In the days of its
prosperity Yuen-nan must have been a fair land indeed, bright, smiling,
seductive; now it is the exact antithesis, and the people live sad,
flat, colorless existences.
For three days my caravan was preceded by twelve men, headed by a sort
of gaffer with a gong, carrying a corpse in a massive black coffin,
elaborate in red and blue silk drapings and with the inevitable white
cock presiding, one leg tied with a couple of strands of straw to the
cover, on which it crowed lustily. Their mission was an honorable one,
carrying the honored dead to its last bed of rest eternal; for this dead
man had secured the fulfillment of the highest in human destiny--to have
his bones buried near the scene of his youth, near his home. This is a
simple custom the Chinese cherish and reverence, of highest honor to the
dead and of no mean value to the living. To the dead, because buried
near the home of his fathers he would not be subject to those delusive
temptations in the future state of that confused and complex life; to
the living, because it gave work to a dozen men for several days, and
enabled them to have a good time at the expense of the departed. A
perpetual and excruciatingly unmusical chant, in keeping with the
occasion's sadness, rent the mountain air, interrupted only when the
bearers lowered the coffin and left the remains of the great dead on a
pair of trestles in the roadway, whilst they drank to his happiness
above and smoked tobacco which the relatives had given them.
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