life and customs; Villages
In order to keep the line of succession unbroken, it is thought desirable
that each generation should have its proper representatives, whether they
really were or were not links in the chain. It is only in families where
there is some considerable property that this question is likely to arise.
Where it does arise, and where a lad has died for whom it is thought
desirable to take a post-mortem wife, the family cast about to hear of
some young girl who has also died recently. A proposition is then made, by
the usual intermediaries, for the union of these two corpses in the bonds
of matrimony! It is probably only poor families to which such a
proposition in regard to their daughter would be made; to no others would
it be any object. If it is accepted, there is a combination of a wedding
and a funeral, in the process of which the deceased "bride" will be taken
by a large number of bearers to the cemetery of the other family, and laid
beside her "husband"! The newly adopted grandson worships the corpse of
his "mother," and the other ceremonies proceed in the usual way.
The writer was personally acquainted with a Chinese girl who after her
death was thus "married" to a dead boy in another village. Upon being
questioned in regard to the matter, her father admitted that it was not an
entirely rational procedure, but remarked that the girl's mother was in
favour of accepting the offer. The real motive in this case was
undoubtedly a desire to have a showy funeral at the expense of another
family, for a child who was totally blind, and whose own parents were too
poor at her death to do more than wrap her body in a mat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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