Traditional Chinese funerals can be overwhelming with customs and traditions especially if you know nothing about them. Here is a guide of how we prepared our fathers funeral during the pandemic.
Altar Arrangements
Continuously burn candles and incense until the day of the burial to guide the deceased to the afterlife
- Incense pot with sand is placed in the center of the altar (on the first day we didn't have this so we used a bowl of uncooked rice). We bought a white flower pot and sand from B&Q
- A bowl of cooked rice with two chopsticks upright with a boiled egg in the middle. The up right chopsticks symbolizing the deceased "eating" the food offered. (This is later buried with the deceased)
- Tea and wine cups: In front of the incense burner place 1 cup of tea and 3 cups of rice wine. You can buy these from most Asian supermarkets. (Usually when worshiping gods and ancestors, we would place 3 tea cups and 5 wine cups 三茶五酒 but for the first year of death we were told to use 1 tea cup and 3 wine cups when offering prayers to my father as he would still be making his way through the afterlife so would not be classed as an ancestor just yet)
- White candle: Our altar was by our balcony door so we used a lantern that we bought from IKEA to prevent the flame from blowing out. We bought pillar candles from Tesco and used ramekins to hold them.
- Food Offerings: Place food offerings at the front on dedicated plates used for the deceased (my mum kept a few plates and bowls aside to use) burn 3 candles during meal offerings
- Photo of the deceased: Usually in black and white this can be placed behind the altars incense pot or on the side. (Coloured photo is also okay)
Do's
Keep the incense and candle burning until the burial. This will guide the deceased to the afterlife. Use incense spirals throughout the night if needed and make sure a single incense stick is always burning. I purchased the incense coils online but you can find these in the Vietnamese supermarkets in Deptford High Street (La Loi)
Offer food before every meal. It is deemed disrespectful if you serve your own food first. The deceased is believed to be still in this life until the burial. Before every meal remember to burn 3 incense sticks and show respect by letting the deceased know its time for breakfast/lunch/dinner so they can eat first.
Place the altar lower than your ancestral/god altars if you have one Ranking is important. When someone dies, we believe it takes 49 days for rebirth. So placing the altar at the same level is disrespectful to our ancestors.
Spread out the remaining incense sticks in the pot to prevent fire. After about a week of visitors and burning incense, the sticks were gathered rather tightly in the center of the pot that it ended up catching fire (started smoking) when a visitor pushed the incense stick too far down. If this does happen, use a tong to pull out the incense sticks and remember to spread them out every couple of days.
Dont's
Don't eat the offerings. This is seen as fighting the deceased for food when the spirit is still making its way to the afterlife. As wasteful as it seems, we have to throw the food away after (You can however eat offerings offered to the ancestors). Tip: Instead of throwing the food away add to compost.
Don't eat with chopsticks. Up until the funeral we had to eat with a spoon as it is believed we could accidentally poke and injure the spirit.
Don't place the altar on the same wall as the ancestral altar. Because it may seem like you are offering incense to the ancestors and not the deceased.
Don't leave the altar unattended. Leaving any open naked flame unattended is never a good idea.
Don't borrow incense or offerings from others. This is frowned upon and considered a bad omen. We were running low on incense and I was not allowed to borrow some from my friend who lived a few minutes away. We also had to keep offerings and incense for our ancestors separate. You can't use the same incense from the same pack you offer to your ancestors or gods.
Things to Prepare
You can hire a Taoist/Buddhist priests to help you prepare for the rituals and ceremonies but this has been difficult during the pandemic and lock-down rules. The below are items you can prepare on your own.
- Consult the Chinese Almanac for an auspicious date and time for the funeral. Usually the burial would have to take place by 11am Wu hour (午時). Usually a Taoist/Buddhist priest would use the deceased birth date, and death date to calculate an auspicious date and time for the funeral but just as a general guide you can find some auspicious dates and times here for various events. The Taoist Minister I used was Fu Lay, he was very knowledgeable and respectful.
- Choose a cemetery plot. Ideally, Chinese cemeteries are situated on a hillside, to improve Feng Shui. The higher the grave is, the better.
- Gold/Silver coin is placed in the mouth of the deceased. The coin is used to pay for the ferry crossing to the afterlife. (This should be placed in the mouth before embalming) This item should be placed in the mouth as soon as possible.
- Walking stick placed in the left hand/ left side of coffin/casket for the deceased to use in the afterlife (if the deceased was elderly)
- Gold/yellow satin sheet each piece of yellow or gold satin covering the deceased in the coffin represents each daughter tucking the deceased in with a blanket.
- White satin sheet each piece of white satin is used to line the coffin/casket and represents each son laying down the bed sheet for the deceased.
- Mantao (frozen steamed bun)/ ball of cooked rice is to be placed in the right hand of the deceased so that they will never go hungry in the afterlife. Some traditions put a grain of rice in the mouth instead of this
- Brand new suit/outfit to represent new beginnings for the decease into the afterlife.
- Jade & Silver ring (men) jade bangle & silver clip on earrings & silver ring(optional) (women) to prepare the deceased for a better afterlife.
- Clothes/belongings old clothes and belongings can be put into the casket/coffin
- Afterlife Road ticket (路票) is a ticket the decease is believed to need to help reach the afterlife (To be burned on the 7th day after death). This is not needed if you have a Taoist priest to perform the rituals as but we prepared one anyway.
The items listed above for the deceased can be handed directly to your funeral director who can arrange to have these placed as directed, alternatively you can do this yourself with the help of the funeral home employees.
Do's
Mark all new items with an incense. For all new items put into the coffin/casket they will need to be marked with an incense so that the deceased recognizes this is for their use.
Cut holes in all pockets. This signifies our loved ones moving on into the afterlife without taking any fortune from this life. This also prevents any hungry ghosts or bad spirits stealing from our loved ones. When something is stolen we believe its stolen from the living of the deceased.
Pair up items put into the coffin/casket. Usually we use odd numbers during a funeral but the passing into the afterlife is meant to be a celebration and for that we use even numbers. So make sure you put an even number of items into the coffin/casket. But if the deceased is a woman put odd number of items in the coffin.
Dont's
Don't worry if you can't do all or any of these, or if you forget. There are so many adaptions to these customs and like my mum says, as long as you have the heart.
The Chinese believe that all will go to Diyu (地獄) after death in preparation for the afterlife.
49 Days to rebirth/afterlife (七七四十九日)
Hun (Chinese: 魂; pinyin: hún) and po (Chinese: 魄; pinyin: pò) are types of souls in Chinese philosophy and traditional religion. Every living human has both a hun spiritual, ethereal, yang soul which leaves the body after death, and also a po corporeal, substantive, yin soul which remains with the corpse of the deceased. Taoism proposes a soul structure of sanhunqipo 三魂七魄; that is, "three hun and seven po". Each 7 days the deceased arrives at a court known as the Ten Courts of Hell (click here to read more)
- 1st 7th day (首七/頭七) Is the most important. The Chinese believe that during the first 6 days after death the soul does not know they have died and they roam freely without any feelings. On the 7th day they are believed to die for a second time and that's when they realise they have passed away and will want to visit home. Incense, candles and offerings are burned at the family home to welcome the soul home for a meal.
A Taoist priest can perform the prayers on this day but this wasn't possible for us during the lock down so you can chant Amituofos name (Amitabha Buddha chant 南無阿彌陀佛) and the Amitabha sutra (佛說阿彌陀經) which is meant to guide the deceased to the pure land. If you unable to chant the Amitabha sutra you can have it played on audio. We had these playing on speaker on loop for the entire 100 days. But most will only have this until the funeral day. we found the chants calming and helped with our healing.
We prepared about 12 ramekins with cut potatoes in which we used to put the incense sticks in, we placed them about 30cm apart along the outside of our front door used to guide the soul back home. We also used a few tea lights inside glass tumblers and put them around our front door. Light 15 incense sticks and start from the furthest ramekin from the front door and with each incense lighted and inserted into the cut potatoes call out for your loved one to come home and let them know what day it is, so today would be the first 7th so let them know today is the first 7th and to come home and have a meal. Once all the incense are lit, put the remaining 3 into the incense burner at the altar with simple food offerings of 3 bowls of cooked rice with 3 pairs of chopsticks, 3 small plates of raw sliced ginger and salt; a simple meal with no meat, no veg. The rows of incense will guide the soul to the altar to receive the offerings.
Prayers can be made and the paper offerings in forms of paper clothes, paper mobiles, paper laptops and paper joss money is then burned so that the deceased can use this in the afterlife. We also burned the paper Afterlife road ticket (路票).
- 2nd 7th day (二七) The ritual is repeated on this day (with meat offering)
- 3rd 7th day (三七) The ritual is repeated on this day (with meat offering)
- 4th 7th day (四七) No ritual is held on this day
- 5th 7th day (五七) The ritual is repeated on this day (with meat offering)
- 6th 7th day (六七) The ritual is repeated on this day but by married daughters. (with meat offering)
- 7th 7th day (末七) The ritual is repeated on this day (with meat offering) - My sister spent a few weeks building a spiritual home which I feel deserves its own blog post- but here are some pictures of it. Instructed by the Taoist priest, we inscribed our late fathers details on it so that he could receive it in the afterlife. If you're thinking "No way can I build this", don't worry, the deceased can buy their own in the afterlife with all that joss money we burn.
Do's
- Prepare the following roughly 12 ramekins or potatoes/any vegetable or fruit to use as an incense holder. 15 incense sticks, a few white candles (tea lights inside a glass tumbler works well as a wind shield), lighter, afterlife road ticket 路票 (1st 7th day only), paper offerings, joss paper money folded into ingots. For the altar 3 bowls of rice with 3 pairs of chopsticks as we believe on this day the deceased may also bring back guests or underworld officers that have come to guide them to the afterlife. Some meat, pork belly, chicken, duck. Remember to sprinkle some salt on top of the meat (this is to add flavour) and 3 small plates of sliced raw ginger. The 1st 7th day you do not offer meat.
- Calculate the 7th day correctly A lot of people get this wrong. If your loved one passed away on Tuesday Morning at 3am then the 7th day would be (counting from Tuesday) Monday right? yeah technically this is correct but when we perform the rituals we do them the DAY BEFORE so Sunday! We believe that holding the ceremony in the evening of the day before will roll into the next day to allow time for the soul to return.
- Start the incense in the evening so when the sky is completely dark as the soul won't be able to be guided back during the day light.
- Always put your own safety first and burn joss paper in a large metal heatproof drum outdoors if possible
Dont's
- Don't leave the burning incense unattended - never a wise idea when in public walkways outside your house
- Don't leave your joss paper burning unattended - put your safety first and always keep a fire extinguisher or some water near by.
- Don't hold a ceremony on the 4th week as this is considered an unlucky number so we skip this week.
- Don't worry if you can't do all or any of these, or if you forget. There are so many adaptions to these customs and like my mum says, as long as you have the heart.
The Wake
According to Chinese folk religions, death is a disruption to the cosmological balance. The performance of death rituals is therefore aimed at re-establishing order and harmony. In addition, the Chinese believe that the dead continue to influence the fortunes of the living. As such, funeral rituals not only exemplify respect and filial piety, but are also done for the sake of recompense
- White flowers If you would like to use flowers, then white or yellow flowers are used as white signifies death.
- White money the Chinese give money in white envelopes which we call white money (白金) direct translation white gold. This is given to the grieving family and in return they are given a coin wrapped in white paper. Some customs also believe this should be given in an odd number (we use odd numbers in funerals) I believe this is why some customs give back in return a coin to make this an odd number?) This white money is used solely for the funeral. So prepare some pound coins wrapped in white paper.
- Incense offerings During the time up until the funeral, friends and family should visit and pay their respects by burning an incense. The white paper wrapped coin is also given here to each person. We used shorter incense sticks for guests paying their respects just so we could differentiate from the main incense in the pot that we had to keep burning.
- Prayers and rituals Before the funeral we had two Chinese Buddhist/Taoist priests prepare the traditional hemp clothing and items we were to use for the funeral and a ritual was performed at our family home. Here they used the 3 teas and 5 wines 三茶五酒 as we were inviting the Gods and ancestors to help guide my father to the afterlife.
Funeral Day
It was January 6th the first day of lock down 3.0 in London. But Funerals could still take place with up to 30 people.
- Cover mirrors and gods. The Chinese cover mirrors to protect their loved ones. They believe if a person sees the coffin's reflection, there will be additional death in the family. During the funeral we also had to cover all god statues with a red cloth and take down any red couplets (used for Chinese new year with the word FU fortune). We covered these from the day my father passed away..
- Clothing: We had the hemp hat, and clothing prepared for us by the Taoist priest, but if not you can wear an old white top or buy a cheap white t-shirt or shirt as this will be burned/thrown away at a later date. If possible then wear white shoes/trainers (these don't need to be thrown away after)
- Taoist/Buddhist Priests Because of the lock down restrictions we couldn't hold a full ceremony but we did manage to have two Taoist priests conduct the funeral playing loud music to ward off evil spirits. We had an open coffin at the funeral parlor where friends and family came to pay their respects but during the sealing of the coffin, everyone was to turn away as this symbolizes separation of the dead from the living and is considered bad luck to watch.
- Food in earth pot (分火direct translation- Dividing the fire?) Each of us siblings took turns to take some of the glutinous rice and chicken and put it into two earth pots. This will later be buried with my father and to ensure he will always have food in his afterlife.
After each of us did this we then had to in turn eat a small bit of rice remaining on the plate.
- Breaking of a comb and mirror This signifies the separation and breaking of the relationship between husband and wife (my mother and father) and so that my father can go into the afterlife with no worries or regrets. My mother was then instructed to keep her half on her bedside for 7 days to show respect and the other half will be buried with my fathers coffin.
- Funeral car made a stop outside our home Traditionally coffins and caskets are kept at the home but in modern day they are kept at funeral parlors. So on the funeral day the funeral hearse must make a stop outside the family home for the soul to visit home for the last time.
- Talismans Special talismans were made by the priests and stuck on all rooms of our house and on the coffin to guard from evil spirits.
- Car movement back and forth three times Additional prayers are made and family members hold onto the hearse and the hearse is to move back and forth slowly 3 times. Symbolising bowing 3 times and the separation to this life and our family home.
- Road spirit paper car seating arrangements The eldest son usually sits in the first car following the hearse if not next to the coffin. A long, lit joss stick is held in the same incense pot used in the home throughout the
journey to the cemetery, symbolizing the soul of the deceased; it is relit immediately if it goes out. Cars following behind will scatter biodegradable joss paper throughout the entire journey to the burial ground. My brother had to hold a tray that held the incense pot with joss stick, cups and the red memorial plaque that the Taoist priest prepared for us. My nephew sat in the seat behind holding a photo of my father.
- Lowering of the coffin
Upon lowering the coffin those born in certain years should avoid watching as this will bring bad luck to them. Usually an advice slip is given before the funeral so everyone can check if they are on the list. But my advice is- everyone should turn away during the lowering of the coffin. The two earth pots with the rice and chicken, as well as the rice bowl with two chopsticks and boiled egg, the broken mirror and comb was then given to the grave diggers to put on top of the coffin.
Family members and other relatives now throw a handful of earth into the grave before it is filled.
- lucky money/sweets
After the family should give lucky money in 1) Hong Kong tradition: a red envelope and a sweet to everyone at the funeral to bring good luck. 2) Chinese born Vietnamese tradition: a coin/money wrapped in white paper or in a white envelope to everyone at the funeral to bring them good luck.
- Route home. Loud music is then played to ward off evil spirits when returning home to scare off evil spirits. A different route should also be used to go home as it is believed that spirits that followed you on the way to the funeral can follow you back home. We brought back the incense pot and placed this back onto the altar.
After the funeral
The family usually holds a banquet for all that attended the funeral. But we were in lock down 3.0 so we couldn't do this. So we all went back to our own homes and had a quiet meal.
- Pomelo leaves water and joss paper Before entering your home you must wash your hands in pomelo leaves water (柚葉水) and leap over a small fire pit of burning white spirit paper(跨過火盤). Pomelo leaves are spiritually cleansing because they belong to the sacred pomelo tree. We had our pomelo water prepared the night before and infused with a talisman prepared by the Taoist priest. We also prepared some in a large bottle to bring the the grave side to wash hands of those who attended the funeral but were not coming back to our home due to the lock-down restrictions.
100 days of Mourning
Family members signify their continued mourning for another 100 days by wearing a colored cloth on their sleeve. The deceased’s children wear black cloth, grandchildren wear blue, and great grandchildren wear green. If the deceased was a child or wife, the mourning period is not observed.
- No celebrations, no bright colours Some only follow this for 7 days, 49 days, 100 days or more. I don't think there is a right or wrong. Over the years there has been so many changes to suit modern day life. In the old days, the mourning clothes had to be worn for 3 years, which is not practical in today's world.
So here is what my family did during the 100 days. (100 days from the death of my father and not 100 days after the funeral)
We had a few birthdays during this period but we were not allowed to celebrate as we were still in mourning, instead we had a quiet one. Presents and cakes were still allowed but no well wishes and candles or birthday songs were allowed. No weddings.
We also opted for dull somber colours during this period.
- No Chinese new year celebrations for 1 year as the Chinese believe that we should not celebrate what was not a good year. We still did our usual Chinese new year preparations, cleaning of the ancestral altar, ancestral offerings, fengshui preparations but we were not allowed to give or receive any lucky red packets.
- No visiting others homes This was not hard as we were in lock down 3.0. But usually you would not be allowed to visit other peoples homes as we could be bringing them bad luck. Others can however visit your home.
- Wearing black cloth on our sleeves my siblings and I all had to wear a piece of black cloth and my nieces and nephews blue, pinned by a safety pin. This has been an adaption to to suit the modern day world, where as in the past hemp mourning clothes had to be worn.
- No hair cuts this was easy for me and my sisters, but my brother had to go 100 days without shaving. Which wasn't that bad actually seeing as we were in lock down.
We were told by the priest that after the funeral we no longer needed to burn incense and offer food everyday and just when we wanted to. But we continued to burn incense and offer three meals a day until the 100th day as it felt right and we had been doing it for 30 days already. We only burned incense during meal times, but we did keep a candle burning for the 100 days. After this we switched to using LED tapered candles.
During the mourning period we wanted to give up something to gain merits for my father in the afterlife so we decided to go Vegan, We felt that if we made a sacrifice, we would be gaining merits for my father to give him a better chance of a better afterlife, although my father was a wonderful honest man, he probably didn't need the extra merits but we wanted to do something for him.
A lot of Chinese traditions are slowly becoming lost with the younger generations; with a lot of us relying on the guidance of the older generations. During my fathers funeral my sister and I found ourselves searching the internet on the different customs and what they symbolised. We read multiple articles in English and in Chinese (my parents would be pleased to know that sending us to Chinese school for 10 years was not a waste of school fees LOL). We gathered bits of information here and there and together with my siblings we made all the arrangements and preparations for the funeral so that our mum didn't have to.
So I hope this post will help those who need to prepare for a Chinese funeral and those who are interested in the Chinese funeral customs.
"As long as you have the heart..."
"只要你有心...."
11 months after my dad passed away my Mother also passed away. Read here how we prepared for my mothers funeral during the pandemic. Some things were done slightly differently. Rituals performed by the Taoist priest will be different depending if the deceased was male or female and whether they passed away at home or away from home.