What should you pay attention to when giving money when attending a funeral?
Wrap money in a white bag. The amount of money depends on local customs. Red envelopes should be given to relatives when arriving or before the ceremony.
When attending a funeral or condolence event, both men and women should wear dark clothing such as black and blue. Men can wear white or dark shirts. Women should not wear lipstick or bright scarves and try to avoid wearing them. For jewelry, if necessary, consider white pearls or plain jewelry, and avoid wearing gold.
Care and comfort are very necessary for the relatives of the deceased. Some excessive actions such as crying should be avoided, and attention should also be paid to the wording. As a condolences, you can generally say, "This incident really touched me." I am grieving, please express my condolences. "This happened too suddenly. I sincerely express my condolences. Please take care of yourself." It is taboo to use words such as "death" and "miserable" that are reminiscent of misfortune.
Funeral venues are solemn, and condolences should restrain their words. Talking loudly, laughing and playing are disrespectful to the deceased and his family. Only by speaking in a lower voice and acting slowly and steadily can you show sincerity and grace. There are great differences in customs and habits among different ethnic groups, different regions, as the saying goes, "there are different customs in ten miles".
The old funeral tradition of the Han people emphasizes heavy burials and rich burials, and is mixed with many superstitious customs. Burial in coffins has been popular among the Han people since ancient times. The funeral is grand and carried out in three stages: exhumation, funeral and burial.
Encourage means dressing the corpse and placing it in the coffin. When a person dies for the first time and before he is buried, the soul of the deceased must be summoned and bathed. There are two steps of burial: small coffin and large coffin. A small coffin is used to wrap the body in a quilt, usually cloth, rich people use silk, and some royal families use jade clothes. The body is put into the coffin. The coffin is called "Shou coffin". The male coffin is engraved with the character "Shou", the female coffin is engraved with the character "福", and some are engraved with the combination of the three characters "福, Lushou". Rice is also placed in the mouth of the deceased during the burial. Wealthy families include bis, beads, etc., royal families include jade, and in modern times, rice is placed in the mouth of the deceased. They are all called "rice containing". Some items are often buried along with the burial. Most people have clothes, quilts and daily necessities. Rich families and royal families have many and valuable burial items.
Funeral means placing the coffin in the funeral palace after the burial. The length of the funeral period varies, ranging from 3 days to 30 days, mainly determined by the mourner. In ancient times, the coffin was usually kept in the coffin for 3 months, and sometimes it took up to 7 months. According to the traditional custom of the Han people, when a parent dies, the children must go to the funeral, otherwise it is considered unfilial. Relatives and friends will mourn and pay homage to the deceased in the future, which is called "mourning" or "condolences." All mourners must wear mourning clothes. In ancient times, the mourning clothes of the Han people were divided into five types: zhansheng, qixian, dagong, xiaogong and weaving linen, which were called the "five clothes". Wear linen and wear filial piety." In modern times, white cloth is often used as mourning clothes. In modern cities, it is common to wear white flowers on the chest and black gauze on the arms.
Burial means burying the remains of the deceased, that is, placing the coffin into the ground. According to old customs, before burial, one often has to look at Feng Shui and choose a cemetery, which is called "choosing an auspicious place." Funeral is also called funeral. During funerals, the ancient Han people usually held the mourning ribbon in front of the "filial son", and those who carried the coffin sang elegy. Elegies evolved into sad music in recent times and modern times. Relatives and friends wrote elegy words or elegiac couplets at the funeral. In modern times, it evolved into sending wreaths with elegiac couplets written on them. In ancient times, there was the custom of burying people (mainly close relatives, close ministers and close attendants, which still existed in the Qing Dynasty). Later, they were gradually replaced by pottery figurines, and in modern times, human figures tied with paper were buried with them. After the funeral, there are memorial ceremonies for seven days, seven days off, one hundred days, and anniversaries, etc., and the tablets are returned to the ancestral hall. This has changed from a ritual for people during a funeral to a ritual for "ghosts" and "ancestral spirits" .
In addition, the Han people also have the custom of "return burial", which is to bury the remains of those who died in other places back to their place of origin. During the funeral, relatives of the deceased should wear mourning clothes and keep vigil in the mourning hall. In the ancient Chinese etiquette system, filial piety clothes were divided into five grades according to the closeness of the blood relationship with the deceased. In modern Chinese, there is also the word "five clothes" to indicate the distance of the blood relationship. The mourning robe is made of white cloth, which is very different from the Western custom of wearing white robes as a formal dress. During the Qing Dynasty, an Englishman came to China for the first time and found it very strange when he encountered a funeral procession where everyone was wearing white clothes but looking painful and sad. In ancient times, people sang elegy during funerals. Tao Yuanming, the great poet of the Jin Dynasty, wrote three "elegy poems" for himself during his lifetime. The elegiac couplets and elegies of later generations evolved from the elegies of ancient times.
The scale of the funeral ceremony is closely related to the status of the deceased. In feudal society, there were strict regulations on funeral rituals for people with different statuses. Princes, nobles and wealthy families often use grand funeral ceremonies to show off their power. In "A Dream of Red Mansions", it is written that Qin Keqing died in the Ningguo Mansion. The coffin used was worth thousands of taels of silver. Two to three hundred monks and Taoists chanted sutras. The funeral procession was "mighty and mighty, as heavy as a mountain of silver." As the poor people cannot even meet the basic needs of food and clothing, naturally they cannot talk about "heavy burials and generous burials". Sometimes the body can only be wrapped in a mat and buried hastily.
After the death of an elder, the descendants have to stay at home for twenty-seven months, during which time they stop socializing and entertainment. Officials must also leave their jobs and go home to observe filial piety to express their condolences to their elders, which is called "keeping the system".