Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1874 — Chinese Ideas About Death. [ARTICLE]

Chinese Ideas About Death.

The Chinese are almost indifferent to the phenomenon of dissolution, and frequently compass their own end when life becomes wearisome. A wife sometimes elects to follow her husband on the starlit road of death; and parents will destroy their offspring in times of famine and great distress rather than allow them to suffer. Still more remarkable is the custom of selling their lives in order that they may purchase the superior advantage of obsequies, which are considered to insure the body in safety for the future resurrection. A wealthy man condemned to death will arrange with his jailer to buy him a substitute for a .certain sum of money, to be spent upon the poor wretch's interment and preservation of his body. Should he have parents, so much is usually pqid to them in compensation for their son’s life. Chinamen invariably help to support their parents; filial respect and devotion is the great Chinese virtue and religious precept, in w’hich they rarely fail. Regarding death as inevitable, he makes the best of a bad bargain, and cunningly and comically gets paid for dying. The wholesale destruction of life in tiffs country is greatly the result of indifference. Hence the massacre of Europeans, so terrible to us, seems to them a matter of little moment, and they cannot comprehend why we should make a fuss about it. They regard our indignant protestation very much as we might treat our irate neighbor whose dog we had shot. “ Well, well, be pacified; if it was such a favorite, lam sorry; but it is only a dog, and there are plenty more. How much do you want to be paid for it?” “You English think so much of a life,” argues the Chinese; “ have you not plenty of people at home?”. Death in China • is awarded as the punishment for the most trivial offenses, and frequently for none at all, except being in somebody’s way. A story was told to me as a fact that, during the visit of one of our royal princes, a theft was committed of a watch or chain belonging to the royal guest. The unfortunate attendant was caught with the- property upon him, and, without further ceremony, liis head was chopped off. The mandarin in attendance immediately announced the tidings to the Prince as a delicate attention, showing how devoted he was in his service. To his astonishment the Prince expressed his great regret that the man's head had been taken off “ Your Highness,” cried the obsequious mandarin, bowing to the ground, “it shall immediately be put on again!” .-o little did he under tand that the regret was for the life taken and not the severed head. In times of insurrection or famine the mowing down of human life like corn-stalks at harvest time is appalling to Eilropean ideas. I must confess to a nervous shuddering when I stood upon the execution ground at Canton—a narrow lane or Potter’s field—where so many hundreds had been butchered per diem during weeks together, the executioner requiring the aid of two smiths to sharpen- his swords, for many of the wretched victims were not allowed to be destroyed at one fell; swoop, but- sentenced to be “hacked to pieces” by twenty 4p fifty blows. I was informed by a European who had traveled much and seen most of the frightful side- of life, that witnessing Chinese executions was more than his iron nerves could stand; and in some of the detail- which he was narrating I was obliged to beg him to desist. And yet he said there was nothing solemn about it, and the spectators looked on amused. ..It was the horrible and grotesque combined.—Temple Bar.