Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets

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Title: Chinese American Death Rituals - Respecting the Ancestors (PH 16-17b)(Undated) Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Pamphlets Catalog #: PH 16-17b Author: Sue Fawn Chung & Priscilla Wegars Published: Undated Subjects: Chinese Americans # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Metadata By: Shelby Figueroa Printed or handwritten: Mostly printed/typed text Date Scanned: 2024-12-11 13:47:56 Scanned By: Shelby Figueroa Scanning Equipment: CZUR Book Scanner OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: JPGs First Created: 2025-03-17 05:46:35 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:46:35

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

Page: of 6  

y.) Paul G. Chace also considered as protection from the unsettled ghost-spirit of the recently deceased.* Interestingly, only two local funeral accounts, from 1893 and 1901, actually, mention observing Chinese funeral priests who might have been directing the rites and the mourners’ ritual actions. Both were very large funerals for extremely important men who were members of the Gee Hong Tong, and the newspaper coverage was unusually detailed,*> Most Chinese funerals in Marysville seemingly did not require a priest to provide formal direction. It can be inferred from mentions of the typical Chinese band leading many formal Chinese funeral processions that there was some muted local manner of ritual funeral guidance. The Euro-American coroner or undertaker, without any guided public funeral or burial rites worthy of mention, conducted other Chinese burials quite simply. In the twentieth century, a professional Euro-American undertaker sometimes handled the funeral rites for deceased local Chinese partly within the undertaker’s own Marysville chapel. Special rites existed for collecting and sending off the bones for secondary reburial back in China. Marysville had a Chinese resident who served as a “bone digger.” He exhumed the bones from the Chinese section of the cemetery, conducted special rites, and carefully packed the bones for shipment back.to families in China for reburial there. The boxes were stored with a local Euro-American undertaker until shipment could be arranged.’ the early twentieth century, both a local funeral service and a major burial geremony in China might be conducted. Obviously, such double services reflected considerable prestige and wealth. The Marysville rites began inside the lodge and continued with a formal procession to the cemetery with the hearse, mourners, and a Chinese band. Roast pig and other edibles were deposited at the cemetery with the coffin, and then the party returned to town. Later, the Euro-American undertaker returned the coffin and corpse to town, , andjthe body was further prepared for travel. The corpse was placed on the 4 train, to San Francisco and then stteped on to China, where it was to “be buried with . . . pomp and ceremony.” Shipment of the prepared body became a standard Seiten a Certain American customs were adapted into local Chinese funerals beginning in the 1910s. The first Marysville report of cremation for the corpse of ‘alo cal Chinese man was in 1915.>? Also beginning in that decade, the funeral Frodsaions of prominent local Chinese men employed the Marysville Brass Band as well as a Chinese band. The Euro-American musicians loudly played thei ‘own popular tunes. Interestingly, beginning about twenty years later, brass bands playing American tunes began to be incorporated into rural Cantonese funeral rites around Hong Kong.*°! t \ On Dying American 57 THE “CHUNG WAH” ASSOCIATION AND COMMUNITY TEMPLE RITES FOR GHOST-SPIRITS Around 1880 a community-wide organization formed to include all the local Chinese people, referred to as Marysville’s “Chung Wah” (Zhonghua) Association. This was seen in the form of deeds transferring the temple property at the entrance to the city to four named trustees of the Bok Kai Temple. These four trustees probably headed the four Chinese tongs in Marysville. Through the previous igen temple operated essentially for the people of the Siyi huiguan. In 1880 grand temple expansion occurred.” The renovated temple-building complex included a large side room marked by an old sign over the door, gong so or “community council room,” a meeting hall “for everyone in the community.” The variety of community activities conducted through the new temple establishment was delineated in the temple’s account books for the 1880s to 1890s. Thus, the expanded Bok Kai Temple® was transformed into the hall of the entire Chinese community (fig. 2.1). However, this all-inclusive Chinese community association apparently waned in the years between the 1910s and the 1930s. Following World War I, a temple restoration effort began.© Subsequently, late in 1949 the “Marysville Chinese Community, Incorporated” formally reorganized as a nonprofit Califor‘nia corporation to work on the preservation of the temple (figs. 2.2 and 2.3). OY While this association still holds title to the Bok Kai Temple (as well as to a school hall, a hospital/daibingwu [old age house], and some other properties), in recent decades this “Chung Wah” Association has had less organizational dominion than the two local tong lodges. TEMPLE REDEDICATION AND JIAO (UNIVERSAL WORLD RENEWAL RITUAL) For the ritual rededication of the renovated Bok Kai Temple in 1880, the community raised the funds to have Daoist priests, along with their retinue of musicians, from San Francisco® attend and officiate. They performed a three-day jiao of rededication, the Universal World Renewal Ritual. This ritual involved calling all the gods and other ghost-spirits to earth, making appropriate offerings, and reestablishing these ghost-spirits in their proper orderly universe. cs Local newspapers described the Daoist priests’ formal jiao rites of the first day in considerable detail, if not with a deep understanding of the incredible reli' gious rites being performed.” Unfortunately, it started raining thereafter and the subsequent coverage was abbreviated. The rites depicted in the Englishlanguage newspaper obviously included the Daoist priests’ three initial ritual.