Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China edited by James L Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski was described to me by my professor as "very good". I think she was right. The book was more an anthropological look at Chinese death rituals than a historical look, while one of the editors was a historian most of the authors were anthropologists and their studies were mostly of Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 70's. It was odd to be reading something that was a little dated, but at the same time so much more modern than I'm used to!
The book contained a lot of detail about different funerary rites, and the process of ritual mourning in China. The different authors tried to find similar practices and themes throughout China to give a bigger and more comprehensive overview of what could be termed "Chinese ritual". There seemed to be an ongoing debate throughout the different essays about what was considered important, the acts or the meanings and it was refreshing to read a book with such lively debates and different interpretations within it's pages. While not so much a fascinating read for each article, there was a great deal of information contained within the book and will definitely serve as good reference material.
Susan Naquin's article, "Funerals in North China; Uniformity and Variation" looked at the historical record of funerals there and compared this with modern anthropological works done in the South. She compared which customs were similar and which were different. And looked at the overall meanings behind both.
Stuart Thompson's article "Death Food and Fertility" was interesting but at times seemed to be reaching. He was looking at the inherent symbolism given in offerings at funerals. In particular how these offerings balanced out the yin and yang forces at work in the procedure. The corpse being dangerous to men because of it's yin essence so men were in danger by attending funerals whereas women were safe. He also made the very good point of how when funerals are held they are rarely this perfect form that anthropologists make them out to be with everyone doing everything correctly. He went on to analyize the significance of each offering and it's yin or yang forces. To me it seemed like he was at times reading too much into everything. But I don't feel like I can make a great judgment on that as it's not an area I know very much about.
"Funeral Specialists in Cantonese Society; Pollution Performance and Social Hierarchy" by James Watson was very good. He looked at the different people who made a living from funerals, the different "grades" of related employment and how the more direct contact with the corpse a person had the more he was ostracized from the rest of society.
"Grieving for the Dead; Funeral laments of Hakka Women" by Elizabeth Johnson analyzed these songs. She looked at how funerals were a time where women could express their grief and dissatisfaction with their lives in a socially acepted way. Often complaints addressed to the corpse were those complaints about her husbands family that she could never make in everyday life.
"Gender and Ideological Differences in Representations of Life and Death" bu Emily Martin was a very poignant look at how male interpretations of funerals and the ideas held by men can be re-interpreted when the focus shifts to the woman's perspective. She linked the idea of marriage as death, and death and rebirth in a very interesting way.
"Souls and Salvation: Conflicting themes in Chinese Popular Religion" by Myron Cohen looked at the different and "conflicting" beliefs about what happens to a person after they die. In particular he looked at how the idea of reincarnation is down played and why, and the different ideas of what happens, to various souls after death.
"Remembering the Dead: Graves and Politics in Southeastern China" by Rubie S Watson I didn't find as interesting. Watson looked at the politics of Feng Shui and how it can affect the living descendants lives, and how certain lineages used the grave sites of their ancestors as political leverage against the Hong Kong governments.
"The Imperial Way of Death: Ming and Ch'ing Emperors and Death Ritual" by Evelyn Rawski was a nice straight forward historical look at the different ritual practices of the different emperors towards mourning and how they handled different situations, such as not being able to offer sacrifices while mourning.
The article, "Mao's Remains" by Frederic Wakeman contrasted the different burials and homages of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao. It seemed a little more relevant reading this week as the mourning done for those two leaders reminded me a lot of the mourning done for the pope.
The last article looked at how mourning rituals had changed in the PRC. "Death in the People's Republic of China" addressed how the government had attempted to change the rituals, how they had succeeded and how they had failed. He also looked at the greater divide this caused between town and country. While I normally don't read much about modern China I found this chapter very interesting. He also made very good points about declaring what was to be considered a "Chinese" ritual while only looking at Hong Kong and Taiwan, and discounting what the Billion people on the mainland did.
Reading this book was interesting, though it really made me happy that I decided to study history instead of anthropology. I just find history to be more interesting and less judgmental. But a great book for reference, and writing the descriptions of the articles I realized that I enjoyed many of them more than I had thought.
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