Modern Life and Traditional Death.

A discussion on tradition and modernization of death rites in Taiwan.

Lazzarotti Marco*
National Taiwan University

Abstract
Traditionally in Taiwan death is not considerate the terminal moment of a person life,
but, throughout specific ritual of passage, it is a way to get a different status, the status
of ancestors. Ancestors still live with their descendants, they influence descends life
in order to satisfy their needs, on the other hand they need to be worshipped by their
descendants. The rich rituals performed during funerals, the ancestors’ worship, the
tomb sweeping day could be considerate as a demonstration of these relationships
between those that are already dead and those that are still alive.
Nowadays the constant and rapid modernization/westernisation of Taiwanese society
gets in contrast with these traditional concepts linked with death. Ancestors are linked
with a family, which ancestor should be venerated by those that are divorced? How
can those that work all day and even during the night take daily care of their
ancestors’ tablets as prescribed by the tradition? How it is possible to combine the
popular belief that one of the souls will follow the body inside the grave with the new
law made by Taipei City government that, due the lack of space, requires the
cremation of the corpse? What is the answer of the society and of the traditional
cultural system to these questions?
I will argue that these problems are not felt and resolved as social problems, but
uniquely as personal problems that need personal solutions. In this way this more and
more modern society still preserves its old cultural environment.

*
Ph.D. Student at the National Taiwan University. For any comment or suggestions:
http://www.marcolazzarotti.it.gg/ .
 Death is one of the bigger taboos in Taiwan as well as in all Chinese culture. Just
for give a concrete example, the number four which in Mandarin Chinese is
pronounced Si 四, has the same sound of the word death – Si 死 - , therefore it is quite
common that buildings, and consequentially elevators don’t have the fourth floor. The
sequence of number skips the “dangerous” number letting people go directly from
third to the fifth floor.
In order to understand this interesting phenomenon, it is necessary introduce some
basilar concepts that are presents inside, and ad the same time animate, the Han
people 漢人 cosmology.

1
It is quite hard to make a presentation of the Han cosmology using just few words,

therefore in order to offer a brief and at the same time exhaustive view of it; I will

help myself with a concrete example of comparison. According to Christian religion,

every man has only one soul, and this soul is in an indissoluble way linked to the

body. Christian people believe that after death the body will resurrect.

According to the Han People view, on the contrary, every man has three hun 魂

and seven po 魄. I am perfectly aware that any kind of translation cannot express the

real meaning of hun and po, but anyway, we can refer to them as the three souls and

seven spirits. This is not an easy concept, as Yu Ying-Shih (1987) 1 try to explain. In

his article the author tells us that the concepts of hun and po are very old, probably

before than Buddhism arrived in China.

When a man dies his three hun move in three different directions: one will end in

the tomb whit the body, one in the ancestors’ tablet, and one, in one of the many

purgatories or hells described by the Taoist texts. So, after the dead, the three hun can

be separated. We also have to say that the po, especially those of children, are very
1
YU, Ying-Shih 余英時. 1987. Zhongguo Gudai Sihou Shijieguan De Jiangbian. 中國古代死後世界
觀的演變. Develop of Ancient China After Death World View. In Zhongguo Sixiang Chuangtong
De Xiandai Chuanshi 中國思想傳統的現代詮釋. Modern Interpretation of the Traditional Chinese
Thought. Taipei: Lian Jing.
sensible, so that they can get scared or even taken away by some ghosts or evil spirits.

For instance, when a baby urinates during the night, the mother cannot change his

dress, because at the night the po moves around from the body of the baby, and if it

comes back and does not recognize his dress, it may keep going around and, thus, get

lost from the baby forever. In the same way, people believe that they have to clean the

face of the child before he sleeps, because in this way the po could easily recognize

the baby and consequentially return inside the baby’s body.

Many scholars, who have analysed Taiwanese culture, agree to affirm that the life

of a person doesn’t end at the moment of the death, but throughout specific ritual of

passage and especially upon some particular conditions, it continues in a different

way2. Anthropologists generally fall into three main categories what a person can

become after death: Deities shen 神, Ancestors zuxian 祖先 and Ghosts gui 鬼. There

could be a basic way to define and divide these three categories of supernatural

beings3. Firstly, the dead who are worshipped by their own descendants are

considered as ancestor. Secondly, those who don't have descendants to worship them

will become ghosts. At last, the dead worshipped by a multitude of people, not only

by their own families, are considered as gods.

The relationships between supernatural beings and those who are still living are,
2
WATSON, James L. 1988. The Structure of Chinese Funerary Rites. In Death Ritual in Late
Imperial and Modern China. University of California Press.
3
FEUCHTWANG, Stephen. 1973. Domestic and Communal Worship in Taiwan. In Religion and
Ritual in Chinese Society. Arthur Wolf, ed. Pp. 105-130. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
JORDAN, David K. 1999. Gods, ghosts, & ancestors: folk religion in a Taiwanese village. Third
edition. San Diego CA: Department of Anthropology, UCSD. (Published as a WWW document.
URL: http://anthro.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan.)
LAZZAROTTI, Marco. 2008. The Ancestors’ Rites in the Taiwanese Catholic Church. MA Thesis,
National Taiwan University. Fully available on www.marcolazzarotti.it.gg .
WOLF, Arthur. 1974, Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors. In Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society.
Arthur Wolf, ed. Pp. 131-182. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
for most part of Taiwanese people, physical and direct. The dead and the livings -man

and spirits - share the same time and the same living space and, maybe most

importantly, they also bodily share the same preoccupations or needs.

As Francis Hsu (1971) noted in his Under the Ancestors' Shadow 4, “The attitude of

the living toward the dead and that of the living are functionally one. The relation of

the living with the dead is essentially modelled upon that of the living with the living.

By glorifying the dead, it both idealized and sets the standard and pattern for kinship

relationship”.

There is a Chinese proverb which says, “The same service to the dead as to the

living; to the absent as to the present” (shi si ru shi sheng 事 死 如 事 生 ). In some

ways, the presence of ancestor worship gave parents an additional incentive to have

sons to perform the rites and thus secure for their parents and grandparents eternal

life. “There are three things which are unfilial,” says Mencius, “and to have no

posterity is the greatest of them” 5. In this way, we can say that dead, the livings and

their successors share the same life time and the same existential world.

Cause the complexity of relationship between these categories, the interaction

between who lives and who already dead (whatever beings he had became, ancestors,

ghost or one divinity), are very strong and real for Taiwanese people. This above

mentioned situation involves many concrete actions and rituals that people have to

perform at the grave (sweeping tomb festival, find the right direction of the body

inside the grave and so on), at home (take care of the ancestor tablets, perform

particular ritual in occasion of the birthday or death-day of some ancestors) at the

ancestor all or at the temple. We will return again on these rituals on the next pages.

4
HSU, Francis. 1971. Under the Ancestors' Shadow: Kinship, Personality, and Social Mobility in
China. New York: Doubleday.
5
The Works of Mencius. 1970. Translated by James LEGGE. New York: Dover Publication.
 2

The recent history of Taiwan could be read as a continuous developing process in

which we can recognize a democratic, political, economical development; after

nationalistic period under the martial low and under the government of KMT (Chinese

People Party), Taiwan sow its first direct presidential elections on 1996. Four years

lather the victory of Chen Shui-bian 陳 水 扁 and the opposition party (DPP

Democratic Progressive Party) put an end to KMT role. Economically Taiwan, after

and thank to the USA post war economic helps, was able to became one of the Four

Tigers of Asia, developing a rich industry especially in the field of information

technology. These developments increased social stability and quality of life. But

these developments bring with them also some challenges for the Taiwanese

traditional society. As Tosolini (2004)6 explained:

It seems that Taiwan will cover, over two or three generations, the experiences

that in Europe needed four or five centuries to elaborate during the so called Modern

Age. On the other hand, after a period of feudalism and on the basis of the

exponential increase in scientific and technological resources, the human

possibilities of dominion over reality and self-fulfilment have been rediscovered. On

the other hand, the typical phenomena of post-modern Western societies are already

widespread: deviant behaviour, destruction of the basic human relational experiences

such as the family, solitude, incommunicability, loss of meaning. The young,

especially, feel that they no longer belong to a specific culture (Tosolini, 2004).

The result of this situation is a continue tension between new models – usually

coming from Western – and traditional patterns of life. In other word it is going on a

kind of cohabitation of contemporary and post-modern life style with the most

6
TOSOLINI, Fabrizio. 2004. Alterity in the Present Taiwan. In Culture and Alterity. Osaka: Asian
Study Centre
traditional systems of beliefs and taboo. On one hand Taiwanese society is changing

very fast, adopting Western – and Japanese - model of life: concretely speaking we

can see radical changes introduced by lows – now employed woman can rest at home

for three months after that they give a birth without leave their job -, architectures

styles (especially those intended for residential use), literary models, education

systems and so on. These new models are usually quickly and well accepted by most

part of Taiwanese society. On the other hand, because the above mentioned

cohabitation of man and spirits, there is a deep rooted traditional way to approach

particular critical moments in life (like death, funeral and so on) as well as the

everyday problem that life usually bring with itself; many people tends to follow old

tradition in order to resolve their problems. I would like to start my discussion on

rituals of death starting from this evident and interesting dichotomy, in order to

present how traditional elements changed and integrate the more and more numerous

change imposed by the modern style of life.

In order to better understand and explain these concepts, it will be very useful to

remember that, according to Chinese culture, according to Mencius words, “the root

of the empire is in the State. The root of the State is in the family. The root of the

family is in the individual”7. In other words, if the individual was properly brought up,

if he was taught to respect authority within his family, he would also respect it outside

the family and be an obedient subject of the Empire. The family, a primary social unit

of any social organization, was consciously cultivated in China perhaps more than in

any other country in the world and achieved greater importance. High respect for

family and paternal authority became a specific feature of Chinese civilization. Filial

piety was proclaimed “the root of all virtue” (Lang, 1946)8. Traditionally one of the

7
LEGGE. Op. Cit.
8
LANG, Olga. 1946. Chinese Family and Society. Yale university Press
main functions of the family was the observance of ancestor worship. As previously

showed, this kind of ritual implies that the ancestors are not entirely dead, that his

soul continues to lives and watches over the life of his descendants. Thus the rites are

based on the idea that those who perform them help both living and dead. An ancestor

living in the beyond is presumed to be endowed with supernatural power which he

may use to help his descendants. He is believed to be better off when he is kept alive

in the beyond through worship than when his existence ceases altogether, or he has

wander in the world as a ghost, as happens with those who have no descendants

(Lang. 1946)9.

As we can see, the Chinese idea of ancestors it is deeply linked with the concept of

continuity between generations inside the same family. These rituals are the way

throughout which a family keep its unity during time. One of the problems brought by

the process of modernization/westernisation is that:

The so-called Western models are centred on physical life and sensation, which

are potentially disruptive to positive interpersonal relationships. These models

conquer minds and hearts in the most delicate moments of the transmission of a

tradition. They succeed in separating generations from each other, even at short

distances in time, in such a way that the individuals find themselves at the mercy of

anonymous forces, which decide their behaviour, both inner and external, without

any possibility of counteraction (Tosolini, 2004).10

The traditional patterns that maintain united a family are put under pressure and

often destroyed by the influences of these anonymous forces, that we can try to call

cultural styles. We already explained how the death rituals and other world concepts

are deeply linked with the family and with the cultural universe of the family.
9
Ibidem
10
TOSOLINI. Op. Cit.
Therefore, how these death rituals survive in this cultural changing environment? In

the next section I will describe how the traditional elements associated with death – or

at least to the world beyond – enter in conflict, are changing and adapt themselves to

the above mentioned massive social changes.

We already said that in Taiwan, death is not considerate as the end of a person life.

It is believed that the spirit of ancestors will survive, exerting their beneficial

influence in the form of a tablet placed on the ancestor altar in the family room of the

house, traditionally called zhengting 正廳. Since one of the souls of the ancestor lives

inside this table, it is easy to understand why this tablet needs so many attentions.

Traditionally, the ancestor tablet is firstly made by paper and gave to the son of the

deceased by the Taoist Master after the end of funerary rituals. After one year the

paper made tablet is replaced by one made in wood that is the one that the family

must to put on their ancestor altar. According to the tradition, during the period of

time where the ancestor is represented by a paper tablet, the descents have to take care

of him, offering incense stick and giving him food every day.

The problem is that, especially in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, people are too busy

because of their job or myriad of other things to do. It is clear that the familiar life is

influenced by hectic pace of life. Often family members do not even come together

for dinner, sometimes not even meet during the day. If following these paces family

life is seriously compromised, how can the ancient traditions be preserved? On the

other hand, if the ancestor doesn’t eat, he will become a hungry ghost who will cause

misfortunes and troubles to the family. In order to solve this problem, there are some

places in Taipei where people can put their ancestor tablets – the paper one – and
other persons will provide to offer incense and food, like an old people’s home, with

the only exception that the customers are their souls.

Since one of the souls will take place in the grave with the body, the disposition of

the corpse is of great importance, as the exact place where it will be located will

influence the fate of the descendants. Every person has their own personal direction

which is assigned at the moment of birth trough elaborate geomantic calculations

usually made by a master (fengshuishi 風水師) or other Shamans11. These persons are

experts in the art of adapting abodes of the living and the graves of the dead so as to

co-operate and harmonize with the local currents of the cosmic breath, the Yin and

Yang. By means of talismans and charms the unpropitious character of any particular

topography may be satisfactory counteracted (Williams, 1976)12.

This implies that if the person orientation is toward south will be better for him -

for his life, business and so on – look for a house with the main entrance directed

toward south. This will bring prosperity and good luck to him and to his family. The

same thing is real for those who already dead, therefore it is very important that every

corpse would be buried according his specific direction.

The main reason is that the dead are in particular affected by and be able to use the

cosmic currents for the benefit of the living, so that it is to the interest of each family

to secure and preserve the most auspicious environment for the grave (Williams,

1976)13.

If the place chooses by the descendants is not comfortable and not well oriented,

11
Geomancy, or fengshui 風水 (wind and water) is the term used to define the geomantic system by
which the orientation of sited of houses, cities, graves, etc., are determinate, and the good and bad
luck of families and communities is fixed. Fengshui is based on the belief that climatic changes are
produced by the moral conduct of the people through the agency of celestial bodies.
12
WILLIAMS, C.A.S. 1976. Outliness of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives. Dover Publications.
13
Ibidem.
the ancestor will manifest his disappointment showing himself in the descendant

dream or procuring various kind of troubles at his descendants: illness, misfortune and

so on. Usually after a dream or a long and continuous period of illness or misfortune,

a man asks to his ancestors and/or to the shaman the reason of the unusual and

unlucky situation. The answer could be like: because your ancestor in the grave

doesn’t feel comfortable, or because the orientation of the grave is incorrect and so

on. At this point it is sometime necessary to open the grave and to put in the right

direction the corpse, or to provide for a second burial, in which the bones of the

defunct are collected, put inside a big jar – of course following a particular disposition

– and put into a charnel tower (lingguta 靈骨塔), usually built inside the cemetery. Of

course the position and the orientation of the urn are important as well as the

orientation of the corpse, therefore the prices of the rent of a charnel tower place

varies depending on which floor and toward what orientation people want.

Traditionally in Taiwan there were not places specifically used as cemetery, but the

defunct were buried on one the family field, because in this way the ancestor could be

able to take care about the field and the prosperity of the family. Usually a field –

throughout geomantic calculations – was choose among those belonging to the

extended family group, (families sharing same surname and same ancestors)14, and

designed as cemetery. As it is easily inferable, because every grave must follow a

particular orientation, the result is neither orderly nor harmonic.

This situation started to change with the Japanese government, banning to bury the

dead close to inhabited zone, but it was with the establishment of the Democratic

republic of China, that the government provided public cemeteries and a common low

14
I will no to explain the rich terminology used by scholars to describe the Chinese family. For those
interested should read the following books:
FREEDMAN, Maurice. 1970. Family and Kinship in Chinese Society. Stanford University Press.
JORDAN, David K. Op. Cit.
regarding the ways to bury a corpse. Modern cemeteries generally are formed by rows

of tombs ordered in regular way. The interesting thing is seeing how people react to

these new rules, which, preventing to freely choose the orientation of the grave, in

fact are contrary to tradition. Inside the pre-ordered and aligned graves, the coffin

follows the indication of the geomancy master. There are graves oriented toward East

with inside a coffin oriented toward West. In this way the new rules and the ancient

traditions are satisfied at the same time.

Divorce rate in Taiwan is the higher of the Asian countries and has kept rising

dramatically since the 1970s (ROC Ministry of Interior, 2005)15. This data reflects the

crisis of the traditional family pattern, based on the superior position occupied by

male compared to the woman rights. Marriages in Taiwan are responding to

modernizing forces by undermining the traditional values and practices based on the

gender and age differentials of the patriarchal family, and are becoming more like

families in the west ( Shen, 2005)16. Traditionally after the separation the children

were leaved with the father, but nowadays, since children can take the mother

surname, it is the mother that usually received the responsibility to take care of

children.

This situation leads to a strong and deep contrast with many aspects of the

Taiwanese folk religion that is, such as the Confucian thought, essentially patrilineal

and chauvinist.

These new lows are generally accepted as a signal of cultural modernity and open-

mindedness, but the hard integration process of these modern concepts in the

15
Republic Of China ROC. Ministry of the Interior. 2005.
http://www.moi.gov.tw/stat/index.aspx
16
SHEN, April Chiung-Tao. 2005. Factors in the Marital Relationship in a
Changing Society. A Taiwan Case Study. International Social Work 48(3): 325–340. Sage
Publications.
traditional cultural context it is often evident and sometimes clashing.

During my fieldwork I met several persons who lived in this situation, one the most

typical case was the one of a woman who divorced by her husband, was charged by

the judge to take care of their son and, clearly resentful toward her husband and

especially to his family, proclaimed her intention to change the child's surname giving

him her own surname. According to what her acquaintances said to me, the son

suddenly fell ill, and the reason was the opposition of the ancestors – of course those

of the father – to the decision of change surname, because a son must to pray and take

care of his patrilineal ancestors.

In these previous pages, I just tried to give some concrete example of how the

constant and rapid modernization/westernisation of Taiwanese society gets in contrast

with these traditional concepts linked with death. The changing Chinese family

pattern in Taiwan deeply influences the traditional cultural and social structure. New

moral value, other kinds of personal ambition, are overlapping and changing in a very

fast way relationships among families. In this continuously and very fast process, the

relations between living and dead, since the latest still leave with their descendants,

of course are naturally influenced.

What I would like to point out by these abovementioned examples, is that these

living-dead relationships are felt and recognized as problem only when they meet a

critical situation – death, rituals, misfortune, illness and so on -, in other words only

when these, sometimes intrusive, presences started to be a problem. Since the so

familiar dimension of these relationships, these problems are felt only in a personal

way.
 If we limit our field only to the death rituals, we can see that the answer of

Taiwanese people to these modernization/westernization processes is essentially

personal; there are not efforts in order to build a social or common answer to the new

rules about cemetery position and arrangement. The answer to the changes and

transformations are not contrasted by the society as a whole, but by each person and

only in the moment when he will meet his specific problems linked to ancestors or

with the other – if in Taiwan we can use this expression – world.

This phenomenon brings with him many insides: while many aspects of the life of

is changing and looking at western models, it seems that individuals could find a

solution for problems linked with death, only inside the tradition. As Umberto Eco 17

says, it seems that people believe only what they already know. Therefore when they

meet these extremely critical moments in their life, they can only return back to the

traditional way to address and solve these problems. This is means that while the

society with its lows, educational systems and so on; the basic cultural elements are

changing only in their external aspects, while they continue to influence and to direct

life of many people and those of their families. In this way this more and more

modern society still preserves its old cultural environment.

17
ECO, Umberto. 2010. Il Cimitero di Praga. Milano: Bompiani