The custom of attending a funeral.

According to different nationalities and regions, customs vary greatly. As the saying goes, "ten miles is different."

The old tradition of Han funeral is to pay attention to heavy burial, which is mixed with many superstitious customs. Coffin burial has been popular in Han nationality since ancient times. Funeral is grand and can be divided into three stages: burial, burial and burial.

The funeral is to dress the body and put it under the coffin. Before a person dies, he should summon the soul and bathe the dead. Funeral is divided into two steps: small funeral and large funeral. A small undertaker is a cloth used to wrap his body, silk is for the rich and jade is for the royal family. Great-coat is to put the body in the coffin. Coffins are called "longevity materials", male coffins are engraved with the word "longevity", female coffins are engraved with the word "blessing", and some coffins are engraved with the combination of the words "Fu Lushou". When he was dying, he put rice in the mouth of the dead man. This rich family owns jade, pearls, etc. , the royal family contains jade, modern silver, are called "rice". When you die, there are often some things buried with you. Generally, people have clothes, quilts and daily necessities, and wealthy families and royalty will have many valuable items buried with them.

A funeral is to stay in the funeral palace after the funeral. The mourning period varies from 3 days to 30 days, mainly depending on the mourners. In ancient times, coffins were buried for three months, up to seven months. According to the traditional customs of the Han nationality, children should mourn when their parents die, otherwise it is unfilial. Relatives and friends will mourn and pay homage to the deceased in the future, which is called "mourning" or "condolence". All mourners should mourn. In ancient times, the mourning clothes of Han nationality were divided into five types: Wei, Cui Zi, Dagong, Hong Xiao and Zhima, which were called "five clothes". They are made of coarse linen and fine linen, and wear different mourning clothes according to the relationship between relatives and friends, which is called "Pima Dai Xiao". In modern times, white cloth is often used for mourning. Modern cities generally wear white flowers on their chests and black gauze on their arms.

Burying is burying the body of the dead, that is, burying the coffin. Before burial, the old custom often depends on geomantic omen and chooses a cemetery, which is called "choosing good luck". Funeral is also called funeral. At the funeral, the ancient Han people were generally "dutiful sons", and undertaker sang an elegy. Elegy has evolved into elegy in modern times. Relatives and friends wrote elegiac couplets or funeral elegiac couplets, which evolved into wreaths of elegiac couplets in modern times.

In ancient times, the custom of offering sacrifices to people (mainly close relatives, near ministers and near servants, which remained until the Qing Dynasty) was gradually replaced by pottery figurines, and in modern times, paper figures were buried with them.

After the funeral, there are memorial ceremonies for the seventh, seventh, centenary and anniversary, and the memorial tablet belongs to the ancestral hall, which has changed from a ceremony for people at the funeral to a ceremony for "ghosts" and "ancestors".

In addition, the Han nationality also has the custom of "returning to burial", that is, transporting the bodies that died in other places back to their original places.

During the funeral, the relatives of the deceased should wear mourning clothes and wake in the mourning hall. In the ancient etiquette system of China, filial piety was divided into five grades according to the kinship with the deceased. There is also a word "five clothes" in modern Chinese to express the distance of blood relationship. Filial piety is made of white cloth, which is quite different from the custom of westerners wearing white clothes to make dresses. In the Qing Dynasty, an Englishman came to China for the first time. When he met the funeral procession, everyone was dressed in white, but his expression was painful, sad and strange. In ancient times, people sang elegies at funerals, and Tao Yuanming, a great poet in Jin Dynasty, wrote three elegies for himself before his death. The elegy of later generations evolved from the elegy of ancient times.

The scale of the funeral ceremony is closely related to the status of the deceased. In feudal society, there were strict regulations on funeral ceremonies for people with different identities and status. Princes, nobles and rich people often show off their power with large-scale funerals. In A Dream of Red Mansions, Qin Keqing died in Ningguo Mansion with a coffin worth several thousand taels of silver. Two or three hundred monks chanted, and the procession at the funeral was "mighty and unstoppable". The poor don't even have enough food and clothing, so naturally there is no "reburial". Sometimes you can only wrap the body with a mat and bury it hastily.

After the death of the elder, children and grandchildren should stay at home for 27 months, during which time they should stop socializing and entertaining. Officials must also leave their jobs and go home to be filial to show their condolences to their relatives. This is the so-called "shouzhi".