Author's note:

Dear friends, 

What you are about to read is Chapter 5 of my doctoral dissertation on Chinese folk religious practice. The entire dissertation will soon be available at ProQuest. For citations please go to ProQuest. Thank you.

A “THICK DESCRIPTION” AND ANALYSIS OF A FUNERARY RITUAL IN QIJIAZHUANG, PRESIDED OVER BY A LOCAL YIN-YANG

1. Thick Description of the Rituals

Among all the rituals that a yin-yang leads or presides over, funeral rituals are the most important. Funeral rites are central for families as well as for the ritual life of the entire village. The death of a person is always a sad reminder to the living that the yin world is “only a paper’s thickness away from the yang world” (Z. B. Meng, personal communication, August 2006).  In contrast, a healing ritual can be optional and might even be replaced by seeing a doctor; a memorial[1] ritual also can be optional, or can sometimes be presided over by the head of the household or by a fellow villager. A funeral ritual, however, must always be done by a yin-yang. The bedrock of this funeral tradition, the worldview underpinning its meaning and importance, is the cosmology of the villagers. At its core is the view that there is another world, an after-life world, or, in the terms that identify the ritual leader, a “yin world” that co-exists with the yang world. A person’s journey from the yang world to the yin world is not as simple as one might think – it is not akin to moving from point A to point B in the yang world. It warrants and requires proper procedures in order for the deceased to migrate to the right place in the yin world. This passage requires the proper funerary documents, somewhat like a passport, or, as it is commonly described in China, an “introductory letter” that announces the deceased into the yin world. There are several primary reasons why the funeral ritual remains a central and serious ritual concern.

First, the underlying belief system prescribes the rituals as central. In this worldview, the moment a person dies, he or she has no ability to keep the multiple souls and the body together.  The souls tend to flee the body and may get scattered all about. In the words of a yin-yang himself, “Numerous wandering ghosts are waiting for the moment to kidnap a dead person’s souls because they know that the surviving members of the family and other relatives of the dead will offer them sacrifices” (Z. J. Meng, personal communication, March 2011; January 2012). By kidnapping and controlling the souls of the newly dead, these ghosts will receive a good share of the paper money, good food and drinks, from the sacrifices. If these lost souls are not liberated from the wandering ghosts, chances are, the newly dead person’s souls will become wandering ghosts as well.

Second, the dead person must be buried on the right date according to the cosmological calendar. Each person has his or her own horoscope, and thereby his or her predetermined burial date and hour, and must be verified accordingly. There are only certain auspicious times for any [dead] person to be buried. And yet this date has to meet the full compatibility of the “Star Officers on Duty” (值日星官); if these dates are compatible, then there is a third restriction that must be examined; this is the Tuwang (土旺) taboo dates[2], during which the moving of earth required for a burial is prohibited. In a personal example, my mother-in-law passed away on February 9, 2007, which unfortunately happened to be the Tuwang period, and, consequently, her corpse was kept and mourned for eight days before it could finally be buried. The need to respect this calendric taboo superseded the other primary belief that a dead person’s soul and ghosts can only rest in peace after the deceased is buried, which means that the sooner a dead person is buried the better.

Third, the dead must be buried in the correct geographical orientation appropriate for burial in any given lunar year. The propitious directions rotate each year. Whether a person can be buried in a certain direction is always a big concern for the mourning family, particularly because there is frequently an existing family graveyard in which the burial orientations have already been determined, and this cannot be changed in order to bury additional individual family members. In cases when a certain orientation is not suited for a given burial in a family graveyard, a temporary burial site at another location becomes the only option. Again, a typical example comes from my own experience in which my grandmother was first buried in a temporary grave before being moved later to the family graveyard.  Detailed descriptions are given below. 

Fourth, the proper gods have to be notified and/or invited during the funeral ritual. In a funeral ritual (as well as in a memorial or healing ritual) only the gods that are relevant for the situation should be notified or invited. For example, in all my ethnographic fieldwork, I found that burying a dead person involves at least the following gods (all the explanations are based on my interviews with the yin-yangs and the villagers in Fanmagou, Qijiazhuang and Wang Da-Zhuang, 2002-2014):

·         The Yan-Wang (閻王King of the Underworld) must be invited if there is a sacrificial ritual before the burial, or be notified if there is no such sacrificial ritual. The King of the Underworld and his government officials receive/admit the ghosts of the dead and make judgments according to the dead peoples’ words and deeds in the yang world – to determine the future of these ghosts.

·         The God of the Big Dipper (北斗七元星君) must be invited if there is a sacrificial ritual, because this god has charge over people’s life spans. “Entertaining the God of the Big Dipper is not intended to get more years of life for the one that is already dead; rather, it is to beg for longevity and for the ongoing survival of the family. Hence it is very common for the mourning families to hire yin-yangs to chant Beidou Jing (北斗經 Verses and Hymns to the Grand Seven Chief Sages of the North). This activity, in our jargon, is called ‘the praying with sacrifices to the God of the Big Dipper (禳星告斗)’” (Z. J. Meng, personal communication, July 2007).

·         The Earth God must also be notified, or invited if there is a sacrificial ritual, in order to get permission to open the earth to dig the grave. If a dead person must be removed from one grave to another in a faraway place for a reburial, the Earth God of the old grave site must be thanked and permission from the Earth God in the new grave site must be requested.

·         The King of Medicine may also be invited to a sacrificial ritual if the deceased died of a disease. The yin-yang will beg this god to bless the mourning family with good health.

In addition to the afore-mentioned high-ranking gods, numerous low-ranking local gods must also be notified. These include (1) the town god (城隍) if in a town, or the village god (村廟) if in a village, because this god is in charge of the region or area where the dead person belongs; (2) the Ghost-Escorting Messenger (押魂使者) and the Ghost-Discerning Minor Servant (判魂童子) if a person dies in one place and needs to be moved to another place for burial; (3) the Kitchen God (竈君) must be informed, regardless of whether there is a specific sacrificial ritual or not, because the mourning family will keep the Kitchen God very busy for a few days with meal preparations. Therefore at least libations and incense must be offered to the Kitchen God.

Regarding inviting gods, Master Meng has the following remarks: “If a god that is expected to be invited is not actually invited, then he will be offended; if a god that is not expected to be invited is actually invited, then other gods might be offended; so we human beings have to make sure no rules are violated and no deities are offended” (Z. J. Meng, personal communication, July 2007). This double-edged aspect of funeral rituals shows the high degree of precision that is required, necessitating the engagement of the trained yin-yang leaders.

Fifth and finally, the right texts must be recited so that the ghost of the deceased person will not be sent down into hell. In the Chinese folk religion, hell is located somewhere below, underneath the yang world; therefore the direction to hell is always termed as downward, as it is reflected in the Chinese set phrase as xia diyu (下地獄) – an antonym of shang tiantang (上天堂, going up to the heaven).

Keeping in mind this central and precise nature of the funeral ritual in this cultural context, I now turn to an ethnographic description of a particular event in which I needed to balance my own dual insider and outsider participant observer role. The following is a full recount of funeral procedures and rites for my maternal grandmother. As quite a number of rituals were held concurrently, it was beyond my ability to observe all of them directly; therefore the recounts here are a combination of direct observations as well as of numerous interviews with the yin-yangs and the villagers not long after the events. The third and the fourth parts in particular are based on my own direct participant observations interpreted through my lifetime of primary cultural and linguistic knowledge.

(1) The passing away of my grandmother and the arrangements for mourning. On July 29, 2003 my maternal grandmother breathed her last breath. She was 91, but she had been in good health throughout her years. She became suddenly sick, after lunch.

My aunt and my uncle were sitting next to my grandmother. My aunt is a retired village doctor[3] so she started checking the pulse while discussing with my uncle as to whether or not they should send my grandmother to the hospital. Soon they found it was too late to even call an ambulance, and the moment they were sure that my grandmother had passed away, they closed her half-open eyes. They then took out the traditional graveclothes readied for use in this moment (壽衣, or 老衣) [4] and put them on my grandmother, over the clothes she was already wearing. It is a custom to prepare graveclothes for an old family member when she or he reaches sixty, or when she or he has grandchild(ren), or when she or he has been pronounced by a doctor to be incurable and is counting the last days. Then my aunt and my uncle spread some straw – about three centimeters thick – on the floor of the room, alongside one of the walls, so there would be room for the mourners. They moved her body onto the straw – this is called luocao (落草, landing on the straw), laying her on her back and facing her towards the back of the room, so the mourners would not see her head when they walked into the room. Then they opened her mouth, which had not yet become stiff, and placed inside it an old copper coin that had also been previously prepared for this moment. It is ideal for the coin to be silver or even gold, but regardless of its composition, it is called tankoujin (彈口金, mouth suppressing gold). Next, they found a sheet of white paper to cover her face, and a piece of thin flax string to tie the tips of her feet together. These have all been local customs for generations. While my aunt made telephone calls to the relatives to inform them of the news, my uncle then went and found a fragment of an old clay tile and soaked it into a bucket of cold water for a few minutes before placing it over my grandmother’s chest. This was done to more quickly cool down her body temperature. Cooling down the temperature of a corpse quickly is always a challenge and a matter of concern for family members when the death occurs during the heat of mid-summer. This being the seasonal case for my grandmother’s death, as an additional measure to cool down her body temperature, he poured some sorghum wine onto the tile – according to the local people, alcohol vaporizes fast and thereby it helps reduce body temperature fast.

The first person my aunt called[5] was her cousin Chang Wanliang, who was a designated male mourner of my grandmother.[6] My grandmother gave birth to two daughters, and the local custom has it that in cases where there are no sons, there is a need to find a stepson and identify him as her future male mourner. In the local cultural context this stepson was considered more appropriate than having one of her two daughters take the lead mourner role. There is a patriarchal and patrilineal intention behind this custom, which is to designate a male “child” so that the family’s surname will be passed on (傳香火). Therefore about 30 years ago, Chang Wanliang, a son of my grandfather’s fifth brother, was appointed as the stepson and the heir of my grandmother. This kind of stepson on the father’s side is considered the most reliable because he does not have to change his real surname. Additionally this means that the family he has been adopted into is closely related to his own and therefore requires no significant kinship changes. After this arrangement of a primary male mourner was made years before, and including her two daughters, my grandmother was set up to have three primary mourners at her death.  However, my own mother passed away ahead of her in 1996, leaving my aunt and my uncle Wanliang as the two remaining primary mourners.

Before the relatives began arriving, my aunt and uncle next had to set up a mourning room with a family shrine – which in fact has items representing both a shrine and an altar. They cleared a table that was next to my grandmother’s body. This table would be used to place a kerosene lamp (in lieu of a candle), and also incense sticks and offerings like….While my aunt was preparing to put a brownish ceramic incense burner at the back center of the table, my uncle folded a piece of white paper into a tablet and, with a writing brush, wrote these words:

常门慈母王氏之神位

The spirit tablet of MS Wang, the deceased kind-hearted Mother of the Chang family.

Wang is my grandmother’s surname; Chang was her husband’s surname. The tablet was vertically set up on one end of a piece of bamboo that was about the size of a chopstick, both in thickness and length. With both hands, my uncle placed the tablet into a bowl of rice, which was also prepared by my aunt and had been placed right behind the incense burner, and then he lit three sticks of incense. He held the incense sticks up about the height of his forehead, paused for about one and half seconds, then slowly lowered his hands and stuck the incense sticks into the sand which was the content of the incense burner. They found a kerosene lamp to place on the table, and lighted it. This lamp would be kept there throughout the entire mourning period so the mourners could use it to ignite the paper money – that was prepared by the mourning family and brought by the visitors. My aunt found a small bowl from the kitchen, poured into it some cooking oil until about 80% full, and then made a wick with new cotton; when the old-fashioned oil lamp was ready, she placed it next to my grandmother’s head, at the right side, about 40 centimeters away. This is called the yin-hun-deng (引魂燈, ghost-leading lamp). Whenever the oil went down, my aunt or somebody else would add more. Like the kerosene lamp, the ritual practice calls for this cooking-oil lamp to be kept burning all the time so my grandmother’s three souls would not be scared of the darkness and run away. When all these things are ready, they took two china plates and displayed some fruit in front of the incense burner. This was the very first offering to my grandmother. Then they washed two teapots of two different sizes. Sorghum wine was poured into the small pot and tea into the big one. Both of these are for libations. The last thing they prepared was an enamel washbasin whose diameter was about 30 centimeters; it was placed in front of the sacrificial table, with about a quarter of the washbasin extending under the table. This basin was so placed to catch the ashes of the paper money that was burned. This washbasin was placed there to protect the floor tiles because my aunt and uncle live in the city; in the countryside, it would have been an earthen basin (which will be explained later in this chapter).

Less than half an hour passed before relatives living in Guyuan city began arriving at irregular intervals, bringing food, fruits and paper money they bought from drugstores venders. The food and fruits were to be placed on the sacrificial table for a few hours, and then only a very small portion of the sacrifices would be thrown into the burning paper money. At the same time as the paper money was burned, tea and sorghum wine was poured round about the basin as libation. These early rounds of diverse sacrifices would soon be followed by other varieties of sacrificial offerings brought by other relatives and friends who came later as they learned the news of my grandmother’s death.

(2) The official mourning shrine and the memorial setting. My aunt’s home is in the city of Guyuan, but the family graveyard where my grandmother was to be buried is in Qijiazhuang, a village 40 kilometers southwest of Guyuan and only 1.5 kilometers from my hometown of Fanmagou. Qijiazhuang village is where all my mother’s paternal uncles, aunts and most of her cousins, including my uncle Chang Wanliang, the adopted stepson and male mourner, live or lived.

Immediately after receiving the call from my aunt, Chang Wanliang did four things: (1) He sent a cousin by motorcycle to go find and invite a yin-yang to preside over the funeral; (2) he sent another cousin by motorcycle to buy white cotton cloth for the mourning attire - for this task, this relative would have to work with another relative to calculate the amount of the cloth needed based on the number of all the mourners; (3) as he did not have a wife and children himself, he asked his youngest brothers’ family (with whom he lived) to start preparing for a big meal to serve to the fellow villagers who would begin arriving soon after the obituary news was announced – typically there is a one-person-per-family attendance policy; (4) he asked another male cousin of his to go with him to do a baosang ritual in the village (報喪, to orally announce the news of the death and to invite the fellow villagers for help).[7] This last task is actually part of the overall funeral ritual. The following description is based on interviews of a group of Fanmagou villagers about the baosang ritual.

Baosang is to formally announce the death of a relative to the entire village and to invite the fellow villagers to come to the funeral service. As part of this ritual announcement, it also plays an important role in inviting the fellow villagers to assist with the physical labor associated with the funeral – to dig the grave, to carry the coffin, to bury the dead, and then to participate in the house cleansing ritual; all activities require the help of additional people beyond the immediate family and some of them, such as digging the grave and burying the dead, can only be done by people that are not mourners. If the dead person had children or relatives, they would be responsible for leading the baosang procedure; otherwise the fellow villagers will volunteer to assist with the work. There is no specific sequence as to which part of the village should be informed of the death first; but by custom, the ritual announcement has to be done door-to-door.  The ritual informers must proceed to the front gate of each family home and kneel down before calling aloud the name of that family’s first child, or the head of the family. When someone comes outside of the house, they will kowtow and announce the news of the death. After the announcement is made they then say: “Now we will have to bother you and invite you to come to help us.” Customarily, the head of the family promptly promises to go and help as needed, and then the informers move on to the next family home, continuing until they have made visits to the entire village. During the overall baosang procedure, the informers also identify and ask one individual to do a special favor to the family; which is to be the zongguan (喪事總管, funeral manager) of the entire funerary activity. The zongguan is usually someone who is able to handle multitasks and is good at the calculations needed to manage the overall events. This person is also the coordinator between the mourning family, the yin-yang(s), and the carpenter(s), if a coffin must be made. 

According to the yin-yangs’ description, the ritual action of baosang has another social function; the moment the baosang is initiated, the entire village will know that from that day on, the close family mourners, particularly the children of the deceased, are not supposed to enter any villager’s house for 100 days – they may only enter homes of their own extended family. The yin-yang masters who I interviewed explained the rationale for this prohibition. 

According to their beliefs, during the mourning period, it is not only the ghost of the deceased parent that may be hanging around the family, but other ghosts may be drawn there as well. The wandering hungry ghosts (遊魂餓鬼) may also be lurking in the area attempting to take advantage of the daily sacrifices of food and paper money associated with the death. This is understood and accepted by the mourning family; but it is not a desirable situation for the other village families because these wandering hungry ghosts could bring them misfortunes like diseases. Moreover, there is also the more physical concern that since someone has passed away within the mourning family, it is likely that the germs associated with the death are still lingering and might be transmitted to other villagers by the family mourners. Finally, by tradition the family mourners are not supposed to have a happy mood for at least the first few weeks after the death. Consequently, if they were to visit a fellow villager it is believed they would bring and transmit their sad mood to that family, which is also undesirable. These are the spiritual, physical, and emotional aspects of the mourning-period prohibition (Z. Zhang, interview with Master Ma and Master Meng, July 2004).

Returning to my grandmother’s death, even before the baosang procedure was fully completed, the yin-yang and his apprentice arrived by motorcycle. (Although the apprentice was not yet initiated, customarily they both are referred to as yin-yangs, which is how I will refer to them hereafter.) They were greeted by the newly chosen mourning manager, who had arrived half an hour earlier, and also by the mourning family which, almost immediately, served a light meal – noodles with fried eggs – to the yin-yangs. Very shortly after the meal, the master yin-yang began gathering information about the deceased and members of the family so as to prepare the ritual “paper work” as well as to identify the auspicious dates and a time to bury the deceased. The following is a list of the specific information he gathered:

·         The surname of my grandmother – the yin-yangs already knew my grandfather’s surname so he did not ask.

·         The birth date and death date of the deceased.

·         The names of all the primary mourners – the children or stepchildren of the deceased, including sons-in-law.

·         The names of the secondary mourners – nephews and nieces of the deceased.

·         The names of the grandchildren of the deceased.

·         The location of the family graveyard and its directional orientations.

Immediately after the master yin-yang learned that the family graveyard was West-East in direction, he sighed and told the funeral manager that my grandmother could not be buried there at this time, because it was the year of the Ram and the West-East direction was ill-suited for that calendar year. The funeral manager and the mourning family was a little disappointed at this news, because they all knew that my grandmother would have to be temporarily buried somewhere else in the vicinity of the family graveyard in a North-South direction and then move later to the family graveyard. As the master yin-yang had already learned that the corpse was in Guyuan city, he asked whether the mourning family was going to buy a coffin there or have one made in Qijiazhuang.  Making, rather than buying, a coffin is typical in village funerals, whereas the opposite is often the case in cities. He was told that her coffin had already been made a few years ago and was being kept in Qijiazhuang village.

About 10 minutes later the master yin-yang prepared a tablet for a separate family shrine – like the one at my aunt’s house in Guyuan, it was likewise a combination of a shrine and an altar. The differences from the shrine in Guyuan were: since there was no corpse next to the shrine there was no need for a basin under the table. Had the corpse been next to the sacrificial table, an earthen basin would have been under the table to hold the ashes of the paper money. Then, when the corpse is put into the coffin and is lifted to be moved toward the graveyard, the primary mourner would hold the earthen basin upon his head and throw it at the front part, or the smaller end, of the coffin. According the villagers, the functions of doing this are: (1) to show that the primary mourner tries with his last effort to stop his dear mother (or father) from being carried away, and (2) to let the departing relative carry the paper money along as his / her panchan (盤纏, traveling expenses).

The tablet that the yin-yang made bears the following words:

公故先妣常君王氏之神位

Spirit tablet of the deceased mother MS Wang of the Chang

     After Chang Wanliang finished the baosang door-to-door announcement, he returned home. He prostrated himself in front of the master yin-yang and received a spirit tablet made by the yin yang for the shrine (see image and translation). He thanked the yin-yang, stood up, and placed the tablet onto the center of the table. At the front of the tablet, he placed an incense burner and lit three incense sticks over a self-made kerosene lamp, and then he placed the food sacrifice, which consisted of newly-made steamed sacrificial bread (獻饃饃).[9]

One of his brothers, nicknamed Number-Five, brought two pots and placed them in front of the bread. One contained sorghum wine, and the other tea that was not anything special from that which the living people drink, but extra effort was made to make the tea pot cleaner than usual. Chang Wanliang knelt down to burn a few sheets of paper money while Number-Five poured a libation of the wine and the tea onto the ground in front of the shrine. Three other family members who were in the room during the setting up of the shrine and at the initial sacrifice, also knelt down and several female family members wailed outside, in the yard. Wailing at home without the coming of guests / fellow villagers was more emotional than ritual; yet many villagers agree that wailing is another way to announce and / or to confirm the sad news. After this initial opening of the shrine by the immediate family, the incoming relatives and the fellow villagers were then able to pay their respect and to offer their own sacrifices.  Customary sacrificial offerings include steamed sacrificial bread, fruits, and canned fruits bought from a small store in the village.

(a) Front-door obituary (門告). While the mourners offered their very first sacrifice, the yin-yang wrote the “Front-Door Obituary” on a full-size piece of white paper. This is a formal ritual document that reads:

        不孝男常万良罪孽深重不自陨灭祸延公故先妣常门慈君王氏原命子鼠相壬子年九月望日受生享寿九旬有二逝于公元二零零三年古七月朔日因病告终正寝不孝等亲视含殓遵制成服择定本月初二日吉日吉时扶柩发引新茔北山北向安厝倘蒙亲谊送殡吊奠者寸楮片纸概不敢领  仅此

计

闻

哀子孝男泣血稽颡抆泪同拜

侄男常万瑞等泣血抆泪  同拜

The undutiful[10] son Chang Wanliang is gravely sinful [i.e. negligent] but did not I[11] myself perish and [thereby] have caused the harm to be extended to my old mother MS Wang[12] of the Chang family, who was born under the zodiac of rat [e.g. one of the 12 animals] on the 15th day in the ninth month of the lunar calendar in the year of Renzi (壬子), and lived up to 92 years; she passed away in the living room on the first day of the seventh month (lunar calendar) of the year of 2003 of the solar calendar [13] due to an illness. I as well as other undutiful relatives will personally witness the coffining and make mourning dresses according to the tradition. A lucky day and auspicious hour[14] have been chosen to escort the coffin to the new graveyard at the Northern Mountain with north-south direction to bury.  Should relatives and friends come to offer sacrifices and condolences, we dare not accept even small pieces of paper.[15]

Sincerely we hereby announce

The news

Shedding tears of blood the orphaned child worships by koutowing and wiping tears.

Nephew Chang Wanrui[16] and all the other nephews worship with tears and blood from our eyes.

The “Front Door Obituary” was pasted to a door plank, which was taken down from the front door of the family courtyard, and then leaned against a small stool in the foreyard, close to the passage that connects to the village’s main path.

This obituary has ritual functions beyond the practical announcing of the news of the death to the villagers; Master Meng made the following remarks amplifying the spiritual reasons for this component:

…it [the Front Door Obituary] is also for passersby to stop and read. Every time the obituary is read, credits of respect will be added to the deceased. This is good because it will help to offset the sins that the deceased might have committed in his or her life…There is a saying that goes like this: Three feet above the ground there are gods / spirits (離地三尺有神明) watching and listening. They collect information and report to relevant gods about the deceased – this is true to the living as well and you know that every day there is a Star God on duty. That’s how one’s words and deeds (good conduct and misconduct) are recorded and one’s future and length of life (陽壽) are determined (Z. J. Meng, personal communication, September 2013).

(b) The antithetical couplets. Right after the Front Door Obituary was finished and placed, the master yin-yang began writing the traditional poetic lines, or more specifically, the antithetical couplets, that are exclusively composed for such funerary purposes (喪事對聯). He wrote these on strips of white paper that had been prepared by his yin yang apprentice. He learned from the funeral manager that three pairs of the couplets were needed – there are altogether six doors but not all of them need a pair of the couplets. So for the front gate (or the courtyard door, whose plank had been taken down for the obituary) he wrote the following couplet (see explanations of these couplets in the analysis section, below):

海山莫並親恩重

覆載難容子道虧

Seas and mountains cannot match the weight of the deep affection to my relative,

Heaven and earth are unable to contain the deficiency of this son’s filial piety.

And on the top of the doorframe, these words were written: The sorrowful heat is like broken (憂心如碎).

For the mourning room, he wrote this couplet:

日落西山不見面

水流東海難回頭

The sun that sinks in the west cannot be seen,

The water that flows to the east will hardly return.

And on the top of the doorframe, these words were written: Mourning wailing with tears (喪哭致泣)

As for the kitchen, he wrote this couplet:

母容莫睹傷心難禁千行淚

親恩未報哀痛不覺九迴腸

Unable to see Mother’s face, saddened, cannot hold back thousand drops of tears,

Haven’t repaid her kindness, grieved, suddenly realized all worriedness.

On the top of the doorframe, these words were written: The voice and grace will last forever (音澤長存)

These antithetical couplets[17] were written on white paper, instead of red paper; because white color is related to sadness both locally and throughout Chinese culture. In fact, traditionally these ritual couplets, if red are called xidui (喜對, happy couplets) while white couplets are called xiaodui or sangdui (孝對or喪對, mourning or funeral couplets).

After writing and placing the three white paper couplets, the yin-yang asked the family whether a long narrow flag (長幡) would be needed to further extend the public death announcement and to publicize the good virtue of the death. The family said no. The reason for declining this additional ritual component, as my uncle Wanliang told me later, was that (1) it would cost extra money and (2) since his house is far away from the main road, no additional people would have been able to see the long narrow flag (W. L. Chang, personal communication, August 2010).

(c) Official documents to the yin world. The yin-yangs next moved on to the writing of the “Disaster-Narrating Note” (殃狀單子, or, as Master Ding explained,[18] the “Introduction Letter to the Yin World”) and “The Apology Letter to the Earth God” (祭土文). These are key ritual texts that were needed immediately because the burial time was set for 6:00 a.m. the next morning and the grave diggers would need them completed in order to start digging before dark. To save time, the master yin-yang decided that he and his apprentice would write the two documents separately. The apprentice was given the easier one – The Apology Letter to the Earth God. Because there was already a template for this letter in the master yin-yang’s bag, his apprentice only needed to copy the text by filling in the blanks with the specific information acquired from the mourning family. In less than twenty minutes, both of ritual letters were completed and the master yin-yang took out his six-sided seal and stamped each of the documents.

Next, the master yin-yang assigned his apprentice to write a “Ghost-Leading Road Certificate” (引路亡票) and a “Ghost-Leading Banner” (引魂幡, see explanation and description below).

By this time four villagers, who were to be the grave-diggers, had finished their light meal offered by the mourning family, and they were ready to go up the mountain to the temporary burial location. Standing beside them on this place was Chang Wanliang who, according to the master yin-yang’s specific requests, had collected the following ritual items that were needed for the grave digging:

Ø  A peach-twig bow and five willow-branch arrows

Ø  A stack of paper money, a box of incense sticks and a bottle of sorghum wine

Ø  A kitchen knife and a bundle of millet straw that was tied with three single threads

By the time they were ready to leave, it was almost 6:30 p.m. and the master yin-yang, with his bag in hand, accompanied Chang Wanliang and the four villagers up the hill to my grandmother’s family graveyard.

The graveyard is a little more than a kilometer from the village and it has eight tombs in it.  Owing to the fact that my grandmother could not be buried there yet, a different burial place had to be found. However, because this first burial was only a temporary or sojourn-type burial, the task was to find a suitable place in close vicinity. The place they identified was about 300 meters to the south of the family graveyard, in a fellow villager’s field, where crops were growing.[19] The master yin-yang drew a rough outline of the graveyard and then the five people stepped down the crops before the master yin-yang used his magnetic compass to draw precise lines of the selected grave area at the center of the yard where the grave-pit was to be dug. 

After the outline of the graveyard was drawn, the master yin-yang led the group to the upper right corner – from the perspective of a living person choosing the site – of the square and knelt down. My uncle Chang Wanliang took out the paper money, the incense sticks and the sorghum wine. He ignited the paper money and used the flame to ignite the incense sticks. When he saw the smoke of the incense sticks rising up,[20] the master yin-yang began reading the following letter that his apprentice had copied / composed to the Earth God:

祭土文

维

公元二零零三年岁次癸未夏七月己未朔越祭日癸卯祭主常万良上叩谨以香烛酒礼之仪于新茔后土之尊神前曰，土德广大，生育万物，土府有一千二百尊神。即有一千二百凶煞。兹因弟子葬埋先妣新茔，北山南北向安厝，唯恐山间不利，冒犯土府神煞，因而敬备的酒礼祭献，修文祭土，消除厄难。赦免灾殃。伏愿祭之以后，多蒙保佑。家宅顺利，人口降吉降祥。生者永受福庇，亡者早得超升。神其有知，伏维敢告。尚

飨。

祭土文

消煞文

A Letter to the Earth God with Sacrifice

Re:

On the first day (Guimao, 癸卯) of the seventh moon (Jiwei, 己未) of the year of Guiwei (癸未, [which is] the year 2003 by the Western calendar), the primary mourner Chang Wanliang humbly kowtows here with such sacrificial gifts as incense, candles and wine before the venerated God of Earth of the new graveyard and says, the earth has enormous virtue and gives birth to all things in the world. The government of earth has 1,200 venerated gods and accordingly it also has 1,200 demons. Inasmuch as I, your disciple, will bury my deceased mother in the new grave, which is on the northern hill, in North-South direction, I am afraid that it might be unfavorable in the hills there and offend the gods and demons in the government of the earth. Thus I have humbly prepared wine and [other] sacrifices along with this letter to you to eliminate misfortunes and to have our calamities pardoned. I sincerely hope that after this sacrifice we can be blessed, so our house will be prosperous and lucky and auspiciousness will befall our family. The living will always be blessed and protected, and the dead will be expiated of their sins. In hoping to let you, my god, know this, I am humbly taking the liberty. Please help yourself to the nice food.

Letter to the God of Earth

Letter for eliminating the disasters[21]

The letter was burned after this reading aloud, and then a libation of wine was served to complete the ritual. Everybody then kowtowed and got up. “Now let’s cut the straw,” said the yin-yang.

One of the four grave-digging villagers handed the peach bow and the three willow arrows to Chang Wanliang, and another handed the millet straw bundle and the kitchen knife to the yin-yang.[22] The yin-yang laid the straw in the center of the graveyard he had outlined and started chanting the following verses:

一斩去天殃       The first cut expels the heavenly disaster

妖鬼尽躲藏       All sorts of evil-doers will go hiding

星辰来护卫       The stars will come to guard and protect

日月显三光       The sun and the moon shows the three lights

With the falling of his voice, he bent down and chopped the straw in halves. Two short straw bundles jumped up at the force of his chop and landed diagonally at the yin-yang’s front sides. He straightened up and continued chanting:

二斩去地殃       The second cut expels the earthly disaster

戊己坐中央       The Wu-and-Ji directories sit in the central

伏尸皆化散       The hidden dead bodies shall all scatter

魍魉总消亡       Demons and monsters all disappear

The yin-yang then bent down and cut the left half of the straw again into smaller halves and straightened up to chant again:

三斩去鬼殃       The third cut expels the ghostly disaster

鬼魅尽消亡       Ghosts and goblins should completely perish

亡魂超仙界       The ghost of deceased will be redeemed

穴内永祯祥       The catacomb shall always be auspicious

Upon finish his chanting, the yin-yang bent down and cut the right half of the straw again into smaller halves. After this third cut, he handed the kitchen knife to a villager and said to Chang Wanliang: You can shoot the arrows now.         

Chang Wanliang stood inside the outlined graveyard and shot the arrows in the following order: east, south, west, north, and then down into the center where the straw had been cut into multiple halves.

When this series of gravesite preparation rituals was completed, the yin-yang returned to the village with Chang Wanliang, leaving the four villagers to dig the grave-pit. In this case, they did not need any additional rituals or further instructions since at least one of them had performed this role and work in the past.

When the yin-yangs and Chang Wanliang returned to the village, there were about 20 villagers and relatives at Chang’s house; they came to pay their respects to my grandmother. They were now having a meal – an economical dinner that had meat, which was considered luxury in the countryside – that the mourning family provided.[23] As there were not enough tables and chairs for so many people, they were squatting all over the yard, holding the bowls in their hands, eating and chatting. Usually in a mourning family, there would be no sounds of laughing or loud-speaking, but at this mourning family, people, including some of the mourning nephews and nieces of the deceased, were chatting, laughing and making various kinds of jokes. Yet this is not entirely abnormal. The custom has it that when a villager dies at a good age – seventy years or older, and has great grandchildren, the funeral can be like a celebration. In some places they even use colored paper to decorate the mourning place, including the antithetical couplets.

The mourning family served the yin-yangs and the funeral manager a more decent dinner, which had additional dishes such as chicken and deep-fried dough cakes; a bottle of sorghum wine was also served to these three.[24] Another difference was that they were honored to eat on the kang, a heatable clay bed, at a small kang-top table. This was also the usual practice in the village so nobody questioned that.

No sooner had the yin-yangs finished with their meal, than one of the villagers, Mr. Luo Youcai, approached the funeral manager and the yin-yangs. Luo Youcai had kindly kept my grandmother’s coffin during the past years, and now offered to drive his farm pickup to Guyuan to fetch the corpse. He asked the master yin-yang for the objects that were needed for his trip.

The master yin-yang asked the funeral manager if the funerary objects had been found. When he received the positive answer, he double checked the two documents that his apprentice had prepared. The first was “The Road-leading Certificate” (or “The Road Ticket”, 引路亡票).

北魁玄范府，通用路票。恭迓

道旨敕赦生天宝录以皆为戒送亡魂归回故乡事票仰

酆都城隍诸大鬼王九幽冥官主者神虎追缉将吏三部追魂使者即将新亡过常门王氏讳凤莲因病亡故在宁夏固原市城内今者卜定吉日迁移本地搬迁新茔安葬形归窀穸二宅俱利存亡共庆倘遇沿途河头水尾关津渡口有强神恶鬼遏截阻挡者定依女青律令天律治罪施行决不宽恕须至票者

讣物常门王氏讳凤莲灵魂速赴故乡

信受奉行

票差押魂使者判魂童子二大真人准此

照验

公元二零零三年古七月初二日票行限定当日辰时缴到

Common Road Ticket [issued] by the Northern Star (Beikui, 北魁) Xuanfan Office [25] Humbly welcomes

The Daoist decree[26] that pardons and grants the rebirth in the heaven and prepares everything to escort the ghost of the dead to her hometown, [27] we hereby rely on the support of

The Town God of Fengdu, all the great kings of ghosts, the executive of officials in the Underworld, the divine tiger, the chasing officers, the ghost-tracing messengers in the three departments instantly move the newly deceased MS. Wang Fenglian of the Chang family, who died of diease in the city of Guyuan and an auspicious day has been chosen, to her original place so her physical body will be buried in the grave. Both the yin and the yang dwelling places will be propitious and the living and the dead will celebrate. In case there are brutal and unreasonable gods and evil spirits that attempt to intercept or stop at the ferries, crossroads, river banks or road passes, do punish them according to the heavenly code of Nüqing[28] and never forgive them. Upon receiving this Road Certificate the ghost of MS. Wang Fenglian of the Chang family, who is now the object of the obituary, should return to the hometown immediately by obeying this order.

The great two True Men, the Ghost-Escorting Messenger and the Ghost-Discerning Minor Servant, are hereby dispatched to check and make sure that [the ghost of the deceased] will return [to her hometown] between 7:00 – 9:00 AM on

the second day of the seventh moon by the lunar calendar, in the year of 2003, by the Western calendar.

The master yin-yang was satisfied with the letter; he selected from his six-sided power seals the seal of the “Northern Star (Beikui, 北魁) Xuanfan Office” (北魁玄範府印), damped it in the cinnabar – which is believed to have a function of calming the nerves and tranquilizing the shocks – inkpad, and then stamped it on the letter at the concluding section and handed it to Mr. Luo, telling him that this was to be pasted outside the rear end of the coffin[29] right after the corpse was put in. “In case of rain,” he said, “roll it up and hold it in the hands of whoever that holds the ghost-leading banner” (Y. C. Luo, personal communication, July 2003).[30]

Since the Ghost-Leading Banner was mentioned, the master yin-yang checked the one his apprentice had written on a long strip of white paper (about 15 cm by 60 cm) and then stamped “The Seal of the Army and Governing Office of the Thunderbolt” (雷霆都司印) before handing it to Mr. Luo. The banner bears the following:

东极慈尊放祥光而接引南丹贵府指云路以超升接引常府王氏凤莲真正乙位灵魂早生净界以超升开通冥路天尊

The kind and venerated at the Extreme East releases auspicious light to escort and the honorable residence in the Utmost South guides the cloudy path to jump promote[31] and to accept and lead the true ghost of MS. Wang Fenglian of the Chang family to be reborn soon in the pure land and get re-enlivened. The Heavenly Venerable Road Opener to the Netherworld.[32]

The master yin-yang told Luo Youcai that one of the mourners should hold the banner in the front of the vehicle; he should also throw the paper coins along the road. The “paper coins” (or the 貫​​錢) that the master yin-yang referred to is a different kind of paper money that is not printed, but scissor-cut in round shape with a square hole punched in the middle of it, looking like the old copper coins that had been used in China for centuries (from ca. 200 BCE to 1911). The funeral manager instantly brought a full basket of the “paper coins” and handed it to Mr. Luo.

Now the master yin-yang said there was one more thing for Luo Youcai to take along, which was the “Introduction Letter to the Yin World” (殃狀單子):

谨遵茔元内载推选本音门下入棺内外禳物开列于后。

一課公故先妣常慈君王氏原命子鼠相壬子年七月十五日受生享壽九十二旬有己迺於公元二00三年古七月初一日約定午時因病告終正寢擇定七月初二日吉日吉時扶柩發引新塋北山北向安厝大吉

Faithfully abiding by the regulations of the grave masters the following praying and sacrificial items are reckoned to be placed inside and outside the coffin for this category of surnames.[33]

Items List 1: The deceased MS Wang of the Chang family who belonged to the zodiac of rat (the year of Renzi[34]) and was born on the fifteenth day of the ninth moon and she enjoyed ninety-two years of age. She died in bed of a right age around noon of the first day of the seventh moon of the lunar calendar, in the year of 2003 by the Western calendar. The auspicious date and hour have been chosen to escort the coffin to the new grave on the Northern Hill, to be buried to the north direction.

一課殃煞不出者宜用金銀精石避殃煞，鬼見愁鬼箭草安息香十二精藥井花水桃柳枝神水灑禳，代魂出之大吉。

Item List 2: In case the disastrous and malignant spirit cannot be exorcised [after the ghost of deceased is buried], then gold, silver or precious stones must be used to avoid or to prevent it. Use Sapindus, Euonymus alatus, benzoin, twelve purist traditional Chinese herb medicine,[35] the water that is taken from a well or spring the earliest of a day, peach and willow twigs and the holy water.[36]

一課入棺總用物，宜用丝麻木炭碎錢七枚食罐一個紅花子鐵豌豆白雄雞桑條打門頭兒鳴引魂出之大吉。

Item List 3: All the objects needed for encoffining should be fine hemp fibers, charcoal, seven small coins, one crock, safflower seeds, fried beans and a white rooster – beat the front head of the rooster with mulberry twigs and the cry of it will lead the ghost out. It will be very propitious.

仙師敕令靈界殃煞化氣消散

公元二00三年古七月初一日殃示課行

用物俱全完畢。用物在前永為吉兆。

The immortal master orders the disastrous and malignant spirit in the Spirit World to change into vapor and dissipate.

Publicized and executed on the first day of the seventh moon by the lunar calendar in the year of 2003 by the Western calendar.

All the objects are prepared. It is always a propitious sign to have all the objects prepared beforehand.

After a quick proof-reading, the master yin-yang folded the letter lengthwise in half, pressed it to make a line, and then folded inward each of the half sides so the two edges now met in the center line of the letter, and then he stamped the same “Seal of the Army and Governing Office of the Thunderbolt” (雷霆都司印) straddle-sealing the central line, and handed it over to Luo Youcai and asked him to fold it or roll it before stuffing it into the right sleeve of the deceased. Generally this act can be done before or after the corpse is placed in the coffin.

By this time the apprentice yin-yang had handed a talisman (See sample in Appendix XYZ) that was drawn on a 4 by 12 (cm) long narrow piece of yellow paper to the master yin-yang, who again scanned it quickly for errors and put two seals on it: the one in the upper location was the “North-most (Arctic) Exorcism Seal” (北極驅邪印) and the “Seal of the Army and Governing Office of the Thunderbolt” (雷霆都司印). He placed a piece of white paper on the top of the two seals, pressed with his palms to take off the extra ink so as to avoid smearing and then gave it to Luo Youcai saying “This is the ‘Disaster Dispelling Talisman (Amulet)’ (消殃符); as soon as you get to Guyuan, have the mourning family paste this talisman diagonally on the lower part of the wall to which the dead person’s head is directed.” He asked Luo Youcai to tell my aunt that the talisman should be kept there for a hundred days. It then should be taken down and be burned at the “one hundred days” grand paper burning ceremony.

仙師敕令诸鬼殃煞化氣消散大吉

The key texts of the talisman were the words in the middle which read:

Immortal Master orders that all ghosts and disastrous and malignant beings in the Spirit World vaporize and disappear to ensure great propitiousness.

On both sides of the lower portion of the talisman were two antithetically written sentences to further explain, or to reiterate, the [intended] function of the talisman:

六精斬盡魂魄散，金雞鳴處鬼神驚。

All the six spirits[37] be beheaded and their souls and spirits disappear;

Wherever the golden rooster crows the ghosts and gods be startled.

Luo Youcai and one of the nephews of my grandmother set off for Guyuan around 8:40 p.m., taking the coffin and all the prescribed objects along. “Along the way, there are quite a number of villages so it is better not to let as many people see the coffin,” Master Meng told me a few years later. He said that this secrecy is to avoid making other people feel bad. There are many people who believe that seeing a coffin, regardless of whether it is empty or has a corpse in it, means bad luck. Usually a Chinese Han family will have to set a small fire in front of their courtyard to prevent the air of disasters from getting into their courtyard (Z. J. Meng, personal communication, September 2012).

Now the yin-yang asked the primary mourner, Chang Wanliang, as to whether the family would be interested in requesting a chanting of a scripture. Mr. Chang Wanliang had already discussed this with his brothers, cousins and the funeral manager; so he simply replied that since the yin-yangs had had several intensive hours of working, the scripture chanting was to be delayed until the next year. The master yin-yang immediately understood because he was clear that this burial was temporary and he was absolutely sure that the family would hire him again the next year to conduct a reburial ritual, and that would be his chance to make a little more money by chanting the scriptures (W. J. Chang, personal communication, June 2011).

So the master yin-yang started chatting with the villagers who stayed late with the mourning family. He also answered a few questions of mine, regarding the grave-digging ritual that Dr. Luckert and I were too late to observe that afternoon. These answers, together with my interview with my uncle Chang Wanliang, enabled me to write parts of the content in the “Official documents to the yin world” section. (See above, on page xyz)

(3) Bring back of the corpse from Guyuan. When Luo Youcai and Chang Wanbin arrived at Guyuan, it was almost 10:00 p.m. My aunt was already waiting for them outside. When she and her cousin, Mr. Chang Wanbin, met, they wept in low volume, which was a modified wailing procedure. Because they were living in a city, a louder, dramatic or sometimes even hysterical country style of wailing would be inappropriate there. When they entered the room, there were four or five close friends staying with my aunt and uncle; but Luo Youcai and my uncle Chang Wanbin simply exchanged their greeting with a few words and then humbly walked up to the sacrificial table. They lit three sticks of incense before prostrating down to burn some paper money and then offered the libation of sorghum wine and tea. They did look at the corpse next to the table when they entered the room, but their respect and worship was paid to the tablet on the table, not to the corpse (W. P. Chang, personal communication, June 2011).

After that Chang Wanbin took out the talisman and asked my aunt for some paste; then he crawled to the wall toward which my grandmother’s head rested, and pasted the talisman there. Soon after that Luo Youcai and Mr. Chang Wanbin were offered a nice meal, but they took only a few bites. By now their conversation was on how my grandmother suddenly got sick and passed away before medical measures were taken. Then Mr. Chang Wanbin raised a question: Why was there no yin-yang hired to do a memorial ritual. My aunt explained that the the corpse was going to be there for only one night and the burial site was in Qijiazhuang, where another yin-yang was needed to arrange for all the mourning and burial activities. It might make things complicated by hiring yet another yin-yang. Plus, my aunt argued, this was in a city, where people do not know each other well, and many people are more indifferent than the fellow villagers in the countryside. Doing a memorial ritual might seem to be intruding on or disturbing unrelated neighbors (W. P. Chang, personal communication, June 2011). Luo Youcai was sent to sleep a few hours in a neighbor’s house, and the moving of the corpse was scheduled to start at 5:30 a.m. the next morning. The relatives spent the night kneeling by my grandmother’s body until the next morning as part of the ritual for the mourners, which was called the shouling (守靈keep vigil beside the coffin / corpse).

By day break Luo Youcai had already arrived at my aunt’s house, and relatives and neighbors altogether quickly began the encoffining procedure. An elderly neighbor put seven copper coins that had been kept by my grandmother into the bottom of the coffin that had been lowered onto the ground the previous night; the coins were placed in the shape of the Big Dipper, which was in hope of begging blessings from the start god who is believed by the villagers (yin-yangs included) to have the power to extend human life. Then Chang Wanbin placed a cotton-padded mattress on top of the coins and then my aunt loosely spread some fine hemp fibers. The mattress was to ensure the dead lie comfortably; the hemp fiber is part of the mourning dress (披麻戴孝) it therefore symbolizes that my grandmother was fully supported by her filial children. Chang Wanbin then placed a gauze bag that contains a handful of safflower seeds, some fried beans and a small piece of charcoal close to the head part of the coffin. The master yin-yang explained that these things have safeguarding functions; they were placed in the coffin to guard the ghost from being bothered / attached by evil spirits. The moment these things had been placed, four people, including Mr. Luo, carried my grandmother’s body into the coffin. As soon as the corpse was carried out of the house, my aunt, who was holding a white rooster on her left arm and an elm tree twig (in lieu of a mulberry twig which was not available in the region) went to the spot where my grandmother’s body used to lie and started to gently beat the head of the rooster with the twig. The rooster made a sound with each stroke and after each sound of the rooster my aunt said, “Mom, let’s go home.” My aunt slowly walked to the coffin and held the rooster high and circled it over the coffin for three times before the lid was placed on. Had it been for a permanent burial, the lid would have been nailed fast to the coffin; but this was a temporary burial, plus the coffin had to be opened again to double check the position of the body before burying, so the lid was simply placed on and a rope was used to tie around the middle of the coffin to keep the lid from becoming loose.

While the four people were moving the coffin onto the farm pickup, two neighbors sprinkled across the house some liquid from a basin. The liquid, a Chinese medicine prescribed by the yin-yang, had been boiled over a stove last night. This rite is called xiaoyang (消殃dispelling the disaster).

It was 6:00 in the morning now, and a heavy rain could be felt to be coming soon. So Luo Youcai decided to fold the Ghost-Leading Road Certificate and put it into a plastic bag to protect it from being destroyed by the rain. He also asked Zuowen, a brother of mine who was to hold the Ghost-Leading Banner, to be prepared to roll the banner to the stick as soon as the rain drops fell. When all was ready, Chang Wanbin sat in the trunk of the pickup to hold the coffin with his hands, which is called fujiu (扶柩 escorting the coffin [by holding it with hands]), although the coffin was fastened to the pickup with ropes. Seating next to Luo Youcai, the driver, was my brother Zuowen. He had two tasks: to hold the Ghost-Leading Banner and to throw the paper-coins along the road – not all the places or all the time, but when going over bridges or passing intersections. These are the places where the wondering ghosts are most likely gather to request money. [38]

Around 6:10 a.m. Luo Youcai’s pickup got on the road; my aunt and uncle stayed in the house for about one hour. They needed to burn the xuan-men zhi (paper money for lingering ghosts 旋門紙)[39] and to serve a good breakfast to the people who came to help, and then they would take a bus to get to Qijiazhuang.

(4) The burial ritual. Luo Youcai and the two mourners – Chang Wanbin and my brother Zuowen – experienced heavy rain on the road and they had to make several stops when it was not possible to see that road; therefore they were almost one hour late for the scheduled time. But it was not considered as a problem because the time had been scheduled to avoid exposing the coffin to the sun and the sun was not shining on a rainy day. When they approached the village, two messengers were sent by the yin-yang and the mourning manager to go to the two main entrances to the village to block the road and to remind Luo Youcai not to enter the village, although Luo Youcai knew very well this custom, which says that when a corpse is brought back from an outside place, it is not supposed to enter the village. Usually it is temporarily placed in the outskirts of the village with a roadside shrine for a certain length of time, depending on the availability of a burial date. If there is no waiting time required, the corpse will be directly carried to the grave site, along a path that is usually at the edge of the village. One of the two messengers who went to block the southeast entrance to the village also brought along a new Ghost Leading Banner that was written on a small piece of white paper. The old one was destroyed in the heavy rain and Chang Wanbin had called his brother to ask the yin-yang to prepare another one. This new banner was pasted on the front end of the coffin.

Luo Youcai drove his pickup to the southwestern corner of the village and made a right turn; he drove slowly to enable the roadside families to ignite their hay in front of their yards before he moved on, up to the steep road. According to the local informants, the igniting of the hay or straw was to stop wondering [evil] spirits that might be following the coffin from getting into their houses. The rest of the villagers and the mourners climbed along a small ravine to meet him up the hill. Upon seeing the coffin, female mourners began their wailing for a while, and Mr. Chang Wanrui, the oldest nephew of my grandmother, asked Luo Youcaito turn off the engine of his pickup, so the mourners could have a chance to perform the cheqian (扯纖 rope pulling) rite to show their devoted love to the deceased. Cheqian used to be part of the burial ritual in which the mourners pulled the ropes that were tied to the vehicle that carried the coffin of their deceased relative; it was believed that the longer the distance the mourners pull the rope, a deeper affection is shown to outsiders and the more the deceased was honored. The rite is literally omitted in present day Xi-Hai-Gu due to the fact that most of the coffins were carried on the shoulders, instead of on / in vehicles. In my grandmother’s case, as I learned later, it was in fact also due to the muddy surface of the road after the heavy rain; pulling and pushing by people would help keep the vehicle from slipping and tilting and in return it would ensure a less disturbed journey of the deceased.
Once the coffin arrived at the graveyard the grave diggers were doing their final scrapings at the inner chamber[41] – they only dug the outer pit the previous evening and they dug the inner chamber that morning. When they were urged to come out, they said they were too tired to come up, so my father and other mourners threw down some money as their payments. According to tradition, this practice is more of a light-hearted humorous custom than actually bargaining for money. This practice is only applicable in burial rituals for someone that had lived a full length of life, which means the person lived to be at least 70, or had grandchildren. When the grave diggers finally came out the pit, some mourners opened the coffin to check to see whether the corpse was still in the right position after the long journey. The yin-yang went over to make sure all the needed objects were included in the coffin. If it had been a clear day, a piece of cloth about the size of a quilt would have been needed to pull over the heads of the coffin openers to prevent the corpse from being exposed to the sun, which is strictly prohibited. 

      At the same time, some male mourners were burning paper money at the foot of the grave pit; all the female mourners and some male mourners knelt about 10 meters away from the paper money burners. Everything was ready now. The primary mourner Chang Wanliang jumped down to the grave pit with a bundle of straw. He held the straw tightly and used it as a broom to sweep the surface dust out of the inner chamber. Then one of the villagers handed him a red ceramic pot which contained yeast. He placed the pot in the back of the inner chamber where the head of the coffin was to be placed. The Chinese character for yeast is 酵, which contains the character 孝 (filial piety); the using of the yeast implies that the dead person has representatives of filial piety by him or her all the time.

A few minutes later the yin-yang gave the order, and the actual burial began. Female mourners began to wail again while the coffin was lowered to the grave pit, under the directions of the head yin-yang, who was standing at the heading direction of the grave pit. When the coffin was pushed into the catacomb, the inner chamber, the yin-yang went down the pit and used his compass and a piece of white string to make sure the coffin was in line with the auspicious directions. As always, the head yin-yang was giving orders while the primary mourner, Mr. Chang Wanliang, was making adjustments to the coffin. This part of the burial procedure is called da-zhen-wen-xiang (搭針穩向) by the yin-yangs; it is considered to be one of the most delicate tasks in a burial ritual (Z. J. Meng, personal communication, March 2011).

About three minutes later, the master yin-yang was helped out of the grave pit and all the mourners went over to the pile of dirt; each of them threw three scoops of dirt into the grave pit while the fellow villagers began to use their spades and shovels to take care of the major burying job. As the entrance of the inner chamber needed to be blocked, a long straw braid was coiled up as a gate, to hold the dirt so it would not slide into the inner chamber. For this task, my father, another primary male mourner, went down the pit to offer his help as part of his responsibilities.

In the meantime, the master yin-yang and his apprentice knelt at the upper right corner and read a letter to the Houtu (后土, Earth God). When they reached the last paragraph, which was rhymed, they switched from reading to singing. They used two musical instruments – the master yin-yang used a drum and the apprentice used a pair of cymbals – to accompany their singing. While the yin-yangs sang the hymn to the Earth God, one of the mourners, a nephew of the deceased, knelt next to the master yin-yang, burning paper money and pouring libations of sorghum wine to the Earth God. The following was the letter the master yin-yang read to the Earth God:

酹土文

維

公元二零零三年歲次癸未夏七月初二日祭主常萬良上叩謹以香燭酒禮之儀酹土於

寄塋后土之尊神前曰：坤輿尊神，位鎮中央。生育萬物，宰制四方。城隍社令，各施職司之威；土地方隅，共守丘陵之正。弟子慈母常門王氏新亡待葬，憾逢舊塋方向不利，此皆因弟子等不孝而招致老母蒙受牽連。敢請

后土尊神赦免不孝弟子，開恩無辜老母。准允我母亡靈，寄葬一周之年。明年同日，遷移老塋，與家門先亡團聚一處。

一年之久，土德深厚。弟子感恩，獻禮祭酒。眷顧陰陽，免除災殃。存亡共慶，平安健康。家宅順利，子孫興旺；神其有知，伏惟尚

饗

酹土文

謝恩文

A Letter to the Earth God with Libation

Re:

The second day of the seventh moon of the year of Guiwei – year 2003 of the Western calendar – the primary mourner Chang Wanliang has humbly prepared the incense, candles and wine to pour out a libation in front of [43]

The venerated Earth God of the sojourning grave and says: The venerated Earth God sits at the center. The Earth gives birth and nourishes all beings and controls the four directions / corners. The town gods and regional [yin world] officials all use their powers according to their rights; the local gods of all the directions, working together to guard the hills. Your disciple’s kind-hearted mother, the newly passed away MS. Wang of the Chang family, is about to be buried; but unfortunately the directions at the existing family graveyard are ill-suited. All this is the consequence that I, your disciple, and other children had been lacking in filial piety and thus caused my late mother to suffer the implications.[44]  May I take the liberty to ask the venerated Earth God to pardon this unfilial disciple and show mercy to my innocent mother to permit her ghost to be guest-buried here for one year? This very day next year [she] will be moved to the family graveyard to be reunited with the family members that died prior to her.

A year’s length shows the profoundness of the virtue of the Earth. Your disciple is grateful and I offer sacrifice and pour libations. [Please] bless the dead and the living and remit the disasters, so the dead and the living can celebrate together and there will be peace and health. Our homestead will be smooth and our offspring will thrive. Hopefully this can be heard by the Earh God and I humbly invite you to

Enjoy the sacrifices!

A Letter to the Earth God with Libation

A Letter of Thank You

Toward the end of the burial ritual, one of the fellow villagers approached the paper money and took a handful from it, ignited it, and took it to a nearby place to burn for a relative of his who passed away not long ago. This has been an interesting custom in the region as the residents believe that the ghost of newly deceased people are not settled and that they always look for opportunities to join in the fun of funeral or memorial rituals, hoping to share some sacrifices that his or her living family members can get from the mourning family. But despite their past relationships in the yang world, the ghosts in the yin-world seem to be stingy and therefore the wandering ghosts have to rely on their relatives in the yang world to help them by sharing some money and other offerings.

When the hill of the tomb was piled up, the mourning sticks were thrust at its foot-end. While two mourners were still burning the last handfuls of the paper money, the rest of the mourners along with their fellow villagers and the yin-yangs went home. They chatted during most of the journey but a few minutes before reaching the mourning home, the mourners accelerated their steps. There was a low pile of fire over which the mourners jumped and then they all knelt down, facing the arriving yin-yangs and the villagers, who also jumped over the fire. The mourners kowtowed to all to express their sincere thanks. Then a nice meal was served to all, after which the primary mourner prostrated and offered the payment to the master yin-yang, who might share some with his apprentice.
(5) The omitted house cleansing rite. After the deceased has been buried, a “house cleansing” is usually the concluding rite.  This is a ritual of exorcism, not a literal cleansing, and there are circumstances when it is not required. The house cleansing rite was deemed unnecessary in the case of my grandmother’s burial because her corpse was never actually brought to the house – it was in fact not even brought into the village. Aware of the importance of including here an ethnographic description of this rite, I interviewed, in the winter of 2007, villagers and local yin-yangs about the house cleansing ritual.

According to the villagers in Fanmagou (W. K. Wang & H. C. Zhang, personal communication, August 2010), if a person died at a good age (70 years or older) and of natural causes, after the corpse is buried, a house cleansing ritual may be led by any experienced villagers and it does not necessarily have to be led by a yin-yang. However, if a death does not meet these criteria, it is implied that the disastrous and malignant spirits are strong and therefore the family has to hire a yin-yang to perform the house cleansing ritual. This ritual may be performed at various levels of seriousness; the largest and most involved can include several yin-yangs and up to twelve helping villagers. Most commonly, the ritual requires six people working together, a yin-yang and five helpers. The yin-yang opens his sack and pulls out all his tablets of gods (see Illustrations 5 in Appendix); after sorting out what divine help he needs for this particular rite, he begins to set up a shrine in either the northern part [45] or in the middle of the mourner family's courtyard, where he then invites all the gods whose names are mentioned in the scripture of “Excellent Dragon and Tiger Scripture for Eliminating Disasters and Guarding Houses, Revealed by the Most High Zhengyi Heavenly Master (Taishang Zhengyi Tianshi shuo xiaozai zhengzhai long-hu miao jing太上正乙天師說消災鎮宅龍虎妙經).” Having invited all the relevant gods, he then chants this very important scripture that he copied from his scripture book, accompanied by musical instruments. The yin-yang himself will use a bell, while the helping villagers will use drums, gongs and cymbals. The following is the full text of the scripture in both Chinese and English.

太上正乙天师说消灾镇宅龙虎妙经

尔时

圣祖元始天尊。与玉清圣境太上道君。太清仙境太上老君。玉皇上帝。天皇大帝。北极紫微大帝。紫微天皇大帝。先天圣母。后土地祗。五方五帝星君。东方木德星君。南方火德星君。西方金德星君。北方水德星君。中央土德星君。三十六洞神仙。八十一万真人。年值月值日值时值使者。太阳星君。太阴星君。罗睺星君。计都星君。森罗万象星君。二十八宿。天地水府三官大帝。北极四圣元帅真君。奉行六甲六丁。左手执印。右手掌剑。寒光逼人。天师有二十四万神将。人人咬牙。个个勇猛。声如虎喊。气如风云。摇旗云摩。鼓震雷霆。筛锣相催。力发神兵。

忽见人家宅上。或有邪魔魍魉之鬼。血精痨病之鬼。投河落井自缢之鬼。一切铁枷棒打。火轮烧身。缚手锁脚。捣沫为尘。一切妖精。赶离宅门。东堂西舍。卧房楼阁。宅院之内。细绪搜寻。

咸有人间。修盖宅舍。打墙动土。移门改户。眠梦颠倒。睡卧不安。树木掘坑。不依禁忌。不选良辰吉日。触犯土公土母。惊动六神。恼羞作祸。旦暮相侵。

志心焚香。生日看此经。寿命得长生，本命看此经，灾病得离身；病人看此经，早得离床枕。甲子看此经。行往遇福神。逐日看此经，百事称其心。夜梦看此经，睡卧得安宁。狱中看此经。枷锁早离身。难月看此经。男女早降生。每遇甲子，本命生辰之日看此经，种种香花，时新五果，志心供养，或注生死，上至帝王，下及庶人，信守奉行，魁𩲃𩵄䰢魓𩳐魒，斩尽邪魔杀尽妖。水火盗贼登时灭，官灾病患一齐消。

急急如律令。

The Excellent Dragon and Tiger Scripture for Eliminating Disasters and Guarding Houses Revealed by the Most High Zhengyi Heavenly Master

At the time, the Holy Grandfather the First Heavenly Venerated was with the Most High Daoist Chief of the Jade Pure Sacred Land and the Most High Lord of the Supremely Pure Wonderland. Also with them were Jade Emperor the Highest, the Heavenly Emperor the Greatest, The Ziwei Star Great Emperor of the Northernmost, the Ziwei Heavenly Emperor the Greatest, the Female Deity of the Sky and the Revered God of the Earth. Also with them were the five empire star gods of the five directions: The Wood Virtue Star God in the East, the Fire Virtue Star God in the South, the Gold Virtue Star God in the West, the Water Virtue Star God in the North and the Earth Virtue Star God in the Center. With them were also the Immortals of the Thirty-Six Daoist Cave-Temples, the Eight Hundred and Ten Thousand Divine (Supernatural) Beings, the Messengers on Yearly Duties, Monthly Duties, Daily Duties and Hourly Duties, the Sun God, the Moon God, the Luo-hou Star God, the Ji-du Star God, the Ten-Thousand Universal Phenomena Star God, the Twenty-Eight Constellations, the Three Empire Officials that govern the  Heaven, the Earth and the Water as well as the Four Saint Marshals of the Northernmost. 

Following the Six Jia Gods and the Six Yi Gods, ^[46] the Daoist Master[47] holds in his left hand a seal and in his right hand a sword, whose cold light compels people. Each of his two hundred and forty thousand divine generals is gnashing his teeth and every one of them is valiant. Their voices are like the roar of tigers and their movement is compared to a storm. Their flags are like clouds and their drums vibrate like thundering. Gongs are beaten restlessly and soldiers are sent off.

All of a sudden they saw that at people’s houses there were evil spirits – those who were victims of bloody spirits or tuberculosis, those who committed suicide by jumping into rivers, wells or hanging themselves, those who were killed at the cangue scaffold[48] or with clubs, or with fire rings, or who were pounded into foam and dust with their hands and feet being tied with chains and fetters. All evil spirits must be evicted from the houses. Rooms in the east and west, bedrooms and pavilions, every corner inside the courtyard will be carefully searched.

There are some families, when they build the houses, they move the earth and build the walls, they move the door or change the window, they reverse the night for the day and they do not sleep peacefully; when they dig the holes to plant trees, they do not take care to respect the taboos and choose the good days, and they offend the Earth Mother and the Earth Father and also disturb the six gods. Therefore the gods get angry and they send disasters to the families and trouble them day and night.  

[You must] burn the incense stick devoutly. If you read the scripture on your birthdays, your life will be lengthened; if you read the scripture in the year of your own zodiac animal, disasters and illnesses will leave your body; if you read the scripture when you are sick, you will get well shortly; if you read the scripture on the day of Jia-zi (甲子), you will meet a mascot when you travel; if you read the scripture every day, all things will be satisfactory; if you have disturbed sleep, reading the scripture will make you sleep soundly; if you are in prison, reading the scripture will set you free; if you suffer from blocked labor at childbirth, reading the scripture will bring the body out soon. On every Jia-zi day, or during your own zodiac year, or on your birthday, read the scripture, sacrifice with all kinds of fragrant flowers and five kinds of fresh fruits, devoutly offerings these may have [favorable] impacts on lives and deaths. All people, as high as emperors and kings and down to commoners, should abide by this. [The Seven Star Generals] Kui, Zhuo, Huan, Xing, Bi, Fu and Piao, behead the evil demons and kill all the devils. Calamities of water and fire, robbers and thieves, should all be eliminated; lawsuits, disasters, diseases and sufferings must all wither away.

Do immediately in accordance as this law commands!

Immediately after chanting the scripture, with proper libations,[49]  the yin-yang burns his copy of the scripture. Then he gets up, grabs a few sheets of the paper money, ignites them and holds them with the burning tip upward so the burning will last a little longer. Then he walks to one of the corners of the courtyard where a pot has been put on a small stove, decocting the twelve herbs that the yin-yang prescribed on the first day of the funeral procedures. The main mourner follows the yin-yang with three incense sticks that he has just lighted and a stack of about twenty sheets of paper money in the other hand. When both men come close to the medicine pot, the yin-yang kneels down and the main mourner hands the incense sticks to the yin-yang, who then holds the incense sticks and makes several circular sweeps over the medicine – three clockwise and three counterclockwise – while singing the following:

谨请奉请香奉请 Sincerely, respectfully and with incense I am inviting

The yin-yang stretches the sentence long enough for the main mourner to pour the liquid medicine into a clean basin that has been prepared by other family members. Then the yin-yang holds the incense sticks in his left hand and continues to sing the remainder of the lines (see below) while the main mourner kneels down again next to the yin-yang to fold the paper money, one sheet each time, to get ready for the yin-yang to grab. The yin-yang ignites the paper money from the flame in the stove, and repeats what he did a moment earlier with the incense sticks. The singing continues:  

奉请三皇圣帝君 I invite your majesties the holy Three Emperors

轩辕伏羲老神龙 Xuanyuan, Fuxi and the senior Shennong

十大冥王诸仙众 The Ten Kings of Hell and all the immortals

丘刘谭马郝王孙 Qiu, Liu, Tan, Ma, Hao, Wang and Sun

灵丹妙药崔元帅 Marshal Cui[50] who gives miraculous cure

神手仙方吕洞宾 Lü Dongbin the divine physician that has fairy prescriptions

和瘟教主匡阜使 Kuang Fu the leader of plagues pacification

徐州降魔大神功 Demostrated great strength by vanquishing demons in Xuzhou

At the end of each line sung, the yin-yang bows toward the medicine water and after singing the last line he stands up, ignites several sheets of paper money, holds them up, and slowly walks to the shrine, while the main mourner follows him, holding the basin with the medicine water. When they get to where the shrine is, the main mourner places the medicine basin in front of the shrine before he kneels down with the yin-yang. But the singing is never interrupted:

焚香祈祷赴坛庭 Burning the incense, saying prayers I am going to the shrine

十二精药紧随跟 You twelve pure medicines shall follow closely

一十二位都请至 All the twelve of you should be invited

奉请入于净水中 To come into the pure water

往上洒，开天门 Sprinkle upward, the gate to heaven opens

往下洒，闲地户 Sprinkle downward, the windows of earth close

开天门，闭地户 Open the gate to the heaven and close the windows to the earth

留人门，塞鬼路 Leave the door to humans, block the path for the devils

穿鬼心，破鬼胆 Pierce the hearts of the devils, break their gallbladders[51]

人行有路，鬼走无路 The humans have roads to walk; the devils have none

吾奉太上老君With the decree from the Supremely High Daoist

急急如律令Do immediately in accordance with the commands of the law!

The yin-yang stretches the last sentence by slowing down and raising his voice. Then he stands up while the main mourner remains kneeling. A helper hands a clean willow twig to the yin-yang who dips the medicine water and sprinkles around him. The singing continues:

一洒天堂四时净  The first sprinkle makes all the hallways clean in heaven

二洒地府鬼神惊  The second sprinkle frightens the ghosts and gods on earth

三洒邪魔皈正道  The third sprinkle makes evil demons turn to the right path

四洒亡魂化厌尘  The fourth sprinkle turns the ghosts of the dead into dust

五洒人民值开泰  The fifth sprinkle ensures people prosperity, safety, and wellbeing

六洒六畜保安平  The sixth sprinkle keeps the six domestic animals from mishap

七洒七星增福寿  The seventh sprinkle invites the Seven Stars to add blessing and longevity

八洒八方遍安宁  The eighth sprinkle protects the eight directions free from worries

九洒九泉来开泰  The ninth sprinkle gives peace to all the graves in the Nine Springs

十洒疾病早离身  The tenth sprinkle expels diseases away from [human] bodies

洒着人来人长寿  If the sprinkle falls on a human being they will enjoy a long life

洒着鬼来鬼消音  If the sprinkle falls on the spirit beings they shall disappear

吾奉太上老君     With the decree from the Supremely High Daoist

急急如律令          Do immediately in accordance with the commands of the law!

With the last two lines of singing, the yin-yang bows to the shrine, the main mourner bows while still kneeling, some helpers who have quietly joined the mourners by kneeling next to him also bow along with the main mourner.

Now the yin-yang motions the kneeling people to stand up and he takes from his pocket his peach-wood power seal to hold in his left hand, and he pulls out the sword that is carried on his back. When the yin-yang is sure that all his helpers have got their own “weapons,” the yin-yang announces the house cleansing rite with a loud shout “Hai,” to which all of his helpers respond by holding their “weapons” high. The yin-yang bows one more time to the shrine – which is being followed by his helpers – befoer he calls loudly on his primary divine helper: “Xiangmo hudao Tianzun (降魔护道天尊 The Heavenly Venerated who vanquishes demons and guards the Dao)!” Then he starts singing the following rhymed lines while searching all the rooms and corners of the mourner family, continuing to hold on to the seal [thus portraying the official style of this procedure] he is sweeping his sword through the air –up and down, to the left and to the right, as if he is fighting a fierce battle.

讚天师。护道尊。Praise to the Heavenly Master, the guardian of the Dao

降生在龙虎山中。Who was born in the Mountain of Dragons and Tigers

执掌万法天地惊。Controls ten thousand talismen that surprise the heaven and earth

统神霄。辖天兵。Governs the highest heaven and the soldiers of Heaven

手执宝剑斩妖精。Holds a sword to behead the evil spirits

请得天将下凡尘。I am inviting the heavenly soldiers to descend onto earth

邪魔恶鬼心胆惊。Demons and evil spirits will tremble with fear 

移星换斗能显应。Stars of all sizes will be mobilized to appear

保护社稷享太平。Protect the country to enjoy peace

降魔护道大天尊。The Heavenly Venerated who vanquishes demons and guards the Dao

天师法力严如雷。The power of the Heavenly Master is as rigorous as the thunder

摧破魔山化为灰。It will destroy the mountain of the demons to make it into ashes

百怪皆徒罡下惊。All the goblins will flee with fear under the Gang Star

群妖悉赴剑中哀。Every demon will suffer grief by the power of the sword

先凭正乙急驱邪。I first use the Zhengyi [sword] to quickly expel the demons

后按玄雀步斗魁。I then use the Xuanque [ruler] to lead the Dou and Kui stars

此日若行三洞法。Should I use the methods of the three Daoist weapons

神水河沙洒方位。The divine water and the sand grains will be thrown into all directions 

Wherever the yin-yang goes, his five helpers follow him performing aspects of the ritual in this order: The first helper forcefully throws out pea-size sand grains; the second brandishes a long bamboo broom in the air, as if he is sweeping out the disastrous spirits; the third spits alcohol or kerosene, lighting it into a flaming torch as he spits; the fourth sprinkles the medicine water; the fifth sprinkles warmed vinegar. When all the places inside the courtyard are searched and “cleansed” the team walks out of the courtyard and continues their cleansing practice for approximately 20 steps in each direction – unless a direction is blocked by a cliff or a building.  Whenever the yin-yang finishes the last line and, after the cleansing team has done its procedures, the yin-yang repeats the rhymed lines and they start over to “cleanse” the house two more times.  

When all these procedures are concluded, the yin-yang, his helpers, and many members of the mourner family kneel down in front of the shrine where the yin-yangs recites the following text to then send off the gods that had been invited to be present and to assist with the cleansing:

弟子XX真诚谢过圣祖元始天尊，玉清圣境太上道君，太清仙境太上老君；谢过各位天地神明与众位星君不辞劳苦，降临法场，以无边威力协助扫除殃煞，清扫宅院，安定一家大小之人心。弟子感激万分，无以为谢，谨借东家之水酒香烛，恭送列位神明圣驾返回天界。日后弟子若有事相求，将再燃香秉烛叩请仙驾降临坐镇。弟子XX等叩首恭送！

I, your disciple XYZ, sincerely thank the Holy Grandfather the First Heavenly Venerated, the Most High Daoist Chief of the Jade Pure Sacred Land and the Most High Lord of the Supremely Clear Wonderland. I thank all the heavenly and earthly gods and star lords for sparing no pains to descend to this execution ground and to assist me with your bondless power to vanquish the disastrous and malignant spirits and to cleanse the homestead so that the minds of the resident family will be put at peace. With much gratitude I have nothing adequate to thank you, but I borrow the sorghum wine, incense and candles to humbly escort your return to your heavenly dwelling places. Should I have anything that I need your help with, I will command and I will ignite the incense and the candles again to humbly invite you to descend and to take charge.

Your disciple XYZ and others are now seeing you off with kowtows!

With these concluding words all the team members kowtow three times, get up, put their two palms and fingers together, up at their chests, and then raise them so that the thumbs almost touch their noses before letting the hands drop apart.

Now the members of the family will begin to clean the mess in all the rooms while the yin-yang and the helping villagers take down the shrine. The family will always clean the main guest room first so as to let the yin-yang and the helping villagers sit to smoke a cigarette before they are served a nice meal, which has been prepared before the ritual.

After the meal, some villagers will take the opportunity to consult with the yin-yang their fortune for the year, or the compatibility of their children with potential husbands or wives, or just do a casual chat.

If the yin-yang’s home is not far away from the mourner and hiring family, he will not spend the night as a guest; for a longer journey he will leave for home the next day. Whatever the case, a few minutes after the farewell dinner the hiring family will pay the yin-yang. To do this, the head of the family places cash and two packs of cigarettes – or a pack of tea – on a rectangular wooden platter and then kneels down on the ground, facing the yin-yang who is sitting on the kang (a heatable clay bed) behind the small portable kang-top dinner table and says something like: “We thank you for taking your busy time helping us; we do not have anything decent to offer to you but please accept this small gift from us.” The yin-yang will always take the cigarettes or tea before taking the money; but it is a custom for the yin-yang to say that he has been overpaid; he will pick up money but take some from his payment to place it back on the platter. If the helping villagers are still staying with the mourner family – for example when the yin-yang decides to go home after the concluding house cleansing dinner – they will say thanks on behalf of the mourner family and praise the yin-yang for being very professional. When the yin-yang gives some money back to the mourner family, the helping villagers will say, along with the head of the mourner family, “Take it. Take it. It has been hard work” (F. G. Shen & Z. Y. Zhao, personal communication, February 2007). 

A funerary ritual provides a large stage on which the yin-yang practitioners put out their most crucial performances. The performances aim at pleasing the divine beings, controlling the evil spirits and comforting the mourner family and therefore best represent the interactions between the yin and the yang worlds. In the funerary performance, the yin-yangs are both the directors and the star actors, while the helping villagers, including members of the mourner family, are the supporting roles. The villagers need professional leaders in this ritual and the yin-yangs need the fellow villagers as trusting helpers. The yin-yangs have divine helpers as well, but the divine helpers cannot be seen; they can only be felt presenting. 

2.  Analysis of the Rituals and the Rationale of Using a Yin-Yang

From the first moments after a relative passes away through the concluding house cleansing rites, a funerary ritual entails various kinds of smaller ritual procedures at each stage of the preparation and burial. It is probably more accurate to say that a funerary ritual is actually a collection of related rituals. Some of the preparatory or peripheral rituals are able to be done by the family members or fellow villagers; but all the key rituals are prepared and led exclusively by a yin-yang or a number of yin-yangs. As it was summarized by Master Z. H. Ma (personal communication, July 2002; August 2002) a yin-yang’s primary tasks in a funeral ritual include the following steps:

•         Inquiring information about the dates of the dead and the location and direction of the mourners’ family grave so as to consult the books to see what dates are available and what directional orientations are auspicious for the burial

•         Finding the spot for the grave – even if the mourner family has already found a spot it must be confirmed and fine-tuned by the yin-yang with his knowledge and his needle compass

•         Writing all the documents – the front door obituary, the funerary couplets, the “Disaster-Narrating Note”, the “Apology Letter to the Earth God”, the “Letter to the Earth God with Libation”, the “Ghost-Leading Road Certificate” (引路亡票) and the “Ghost-Leading Banner” (引魂幡) – most of these will be copied from his templates by filling information specific to the dead person 

•         Reading the letters and chanting the scriptures, or singing the hymns while playing at least one of the Daoist percussion instruments

•         Leading the house cleansing ritual that will require some or all of the four basic crucial acts:  fu (符 amulet),  zhou (咒 incantation),  jue (訣 mudra) and bu (步 magical steps)

A funerary ritual involves (a) physical labor such as the baosang, or door-to-door death announcement that requires prostrating and kowtowing, all the way through, or grave-digging or coffin carrying and burying and (b) intellectual labor, such as what a yin-yang does to make informed decisions about all the details of the funeral and burial. While the villagers maintain that all a yin-yang does is light intellectual work; the yin-yangs argue that scripture chanting is long and tedious and it is often repeated several times upon the request of the mourner family and the yin-yang(s) will have to either stand or kneel through the entire procedure that can be several hours long (Z. J. Meng, personal communication, August 2010; September 2012). Without question, leading the complex and vitally important rituals involves significant physical and mental work.

In villages like Fanmagou and Qijiazhuang, physical labor is considered dirty, dull and tedious and therefore indicative of low level social status, while intellectual or mental work is considered clean, interesting and therefore of high level social status. Whoever belongs to a social status that is higher than that of the ordinary villagers, and works for the villagers, is respected. The level of education, the unique talents – singing and playing musical instruments – and the special training of a yin-yang convince people that a yin-yang master knows the proper ways in dealing with the yin world (i.e., he has the high status of this intellectual labor). All my villager informants agree that the official way to deal with the yin world is through written language. The reasons they give are (1) “Everyone that is not deaf or dumb can speak, but it is much easier for men to make mistakes in speaking than in writing. And the yin-yangs usually copy texts from the books that have been passed down through many generations and thereby there should be no errors or mistakes [in their writing]” and (2) “the letters and other documents that a yin-yang writes will be burned so that those who govern the yin world can read them – the same way as paper money and [paper] offerings have to be burned before our ancestors can use them” (W. K. Wang, Z.C. Wang & J. L. Zhang, personal communication, August 2010). The villagers hold that the yin world itself is a scary place to the people of the yang world, dealing with it requires great delicacy and carefulness. Only educated and trained people like the yin-yangs are qualified for the job; “rough fellows like us illiterate farmers may say prayers in some circumstances and do minor rituals, but for burial rituals we dare not do so, as we will make mistakes that’ll cause severe consequences” (Ibid). It is the fear of offending the beings in the yin world that urges the villagers to seek help from a yin-yang. It is their illiteracy that makes the villagers give special respect to the written language – in fact the mystical awe of the written texts used to be even more pervasive in villages like Fanmagou and Qijiazhuang in the past. Even in the late 1950s old villagers strictly forbade young children to sit on or to step on pages from books or on fragments from newspapers (W. K. Wang, Z. C. Wang & J. L. Zhang, personal communication, August 2010). Even greater awe is associated with the written texts that the yin-yang have in their scriptures, and the texts of the practical writings that the yin-yangs adapt from their templates, or the ones the yin-yangs compose. This respect for literacy and texts, and particularly sacred texts is even more widespread in places like Fanmagou and Qijiazhuang than in other places where general literacy has advanced more quickly. The texts the yin-yangs write and read on behalf of their clients are addressed to relevant gods – ancestral gods included – and are thereby sacred or holy. Although nowadays most of the villagers are literate to some degree, the convention to have the yin-yang write the letter and read it is solidly established and faithfully kept. This is partly because the clients feel it is more official to have the yin-yang take care of the funerary ritual; partly because people feel uneasy to change the centuries-old traditions, but mostly because the special awe of the yin-yang texts the villagers have inherited from earlier generations.

A funerary ritual contains three major parts: (1) Taking care of the souls of the dead; (2) burying the body and (3) eliminating the disasters and guarding the house. All the three have joint functions of comforting the heart of the living by way of eliminating their worries. Among the three concerns, while burying the dead includes only a very small portion that is primarily taken care of by the villagers, taking care of the souls of the dead and eliminating disasters and guarding the house, which constitute the much larger portion,  is almost exclusively taken care of by the yin-yangs. 

(1) Taking care of the souls of the dead. Over the duration of a funerary ritual one will notice that the living give much more care to the souls of the dead than to their physical bodies. It is believed by both the yin-yangs and common villagers that once a person dies her or his souls will become so loosely attached to the body that they might be lost at any moment; these same souls are also vulnerable to the extent that they can be attacked by any mean or evil spirits that are wandering about. The mourner family and the yin-yang are expected to keep the souls of the dead from getting lost or attacked. The family can use a ghost-leading lamp (引魂燈) close to the corpse to keep the souls from leaving and scattering; when the corpse is being moved out of the house, the primary mourner uses a rooster to wake up the souls of the dead and then call the souls to come along to the coffin; when the corpse is moved from one place to another, whenever there is a bridge or and intersection along the road, the mourners will call the dead by his or her name (if the mourner is older than the deceased) or by the title, such as “Mom” or “Old Brother”  (if the mourner is a child or a younger sibling), so that the souls may not get lost. To secure the soul-protection measure at a higher level, the yin-yang issues the “Ghost-Leading Road Certificate” (引路亡票) and the “Ghost-Leading Banner” (引魂幡) to escort the souls to the graveyard where they can be settled. This settlement is made easier if the deceased is buried in an existing family graveyard. Behind the soul protection measures is the notion of an afterlife, which holds that the system or the structure of the afterlife world is not much different from the world of the living. But before a dead person is properly buried together with his or her souls, there are always dangers. After the dead person is officially admitted to the yin world, there should be no worries – at least less worries. This notion is constructed out of the binary yin-and-yang world cosmology. Somewhat overlapping with, but widely different from this cosmology is that of the three-tier world, which holds that the afterlife has two drastically different styles. One is the Hell where souls and ghosts suffer from unimaginable tortures and the other is the Heaven that can be loosely compared to the Christian concept. Wherever the soul or ghost of the newly dead should go, it is determined by a combined judgment administered at the difu (地府 the nether world): His or her words and deeds in the yang world, as well as the salvific actions taken by the dead person’s family members.

With regards to multiple souls and spirits, while a Chinese villager is still alive and healthy, he or she is quite capable of holding his or her little flock of three souls and seven spirits contained within. However, a corpse in the transitional funerary proceedings is no longer able to do so. Those who carry and convey must do the herding chores for the deceased. Thus, before bridges and intersections that loosened little herd must be brought together more tightly, and at the graveyard they must be bedded down together with the corpse.

Of course there is no way to undo or redo what one has done in the yang world after the last breath is spent; but the salvific theory provides such a wonderful possibility that no children of the deceased with good conscience and filial piety dare to ignore it. It is this very possibility that generates professional need for the yin-yang practitioners who are trained to take care of the souls of the dead with their salvific scriptures. As long as the notion of salvation in an afterlife exists, the yin-yang profession will also continue to be needed. The name of the profession, yin-yang, by which people call the practitioners, encapsulates the meaning and function of the professional role in itself.

(2) Eliminating disasters and guarding the house. It is common belief that any death, even a natural death of a well-aged person (i.e. 70 years or older), is the result of encountering a yang (殃 disaster) or yang-sha (殃煞 disastrous and malignant spirit); this is why during the funeral period the word “disaster” is most frequently mentioned by the yin-yangs. In one of my interviews with the yin-yangs, Master Meng (personal communication, August 2010) stated that a disaster that has brought death to a family would not willingly walk out the house of a mourner family; it must be removed or driven out by force. A house cleansing is always needed unless the dead person was never brought into the house; and even in that case a house cleansing may be necessary as a safety measure for the rest of the family who came into close contact with the deceased. The yin-yang master showed me “Item List 2” from a “Disaster-Narrating Note” (殃狀單子, see above for contents) template and explained: The note says that in case the disastrous and malignant spirit does not get out [of a house], gold and silver or precious stones should be used. This is because these things are not only sharp and stern, but also shining in the dark. “There must be a reason why people like to wear gold and silver or diamond jewelries,” the Fanmagou villagers told me, “because those things help ward off evil spirits and protect humans” (Z. C. Wang, W. K. Wang & H. C. Zhang, personal communication, August 2010). In case one does not have precious things like those, he can hire a yin-yang, who can use his power, or use his knowledge to summon powerful gods, to expel a disastrous spirit that has gotten into the house, or to use his drawn-on-the-paper talismen to guard the house so the disastrous spirits have no chance to get in. A yin-yang can also prescribe the twelve pure medicinal herbs and empower them to be used in expelling the disastrous spirits.

It is the yang-sha disaster that brings death to a family and overwhelms the surviving members of the family with emotion. Some villagers comment that during a funeral the disaster has been so strong and its emotional effect is so great that it can bring a mourning family to their knees. Taking care of the souls of a dead person provides a last chance for family mourners to exercise their filial piety, an ancient cultural core value.  It also ensures the family mourners that the future generation will continue to be protected by the ancestors who are just being joined by the newly deceased. The underlying belief is that souls that have been pacified will not return to the house and cause trouble for the family. It is even common that some dead may need to be reburied in different locations in order to settle their souls so that their family members will no longer be constantly bothered by those dissatisfied souls. But pacifying the souls of a dead relative is not quite enough to guarantee the safety of a family. The causes of yang-sha disasters need to be chased out of the house and additional guarding measures need to be established. All these activities must be performed by initiated yin-yang practitioners. All of this is done, after all, for the wellbeing of the living. 

The rituals associated with yin yang practice in Fanmagou are a syncretistic blend of influences over millenia of cultural and social evolution in China and include outside contact.  They blend language and traditions of the big three religions, no doubt, but also continue much older shamanistic traditions and roles whose origin may run many thousands of years deeper.  The people clearly value the need for literacy and professional training, even though the yin-yangs themselves are not a separate priestly class, but instead remain simple farmers during their off hours.  The worldview these practices derive from blends belief in an afterlife with concerns for this life and the living. It has changed over time, no doubt, and adjusted to encounters with modernity and other technological changes in recent decades, but these changes are probably small when compared with the change to be faced in the near future as the surrounding society moves quickly towards urbanization and modernization. It hangs in the balance and it is hard to see where it will be even a decade from now. One proactive response may be to preserve this culture and tradition at least through documentation, as in this ethnography and its accompanying digital video pieces. Another response, presently on the rise in China, may include a kind of cultural tourism that values a window into the past to the more remote heritage traditions. But in either case, the yin-yang tradition is transforming rapidly and even ethnography, such as this, may be nearly impossible to conduct in the near future.

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[1] In the Xi-Hai-Gu region, memorial rituals are generally divided into two kinds: the informal and the formal. The informal rituals are those that are held every seven days after a relative dies for up to seven weeks, which is called the Jinqi (盡七, or the last seven); then the next memorial ritual is held on the 100th day, which is call Bairi zhi (百日紙 the hundred day’s paper money burning). After that, there are anniversary memorials for three years, respectively called Yi-nian zhi, Er-nian zhi and San-nian zhi (一年紙, 二年紙 and三年紙 first, second or third year paper money burning). The third year is always the biggest celebration and many families will hire a yin-yang or several yin-yangs to hold a memorial ritual specifically aimed at saving the soul of the deceased and escorting the soul into the Western Pure Land, which is a Buddhist concept.

[2] During the Tuwang days the earth is believed to be the strongest in its force and thereby human beings must avoid offending the earth. According to Master Meng, three days before and four days after the Tuwang day there should not be any burial or reburial ritual (Z. J. Meng, personal communication, February 2007). This is why my mother-in-law was buried eight days after her passing away.

[3] A village doctor, nicknamed bare-foot doctor during the Cultural Revolution time was one who had received some training during 1960s (some were certified in 1970s, like my aunt); the main task of a village doctor was to provide basic diagnostics to the patients and sell medicine (such as pain killers or those for cold and for small children); all of them were trained to give shots or even intravenous injection to the patients.

[4] The graveclothes for a female are usually two pieces in the Xi-Hai-Gu region: An outer garment and a skirt. Old-generation women like my grandmother never wore a skirt in their life time; so the only time they wear skirts is when they are buried.

[5] Prior to such modern means of communication like telephones, news about a dead family was spread either through baosang (see below) or other people or letter writing.

[6] I am using past tense here because Mr. Chang Wanliang passed away in 2011.

[7] My aunt did not go through the baosang ritual. Because all her relatives in Guyuan are one generation younger, she did not have to go to each house of her relatives to inform them of the news; instead, she just made calls, which is now a commonly accepted, urbanized version of baosang.

[8] Video clip from Luckert DVD, 2004.

[9] Sacrificial steamed bread is different in shape from regular ones. There are two kinds of sacrificial steamed bread: one is cylindrical, plum tomato-shaped, which is usually small in size (about 1/5 of a pound in weight); the other is dome-shaped, which is usually large in size (around one pound in weight).

[10] Undutiful: This is a typical way to show modesty. Mourners do not claim that they are dutiful children; it is custom for others to praise them as dutiful children.

[11] The word “I” here refers to the primary mourner, Mr. Chang Wanliang. Letters as such are written in a tone of the first person. In this sense, a yin-yang master is only doing it on behalf of the mourner, or a family.

[12] MS: The Western concept of “Mrs.” does not exist in this culture.

[13] Master Ma said before the Western calendar was introduced to China, all yin-yangs were using the Chinese lunar calendar; but gradually some yin-yangs felt it more convenient to use the solar calendar. (2002)

[14] Lucky day and auspicious hour: The burial time will be determined by a yin-yang.

[15] The local custom is, full-size uncut plain white paper is the must-bring-gift for visitors to the mourning family. A lot of white paper is needed for (1) printing paper money, (2) making paper sacrificial items, and decorating mourning sites. “Dare not accept”: This is another way to show modesty; but mourners and fellow villagers will not come without sacrificial gifts.

[16] Chang Wanrui was the oldest nephew of my grandmother. As there were altogether over 20 nephews, only the name of the oldest was put up on the front door obituary.

[17] According to Master Ma (personal communication, July 2002), over 90% of these couplets were copied from the old-generation yin-yang books; occasionally a more educated yin-yang will create new couplets specifically designated to the deceased that is mourned.

[18] (H. J. Ding, personal communication, August 2003).

[19] The compensation of the crops destroyed by the burial was negotiated between the mourning family and the owner of the field before the decision was made; if an agreement was not reached, the mourning family would have to look for a different villager.

[20] Both the yin-yangs and the villagers believe that the smoke of burning incense will reduce the bad smell from human mouths and thereby human prayers can be clean enough to reach the ears of the gods.

[21] See the analysis section in this chapter for explanation of this second title of the letter.

[22] According to Masters Ma and Meng, there is a more elaborate way of doing the grass/straw cutting. The mourning family is required to go up to three different hills/mountains to pick three grasses (can be the same grass) from each hill/mountain, and then use five pieces of threads of five colors (五色線green, red, white, black and yellow – representing the five directions: east, south, west, north and central) to bundle them up, so there will be three bundles of grasses from three mountains (三山草). This way, the yin-yang will cut one bundle each time.

[23] For the past decade, standard of life in the villages of Qijiazhuang and Fanmagou has been noticeably improved; nowadays villagers can have meat almost every week, much more frequently than 2-3 decades ago when eating meat was only occasional. (Zhang, interview with Zhang Haicheng and Zhao Zhenyuan, 2012-2013)

[24] Had there been a scripture chanting, the serve of sorghum wine would have been postponed till the end of all rituals.

[25] The residence and office of the Lord of Zhonghe, where the No. 1 Central Star directs all kings in the spiritual world. The Central Star is the most majestic among the five human-life-controlling stars. (Zhang, 2013, Interview with Master Meng) 

[26] The format of the letters as such makes sure that names of important gods mentioned in the letter appear at top of a new vertical column. As the columns are written vertically, it is also possible to position the gods’ names one or two characters higher than the rest of the text, to indicate their lofty position. Specific dates are also written a little higher than the rest of the text to show it emphatically.  

[27] As the local custom has it, a female villager has two hometowns; one is her maiden hometown (娘家) and the other her husband’s hometown (婆家). In this case it is the latter.

[28] The full name is “the Code of Nüqing for [Controlling] the Demons” (Mollier, 2008, p. 104).

[29] After a corpse is placed in a coffin, its rear end should head to the direction that it is moved. This means the deceased is “walking” home, instead of leaving home. That is why the Road Ticket must be pasted on the rear end.

[30] If inclement weather is experienced, the letter should be burned and the ashes should be folded into a piece of soft yellow paper (黃表紙) and stuffed into the sleeve of the deceased. Left sleeve for male and right sleeve for female. (Zhang, 2003, field note in Qijiazhuang)

[31] “Jump promote” means to transcend from the mundane world after death and move to the world of bliss; it is a concept borrowed from Buddhism.

[32] Not like in the letter writing, here on the banner the “Heavenly Venerable” was not written in a separate line because altogether there were only two lines written on it.

[33] According to the feng-shui school, all Chinese surnames are put into five groups by their initial consonants of Chinese syllables: Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zhi and Yu (宮商角徵羽). My grandmother’s surname is Wang, it thereby belongs to the Shang consonant group.

[34] Which means 1912 in this case.

[35] 十二精药 巴戟、人参、芍药、乌头、官桂、鬼箭子、茯神、桔梗、远志、杜仲、狼毒、茯苓

[36] There are two different versions of the “holy water” in the Xi-Hai-Gu region. One version says it is the water from the Chinese medicine (any combination of six herb medicine will do); the other version says it is the water that has a yin-yang’s prayer in it. Master Meng practices with the former.

[37] According to Master Ma, “六精” (or Six [kinds of] Spirits) generally refers to all kinds of evil spirits or wondering ghosts.

[38] According to Master Ma, the yin world is much the same as the yang world where there is always someone who is not lawful and they take chances to rob others. Therefore in addition to the Road Ticket that was prepared to protect the corpse transportation, scattering a little money may double ensure a peaceful journey.  

[39] Usually “paper money for lingering ghosts” is burned for a straight three days after a corpse is moved out of a house; but since my aunt and uncle were going to stay in Qijiazhuang for a week, they reduced this ritual to one day. According to the local informants (yin-yang included), “lingering ghosts” include the ghost of the deceased relative. (Zhang, 2010 and 2013, interview with Master Meng and Mr. Zhang Haicheng, Li Dushan and Shen Fagui)

[40] From 1980s gas-powered vehicles have fully replaced the cattle-pulled or horse pulled carts, which reflects how modernity has been reshaping folk life.

[41] In the Xi-Hai-Gu region there are three types of graves: (1) pit-only grave, (2) pit with half-inner chamber grave and (3) pit with full-length inner chamber grave. Anyone that lived a full life and died a natural death (such as from a disease) will be qualified for the third type of grave.  (See Illustration xyz (a) below.)

[42] Based on www.googlemaps.com.

[43] This is an intentional break of a line in the yin-yang writing to highlight the veneration of a god. As the letter was written vertically, a breaking of line will enable the yin-yang to write the name or title of a god in a protruding position to indicate its highness and veneration.

[44] One of the ways for the local people to express their filial piety to their elderly is to take all the blame to themselves; so by saying this they mean that their lack of filial piety, which is equivalent of wrongdoing, brings retribution to their parent, who was not granted by the life-controlling gods to die at a good time to be buried immediately, or to be buried in the family graveyard that has an ideal directional orientation . (Zhang, interview with Master Meng, 2013)

[45] In all yin-yang rituals, when a shrine has to be set up, the northern direction is always the first choice by the yin-yang; this is because “the gates of heaven at the north is kept open all the time while those at other directions open in rotation” (Z. H. Ma, personal communication, July 2003).

[46] The Six Jia Gods are male gods and the Six Yi Gods are female gods, all at the commander of the Heavenly Emperor (Z. J. Meng, personal communication, August 2010).

[47] The “Daoist Master” to whom this yin-yang text refers is Zhang Daoling (34-156 CE), commonly addressed as “the Heavenly Master Zhang” (張天師), the founder of the Zhengyi Denomination of Daoism. 

[48] One of the instruments of torture in old China prior to 1911; see Illustration 9 in Appendix.

[49] Libation of whisky-like sorghum wine is poured by the helping villagers every time the yin-yang bows to the gods during the scripture reading; but at the end of the ritual, the yin-yang himself takes over the wine pot to pour the last libation. If there are several yin-yangs, the master or head yin-yang will do this.

[50] One of the Thunder Gods in Daoism.

[51] This comes from a Chinese idiom which means to scare somebody almost to death.