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HABITS AND CUSTOMS. 157
as clothes, horses, servants, boats, also of paper, representing everything that the
departed may require in the other world. Mourning lasts for three years, and for
the whole of this time the mourners must abstain from meat and wine, and keep
from public gatherings. Custom also requires that the remains of the dead be
brought to their native places, and as the carriage of a single body would often be
expensive, they generally wait until a sufficient number can be got together to form
a large convoy. Hence the numerous temporary cemeteries and mortuary villages,
with their funeral urns and coffins, all tastefully decorated with emblematic
paintings, representing flowers, birds, or musical instruments. Vessels are also
freighted by the friendly societies to bring back the remains of those dying in
foreign lands. Every year the people clothed in white, the colour of deep mourn-
ing, resort in the month of May to the graves and mortuary temples with fruits,
flowers, and other offerings, which are
soon picked up by the birds nesting in
the surrounding
thickets. In these
hallowed places there is no distinction
of rank, age alone taking precedence.
The simple peasants and day labourers
generally know the history
of their
families for many generations back,
and are able to repeat not only the
names, but even the great deeds of
their forefathers. The contempt enter-
tained for the bonzes is due mainly to
the fact that they have renounced the v
family ties, or have become outcasts
by being sold in their youth
monasteries.
Long
to the
funeral rites are not usual in
the case of children, bachelors, spinsters,
illegitimate women, or slaves. The
bodies of infants are often even left by
*. /'!
Fig. G7. MANCHU LADY.
the banks of streams, a custom which has led many travellers to attribute the general
practice, especially of female infanticide, to the Chinese people. But this crime
has never been sanctioned by public opinion, or authorised by the Government, as
has often been asserted. Nevertheless it is certain that in some provinces the
pgor are in the habit of exposing their children, while female infanticide is common,
especially in the Amoy and other overpeopled districts of Fokien. Extreme
poverty is the sole cause of the practice,
which the Mandarins content themselves
with denouncing in proclamations read by nobody. The impossibility of providing
a dower for pirls condemns them to a life of hardship or dishonour, from which
their parents rescue them by an early death, unless they succeed in soiling them
as slaves or the future brides of some village youth. In these cases the price
runs at the rate of eight or ten shillings for every year of their age. Many