Part 13 (1/2)
It was a difficult problem for the magistrate. He might easily move in such a way as to bring the whole city down about his head. But the Chinese are clever in such situations, perhaps the cleverest people on earth. He finally devised a way out. A proclamation was issued levying a tax of fifty cents on every unburied coffin. The Chinese may be superst.i.tious, but they are even more thrifty. For a few weeks Yen-ping devoted itself to funerals, a thousand a week, and now this little city, one of the most isolated in China, can truly be said to be on the road to health. [Footnote: ”Doctoring China,” by Tyler Dennet, _Asia_, February, 1918, p. 114.]
There are very few such progressive cities in China, however, and a missionary told us that recently a young child and his grandfather were buried on the same day although their deaths had been nearly fifty years apart. The funeral rites are in themselves fairly simple, but it is the great ambition of every Chinese to have his resting place as near as possible to those of his ancestors. That is one of the reasons why they are so loath to emigrate.
We often pa.s.sed eight or ten coolies staggering under the load of a heavy coffin, transporting a body sometimes a month's journey or more to bury it at the dead man's birthplace. A rooster usually would be fastened to the coffin for, according to the Yun-nan superst.i.tion, the spirit of the man enters the bird and is conveyed by it to his home.
There is a strange absence of the fear of death among the Chinese. One often sees large planks of wood stored in a corner of a house and one is told that these are destined to become the coffins of the man's father or mother, even though his parents may at the time be enjoying the most robust health. Indeed, among the poorer cla.s.ses, a coffin is considered a most fitting gift for a son to present to his father.
We established our camp on the porch of the temple at Li-chiang and from its vantage point could watch the festivities going on about us. The feasting continued until after dark and at daylight the kettles were again steaming to prepare for the second day's celebration.
By ten o'clock the court was crowded and a hour later there came a partial stillness which was broken by a sudden burst of music (?) from Chinese violins and pipes. Going outside we found most of the guests standing about an improvised altar. The foot of the coffin was just visible in the midst of the paper decorations and in front of it were set half a dozen dishes of tempting food. These were meant as an offering to the spirit of the departed one, but we knew this would not prevent the sorrowing relatives from eating the food with much relish later on.
In a few moments a group of women approached, supporting a figure clothed in white with a hood drawn over her face. She was bent nearly to the ground and m.u.f.fled shrieks and wails came from the depths of her veil as she prostrated herself in front of the altar. For more than an hour this chief mourner, the wife of the deceased, lay on her face, her whole figure shaking with what seemed the most uncontrollable anguish. This same lady, however, moved about later among her guests an amiable hostess, with beaming countenance, the gayest of the gay. But every morning while the festivities lasted, promptly at eleven o'clock she would prostrate herself before the coffin and display heartrending grief in the presence of the unmoved spectators in order to satisfy the demands of ”custom.”
Custom and precedent have grown to be divinities with the Chinese, and such a display of feigned emotion is required on certain prescribed occasions.
As one missionary aptly described it ”the Chinese are all face and no heart.” Mr. Caldwell told us that one night while pa.s.sing down a deserted street in a Chinese village he was startled to hear the most piercing shrieks issuing from a house nearby. Thinking someone was being murdered, he rushed through the courtyard only to find that a girl who was to be married the following day, according to Chinese custom, was displaying the most desperate anguish at the prospect of leaving her family, even though she probably was enchanted with the idea.
On the third day of the celebration in the temple at Li-chiang the feasting ended in a burst of splendor. From one o'clock until far past sundown the friends and relatives of the departed one were fed. Any person could receive an invitation by bringing a small present, even if it were only a bowl of rice or a few hundred cash (ten or fifteen cents).
All during the morning girls and women flocked up the hill with trays of gifts. There were many Mosos and other tribesmen among them as well as Chinese. The Moso girls wore their black hair cut short on the sides and hanging in long narrow plaits down their backs. They wore white leather capes (at least that was the original shade) and pretty ornaments of silver and coral at their throats, and as they were young and gay with glowing red cheeks and laughing eyes they were decidedly attractive. The guests were seated in groups of six on the stones of the temple courtyard. Small boys acted as waiters, pa.s.sing about steaming bowls of vegetables and huge straw platters heaped high with rice. As soon as each guest had stuffed himself to satisfaction he relinquished his place to someone else and the food was pa.s.sed again. We were frequently pressed to eat with them and in the evening when the last guest had departed the ”chief mourner” brought us some delicious fruit candied in black sugar. She told Wu that they had fed three hundred people during the day and we could well believe it. The next morning the coffin was carried down the hill to the accompaniment of anguished wails and we were left once more to the peace and quiet of our beautiful temple courtyard.
Sometimes a family will plunge itself into debt for generations to come to provide a suitable funeral for one of its members, because to bury the dead without the proper display would not only be to ”lose face” but subject them to the possible persecution of the angered spirits. This is only one of the pernicious results of ancestor wors.h.i.+p and it is safe to say that most of the evils in China's social order today can be traced, directly or indirectly, to this unfortunate practice.
A man's chief concern is to leave male descendants to wors.h.i.+p at his grave and appease his spirit. The more sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons who walk in his funeral procession, the more he is to be envied. As a missionary humorously says ”the only law of G.o.d that ever has been obeyed in China is to be fruitful and multiply.” Craving for progeny has brought into existence thousands upon thousands of human beings who exist on the very brink of starvation. Nowhere in the civilized world is there a more sordid and desperate struggle to maintain life or a more hopeless poverty.
But fear and self-love oblige them to continue their blind breeding. The apparent atrophy of the entire race is due to ancestor wors.h.i.+p which binds it with chains of iron to its dead and to its past, and not until these bonds are severed can China expect to take her place among the progressive nations of the earth.
CHAPTER XIX
ACROSS THE YANGTZE GORGE
In mid-November we left the White Water with a caravan of twenty-six mules and horses. Following the road from Li-chiang to the Yangtze, we crossed the ”Black Water” and climbed steadily upward over several tremendous wooded ridges, each higher than the last, to the summit of the divide.
The descent was gradual through a magnificent pine and spruce forest. Some of the trees were at least one hundred and fifty feet high, and were draped with beautiful gray moss which had looped itself from branch to branch and hung suspended in delicate streamers yards in length. The forest was choked with underbrush and a dense growth of dwarf bamboo, and the hundreds of fallen logs, carpeted with bronze moss, made ideal conditions for small mammal collecting. However, as all the species would probably be similar to those we had obtained on the Snow Mountain, we did not feel that it was worth while stopping to trap.
At four-thirty in the afternoon we camped upon a beautiful hill in a pine forest which was absolutely devoid of underbrush, and where the floor was thinly overlaid with brown pine needles. Although the Moso hunter, who acted as our guide, a.s.sured us that the river was only three miles away, it proved to be more than fifteen, and we did not reach the ferry until half past one the next afternoon.
We were continually annoyed, as every traveler in China is, by the inaccuracy of the natives, and especially of the Chinese. Their ideas of distance are most extraordinary. One may ask a Chinaman how far it is to a certain village and he will blandly reply, ”Fifteen _li_ to go, but thirty _li_ when you come back.” After a short experience one learns how to interpret such an answer, for it means that when going the road is down hill and that the return uphill will require double the time.
Caravans are supposed to travel ten _li_ an hour, although they seldom do more than eight, and all calculations of distance are based upon time so far as the _mafus_ are concerned. If the day's march is eight hours you invariably will be informed that the distance is eighty _li_, although in reality it may not be half as great.
In ”Chinese Characteristics,” Dr. Arthur H. Smith gives many illuminating observations on the inaccuracy of the Chinese. In regard to distance he says:
It is always necessary in land travel to ascertain, when the distance is given in ”miles” (_li_), whether the ”miles” are ”large” or not!
That there is _some_ basis for estimates of distances we do not deny, but what we do deny is that these estimates or measurements are either accurate or uniform.
It is, so far as we know, a universal experience that the moment one leaves a great imperial highway the ”miles” become ”long.” If 120 _li_ const.i.tute a fair day's journey on the main road, then on country roads it will take fully as long to go 100 _li_, and in the mountains the whole day will be spent in getting over 80 _li_ (p. 51).