Every village has a “wise man” who is always called upon to select the resting place of the dead, his remuneration varying from two dollars to two thousand dollars according to the circumstances of the deceased’s relatives.  The astrologer never will say definitely whether or not the spot will prove a propitious one and if the family later sell any property, receive a legacy, or are known to have obtained money in other ways, the astrologer usually finds that the feng-shui do not favor the original place and he will exact another fee for choosing a second grave.

The dead are never buried until the astrologer has named an auspicious day as well as an appropriate site, with the result that unburied coffins are to be seen in temples, under roadside shelters, in the fields and in the back yards of many houses.

Any interference by foreigners with this custom is liable to bring about dire results as in the case of the rioting in Shanghai in 1898.  A number of French residents objected to a temple near by being used to store a score or more of bodies until a convenient time for burial and the result was the death of many people in the fighting which ensued.  Mr. Tyler Dennet cites an amusing anecdote regarding the successful handling of the problem by a native mandarin in Yen-ping where we visited Mr. Caldwell: 

The doctor pointed out how dangerous to public health was the presence of these coffins in Yen-ping.  The magistrate had a census taken of the coffins above ground in the city and found that they actually numbered sixteen thousand.  The city itself is estimated to have only about twenty thousand inhabitants.

It was a difficult problem for the magistrate.  He might easily move in such a way as to bring the whole city down about his head.  But the Chinese are clever in such situations, perhaps the cleverest people on earth.  He finally devised a way out.  A proclamation was issued levying a tax of fifty cents on every unburied coffin.  The Chinese may be superstitious, but they are even more thrifty.  For a few weeks Yen-ping devoted itself to funerals, a thousand a week, and now this little city, one of the most isolated in China, can truly be said to be on the road to health. [Footnote:  “Doctoring China,” by Tyler Dennet, Asia, February, 1918, p. 114.]

There are very few such progressive cities in China, however, and a missionary told us that recently a young child and his grandfather were buried on the same day although their deaths had been nearly fifty years apart.  The funeral rites are in themselves fairly simple, but it is the great ambition of every Chinese to have his resting place as near as possible to those of his ancestors.  That is one of the reasons why they are so loath to emigrate.

We often passed eight or ten coolies staggering under the load of a heavy coffin, transporting a body sometimes a month’s journey or more to bury it at the dead man’s birthplace.  A rooster usually would be fastened to the coffin for, according to the Yuen-nan superstition, the spirit of the man enters the bird and is conveyed by it to his home.