Lion and dragon in northern China (1910) (14803957363)

Identifier: liondragoninnort00john (find matches)
Title: Lion and dragon in northern China
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Johnston, Reginald Fleming, Sir, 1874-1938
Subjects: Weihaiwei
Publisher: New York, E. P. Dutton and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress



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me day as dead men if not as living ones. This istrue to a certain extent. The average Chinese dearlyloves his old home, and considering that it has beenthe home of his ancestors for a length of time thatwould make the oldest ancestral estate in Englandashamed of itself, it is no wonder that he shouldregard it with affection. But there is another reason why it is consideredimportant that every Chinese—at least every Chinesewho has sons of his own and has maintained con-nection with the old stock from which he sprang—should lay his bones beside those of his fathers. TheChinese theory is that some mysterious sympathyexists, even after death, between the soul and thebody, and that unless the body is brought to the placewhere the ancestral sacra are carried out it will beimpossible to provide for the sacrificial rites that oughtto be rendered to the soul. The family at home willthus lose one of its ancestral links, and the dead mansspirit will wander homeless and lordless in the world
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Photo by AhFong, Wcihahvei. A PEDIGREE-SCROLL (CHIA Pu) (see p. 279).p. 2S0) BODY AND SOUL 281 of shades: an ancestral ghost separated for ever fromcommunion with its fellows. It is partly because of this supposed connectionbetween soul and body that the Chinese abhor theidea of descending to their graves in a mutilatedcondition. Thus in China decapitation is a moreserious punishment than strangulation, because it isthought that the headless man may become a head-less ghost. The danger of appearing in a mutilatedcondition in the next world is, however, lessened oraverted if the severed members can be buried alongwith the body to which they belonged. A Chineseservant in Weihaiwei not long ago begged for an oldbiscuit-tin from his foreign master in order that hemight give it to a friend who wished to use it as acoffin for his amputated foot.1 It is the hope of every Chinese, then, that when hedies he will be laid in his ancestral graveyard, andthat he will be laid there in a state of or