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A one-inch diameter, ancient bronze-coin, costing $60, with a 1/4-inch square hole in the centre (a pearl or jade object is sometimes used instead), had been placed in the mouth of the corpse. This practice can be traced back to Liangzhu culture in ancient China 3,900 to 4,900 years ago. The purpose of this talisman is to deter evil, to prevent body spirits escaping before purification and to safeguard the corpse against rapid decay.
It was expected that the dead person's spirit would come to the funeral parlour. There were two bowls of peanut oil with a wick made from dried seaweed in the farewell room, 'to lead her on her way'. A packet of cooked rice and a pair of chopsticks lay on the floor to placate fierce dogs which she would meet three weeks after death on the road to heaven. Possessions she treasured, such as special clothes, a cassette of Chinese songs and her handbag with knickknacks, including magnifying glass, cigarettes, lipstick, compact and a piece of jade, were placed in the coffin. Coffin jade, which has been reclaimed after many years of burial, is valued for 'protective' properties. For practical reasons keys and a notebook, which contained telephone numbers, were not placed in the casket. Nor were spectacles. Cremation would splinter them and they could injure the corpse although there seems to be a contradiction here with the magnifying glass.
Also at the back of the hall, on the left of the altar, was a stove around which relatives and close friends, including children, folded 'gold' and 'silver ingots' out of tin-foil. These imitation bars, together with pieces of paper resembling bank notes (a tale has it that a little boy once found one and went to the bank to try to cash it), were burned continuously until midnight. Money is needed by the dead, among other purposes, to bribe officials to obtain good positions in the after-world. Five Buddhist nuns with shaved heads and colourful robes chanted prayers. One had a series of initiation, incense stick burn marks on her scalp.22
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Chinese children take part in funerals, and, with the extended family, it is important they 'farewell the dead'. This appears in no way traumatic. With English funerals children tend not to participate. Certainly with the author's generation (pre-World War II) death was a taboo subject for the young.
A Chinese saying has it: