Page 87 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 80
Coffin

guan

The Chinese believed that two souls inhabited the human body; and funeral
ceremonies had to take this into account.
Well-to-do people provided themselves during their life-time with coffins made of
good hard wood, with an air-tight lid. In the side, a hole was left through which the hun-
soul could pass, to stand trial in the underworld and thereafter be born again as a human
being or as an animal.
The po-soul (or sentient-soul), on the other hand, must not be allowed to escape, as
otherwise it would haunt its relatives as a ghost. The very thought of rotting boards
in the family graves was enough to give people sleepless nights.
In South China, far less attention was paid to the coffin, since the deceased had in any
case to be disinterred after two years so that his bones could be ‘washed’ and laid in a
clay urn ( vase).
If you dream about a coffin, it means that you are going to get an official post: this is
because the word for ‘official’ (guan) is a homonymic of guan = coffin.

Cold

leng-qi

Cold goes along with poverty. So a ‘cold scholar’ is a poor scholar (or, in other
contexts, a sly beggar).
On the 105th day after the winter solstice (4 April) the ‘Cold Food’ feast was
observed. On this day, no fires were kindled, and people ate food prepared the previous
day. It seems possible that this observance reached China from Western Asia where
it had been originally a spring festival in honour of the equinox (when the new
year begins).
In Chinese tradition, this festival also figures as an act of remembrance for Jie-zi Tui.
According to legend, this man had been invited by the Duke of the feudal state of Jin to
serve him as minister. Tui refused all overtures and finally the Duke decided to take
drastic measures – he ordered that the forest in which Tui dwelt should be set on fire.
But Tui preferred death in the flames to serving a prince whose policies he could
not endorse.