The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-03-10
Love OF FUNERAL DISPLAY
Chinese Spend Millions Each Year
in Burying Their Dead.
The CntnfaIques often Left In the
streets of Pciin for Weeks-Cof-
fins Borne in Professions Laden
with Winds and Queer Figures.

1t is in his funeral services that tho
Chiuaman INDUCES his propensity for ex-
travangance and oddly to the utmost.
rich Chinaman in Tientsin recently ex-
pended $4,000 on the funeral of his
mother and laid up for himself immense
stores of credit on the other side of the
Styx. Forty millions of dollars worth
of paper cash, it is said is burned ev-
cry year in China at the graves of an
| cestors. and an incredible amount of pa
per cash can be bought for a cent Yet
lavish as the Chinaman is In his expendi-
ture upon the dead he will often leave a
coffin waiting for a year or for ten
years in an exposed position by the road
side until the necromancsrs shall tell
him the propitious hour and place to
bury his dead. In some places he buries
the remains. or at least what is left OF
them after years of dissolution, in earth
en- pots where thousands can be slowed
away in a very small enclosure.
The funeral professions in the streets
of the great cities of China are often ex-
ceedingIy inconvenient to the passing
traveller. All traffic must make way for
the car of death. and in the narrow
streets of the southern cities a stranger
must crowd himself into the narrowest
possible compass. squeezing into a door
way or celebrating himself into a door
way against wall until the mourners
have passed through the street.
In PeIin, where the streets are wider
the catafalque is often built in the mid
Ole of the roadway and is left there for
days and weeks. filling up the middle OF
the street and obiiging every passing
camel and donkey and rattling, creakfn1s
cart to take some other avenue or to
crowd by on the sidewalk under the avn
ings to the discontinue of foot passen-
/
who do their business on the sidewalk
The absurdity and inconvenience OF
thus giving the dead the right of way
never seems to strike the average Pekin-
ese.
This is all of piece with the national
love of funeral display and heartIess croc-
odile tears, as they .iecsIi at least. Il,
Western eyes. An immense trumpet is
even used sometimes, which Is worked
like garden pump to sob out the boo
moo Of the afflicted relatives. The more
unearthly and heartrendug its sobs the
better they seem to be pleased. For a
great funeral all the beggars and raga-
mullins and impudent small boys in the
vicinity are hired. They are decked out
in tawdry clothes. or perhaps their rags
are not even disguised in any way but
they are at least given banners to carry
and are hired to wall and sob as If their
hearts were breaking. The dtHl. indiffer-
ent, stoltd faces of the men and the rog-
uish, mfschevious smiles on the boys
belle their walls and give a very unreal
an Oh hypocflticdl sorrow 10 the average
Chinese funeral, though doubtless there
is much genuine sorrow and as many real
heartaches as in other lands.
When the coffin is borne in the funeral
procession. it is often covered up with al
sorts of grotesque pasteboard counterfeits
of the things which the departed Is likely
to want in his future journeys in the land
beyond. mock house and a mock horse
are often thus carried, a paper COW to
furnish milk and meat. paper fowls to lay
eggs for him and paper servants to do
his bidding. Oftentimes, too, n tempting
array of real viands Is carried in the pro-
bread and rice and fruit They are not
left to waste their sweetness on the
desert air" but after they have remained
at the graves mouth for little while
and the spirits have shifted the delicious
odors they are divided up among the sor-
rowing relatives and friends, who have
such a feast as many of them have not
enjoyed for days.-Cosmopolitan-