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The eldest sister said to the youngest. We must be good to each other, we may not be sisters in our next lives.
Close relatives, especially females, are expected to display grief. The three daughters and two granddaughters wept in unison, for about five minutes, interrupted by cries of love and affection for the dead mother.
When the author lived in Hoi Ping Road in the 1950s a Chinese woman in a nearby flat, on her husband's death, engaged in continual spells of pitiful crying, interrupted by high-pitched, stereotype wailing, over several days. Public demonstrations of anguish, partly as 'notifications of death', are common for widows, especially for the less well-to-do. Men also can be lauded for overt displays of grief. This serves as an incentive for the deceased's spirit to exercise benevolence on descendants. However, it is important not to cry on coffins as the character for 'tears' puns with 'tiresome'.
Mute dejection does not usually satisfy. After the funeral of Sir Edward Youde (Governor of Hong Kong at the time) in 1986, a group of well-educated Chinese expressed surprise and tacit 'disapproval' that no outward expressions of grief were displayed by relatives.
Cultures obviously vary. As a child in England in the 1920s, the author recalls his mother sewing a diamond-shaped piece of black cloth to the upper-arm of his father's jacket when an uncle passed away. In Hong Kong, until the 1950s and 1960s, it was common for women to wear white, blue, or green wool rosettes in their hair to signify a death. The colour depended on the relationship of the person to the deceased and the rosette had to be pinned on at the correct hour. If it fell off in the street, the wearer was not supposed to pick it up. Children are sometimes scolded for putting white objects in their hair while playing.
Customs have changed rapidly in Hong Kong following World War II. They have also changed rapidly in China since 1949. Today, in large cities in China, people no longer employ traditional Chinese funerary rites, although they are still followed in rural areas. In the New Territories of Hong Kong, traditional Chinese funerals still take place, while urban Hong Kong, with its congestion and rapidly improving living conditions, has evolved its own style of funeral. Although all Chinese funerals follow the same basic format and are the same for emperors as for commoners, Cantonese have a number of...