Page 165 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 158
There are some interesting beliefs in Chinese folklore in connection with the water-
melon. The written character for gua (see above) can be divided down the middle, and
if the top ends are brought together each half can be read as the character for ‘eight’.
‘Twice times eight’ is a metaphor for a marriageable girl (by our reckoning she is only
15 years old). One can put this graphically by saying that the girl ‘is as old as the divided
gourd (po gua)’. The expression can also refer to her first menstruation or even to
her defloration, if one thinks of the red-coloured inside of the water-melon.
‘Melon-seed’ is a poetic expression for a girl’s teeth.
In the province of Canton, a melon must never be presented to anyone as a gift, as the
word xi in xi-gua = water-melon is pronounced in Cantonese exactly like the word for
‘death’, ‘dying’ (si in guo yu). (See also bottle-gourd.)

Grave

fen-mu

The grave was often looked upon in China as the dwelling-place of the deceased person.
There are countless versions of the story in which a wayfarer comes by night to a fine
house in which he is received and looked after by a young woman: when he wakes up in
the morning he finds himself in a grave. Other legends tell how a pregnant woman dies
and then comes every day from her grave as a living woman to feed the baby. The food
she buys is paid for with ‘death-money’ (i.e. worthless paper money, not coins) as it later
turns out. People look for the grave, and find in it a living child.
At burial, the dead were given everything they might need: household goods; in the
case of rich people, even horses and a carriage. For this reason, the imperial tombs were
guarded by ‘grave-watchers’, who ran their profession as a sort of enslavement or
bondage, passed on from father to son. Some idea of the unimaginable wealth that went

into the tomb along with an Emperor can be got from the partial excavation of the grave
of Shi Huang-di, the first Emperor of China (3rd century BC).
Until quite recently, the dead were buried at ‘favourable’ spots specially
recommended by an expert in geomancy. If this were neglected, there was always
the danger that one’s ancestors would be unable to rest in peace and that their
descendants would therefore be plagued by bad luck and all sorts of unpleasantness.
It was customary to plant trees round a grave: trees which in after years gave shade to
wayfarers on the hot plains, timber for building to the peasants, and beneath the trees
grass for the cows. Cremation – now officially favoured – was once practised only by
Buddhist monks, or as a punishment for criminals. By the Middle Ages, however, funeral
offerings were often burned. In later years and nowadays, these offerings are represented
by paper models which are invariably ritually burned.
In olden days, people kept ‘house urns’. This may be connected with the ceremony of
the ‘second burial’ which is still fairly common in South China. A couple of years or so
after initial burial the body is exhumed, the bones are cleaned and then placed in a clay