This passage comes from pages 322 to 324 of Curiosities of Popular Customs and of Rites, Ceremonies, Observances, and Miscellaneous Antiquities by William S. Walsh (1925).
Dead, Festival of the Unforgotten. (Chinese, Ching Ming Chich.) The Chinese All Souls' Day. Ancestor worship is the most prominent feature of the Chinese religion. It was sanctioned by Confucius. Like the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese hold that every person has three souls. At death, one soul goes into the unseen world, the second remains with the body in the tomb, the third takes up its abode in the ancestral tablet, which is the holiest thing in the household. This tablet is simply a narrow niece of wood, about a foot long, two or three inches wide, and half an inch thick, set in a low pedestal, and on one side are inscribed the ancestral names. The eldest son has charge of the tablet and its worship. It is placed in the main hall of the house, offerings are presented before it, and incense is burned to it every day. The son regards this tablet as in very truth the abode of a personality which is far more to him for weal or woe than all the gods of the empire. The gods are to be feared and their favor is to be propitiated; but ancestors are loved and their needs in the spirit world are generously supplied. Food is offered daily before the tablet, in order to satisfy the hunger of the spirit, while paper money, suits of paper clothes, and paper figures representing men-servants and maid-servants are burnt to ashes, — the idea being that thus sublimated they pass without difficulty to the souls in the regions of the blest.
Twice in the year — the first time in the third month, when also, as we learn from the Gospels, it was customary to sweep and garnish the tombs in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, and again in the seventh — the males of every family of standing betake themselves to the graveyards, and, having cleansed and embellished the tombs, offer sacrifices of food and burn paper representations before an altar in front of the graves. Each worshipper bows repeatedly with his head to the ground, as though in the presence of a deity, and brings his devotions to an end by pouring libations of wine over the altar and firing volleys of crackers to drive to a distance any evil spirits that may be lurking in the neighborhood. But there are other evil spirits in the company of the deceased, who, being beyond the reach of the sound of fireworks, have to be propitiated. Lepers and beggars are believed to haunt the eternal regions, and, as these might become annoyingly clamorous if the offerings and presents were confined to the deceased alone, food, consisting of small cakes, and offerings of paper money are presented to them. But even these do not exhaust the unseen powers which have to be propitiated in order to secure the undisturbed repose of tho dead. "To leave out of count the local deity would be almost to invite the disturbance of the genial influences secured by the position of the tomb. Three dishes of food, three cups of wine, three incense sticks, two candles, and three packets of paper money are supposed to satisfy his wants, and these are readily offered at his shrine. When the service is over and the spiritual essence of the food offered has been consumed by the spirits, the worshippers gather round the altar and partake of the more material portion of the viands. This is but a prelude to a subsequent feast, which is held in the ancestral hall of the clan." (Prof. R. K. Douglass, in Good Words for January, 1895.)
In Formosa the feast in honor of the dead was differently conducted. The food was tied row upon row on great cone-like structures of bamboo poles, from five to ten feet in diameter at the base, and sometimes fifty or sixty feet high.
When the spirits had consumed the spiritual part, the carnal became the property of a vast mob that always assembled on the grounds. A gong gave the signal for the latter to rush in. "Scarcely had the first stroke fallen," says George Leslie Mackay, speaking of a Seventh Moon Feast he had witnessed at Bang-Kah, "when that whole scene was one mass of arms and legs and tongues. Screaming, cursing, howling, like demons of the pit, they all joined in the onset. A rush was made for the cones, and those nearest seized the supports and pulled now this way, now that. The huge, heavily laden structures began to sway from side to side until with a crash one after another fell into the crowd, crushing their way to the ground. Then it was every man for himself. In one wild scramble, groaning and yelling all the while, trampling on those who had lost their footing or were smothered by the falling cones, fighting and tearing one another like mad dogs, they all made for the coveted food. It was a very bedlam, and the wildness of the scene was enhanced by the irregular explosion of the firecrackers and the death groan of some one worsted in the fray. As each secured what he could carry, he tried to extricate himself from the mob, holding fast to the treasures for which he had fought and one of the less successful in the outskirts of the crowd would fain plunder him. Escaping the mob, he hurried to his home, expecting every moment to be attacked by those who thought it easier to waylay and rob the solitary spoilsman than to join in the general scramble in the plain."
These barbarities were abolished in 1894 by the Chinese governor, Lin Ming Chuan.
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