CHINESE CEREMONIES.

Evening Star, Issue 3865, 14 July 1875, Page 3

CHINESE CEREMONIES.

Of all their cherished ceremonies (says tlio ' Shanghai Celestial Empire') there ate none the Chinese observe v/ith more .scrupulous exactness than those connected with death and mourning. The Governor of Kiangau has just gone into retirement because of the decease of his mother; and so he will remain, ineligible to any office, for the space of three years. He will not shave las head for one hundred day?. For forty-seven nights he will sleep in a hempen garment, with his head resting on a brick, and stretched on hard ground by the side of the coffin which holds the remains of the parent who gave him birth. He will go down upon his knees and humbly ko-t'ow to each fiieud and relative at their first meeting after the sad evont—a tacit acknowledgment that it was but his own want of filial piety which brought his beloved mother premaI turely to the grave. To the coolies who bear the coffin to its resting-place on the slopes of some wooded hill or beneath the shade of a clump of darkleaved cypress trees, he will make the same obeisance. Their lives and properties are at his disposal day and night; but he has now a favor to ask which no violence could secure, and pleads thus that his mother's body may be carried gently, without jar or concussion of any kind. He will have her laid by tho side of his father, in a coffin which costs perhaps 200 taels, and repair there periodically to appease her departed spirit with votive offerings of fruit, vegetables, and pork,