Scythe and the City: A Social History of Death in Shanghai

scythe and the city

Scythe and the City a social history of death in shanghai

Christian Henriot

stanford university press stanford, california

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. Assistance for the publication of this book was provided by the Chiang Chingkuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Henriot, Christian, author. Title: Scythe and the city : a social history of death in Shanghai / Christian Henriot. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2015050120 | isbn 9780804797467 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780804798747 (e-book) Subjects: lcsh: Death—Social aspects—China—Shanghai—History—19th century. | Death—Social aspects—China—Shanghai—History—20th century. | Shanghai (China)—Social conditions—19th century. | Shanghai (China)— Social conditions—20th century. Classification: lcc hq1073.5.c62 s534 2016 | ddc 306.90951/132—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050120  

Typeset by Newgen in 10 /12 Sabon







To my father, Albert (1927–1995), a craftsman who taught me what good work means

To my mother, Madeleine (1932–2012), who embedded music in my heart

To minanna Antoinette (1910–1989), for her unmatched resilience and generosity With love

Contents

ix

Introduction

1

1. Scythe and the City: The Measure of Death

9







List of Illustrations

43





2. Guilds, Charities, and the Community Management of Death





3. Funeral Companies and the Commoditization of the Dead Body

95 143

5. Foreign Cemeteries and the Colonial Space of Death

195



225

7. Funerals and the Price of Death

259



6. Invisible Deaths, Silent Deaths







4. A Final Resting Place: From Burial Grounds to Modern Cemeteries

309

9. The Management of Death under Socialism

339

Conclusion

361

Abbreviations Used in the Notes

367





Bibliography Index

369



Notes









8. The Cremated Body: From Social Curse to Political Rule

449 475

Illustrations

Tables 19



1.1. Age at death of Huzhou people in Shanghai (1933–1940)

20

1.3. Population density in Shanghai in the postwar period

25





1.2. Number of deaths and death rate in Shanghai (1950–1965)

31

2.1. Guilds involved in managing death in Shanghai (1950)

46







1.4. Number of vaccinations in the Shanghai municipality (1946–1949)

49

2.3. Year of foundation of guild graveyards

52

2.4. Size of the guild cemeteries in 1950

59







2.2. Range of funeral services offered by guilds in 1950



2.5. Length of stay in Shanghai of a sample of Ningbo sojourners (1942–1943)

70



102

3.2. Annual income of four coffin repositories (February 1941)

106



3.1. Rise of funeral parlors and coffin repositories in wartime

140

6.1. Number of exposed corpses and abandoned coffins collected by the SPBC in Shanghai (1915–1954)

231







3.3. Status of the stored coffins in guild repositories in 1951





6.2. Number of exposed corpses and abandoned coffins collected by the Tongren Fuyuantang in the French Concession (1929–1941) 236 292

7.2. Price list of the Nanshi Funeral Parlor in August 1948

293







7.1. Funeral service packages offered by the China Funeral Home in 1933

295

7.4. Coffin storage rates in August 1946

295







7.3. Storage fee and number of coffins per rate level of four coffin repositories in 1941

7.6. Rates for burial lots in the Jiating Cemetery (1947–1948)





7.5. Rates for burial space and vaults in SMC cemeteries (1938–1943) 297 299

x

Illustrations

300

7.8. Shipping rates for coffins in 1939 and 1942

302





7.7. Proposed rates for private cemeteries (1949)



7.9. Funeral packages offered by a group of cemeteries (1947–1948) 306 315

9.1. Membership and income of the funeral industry (1949–1955)

343







8.1. Number of cremations at the Bubbling Well Crematorium (1897–1940)



9.2. Members of the Federation of Corporations, Guilds, and Cemeteries in 1951

346

Maps 11

1.2. Population density in 1935

24





1.1. General map of Shanghai

53

2.2. Coffin repository of the Zhe-Shao Guild in 1946

89





2.1. Distribution of guild cemeteries in and around Shanghai in 1918

103

3.2. Distribution of funeral parlors, guilds, and commercial coffin repositories (1940s)

104

3.3. Growing inventory of stored coffins (1937–1941)

111

3.4. Growing inventory of stored coffins (1942–1946)

112

3.5. Major coffin shipping lines in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui

125

4.1. Distribution of charity cemeteries in and around Shanghai in 1918

154

4.2. Distribution of private cemeteries around Shanghai in 1948

164





















3.1. Spatial timeline of funeral parlors and coffin repositories (before 1937–1945)

199

5.2. Foreign cemeteries in Shanghai

201

5.3. Bubbling Well Cemetery and the “resisting” lineage’s land lots

221









5.1. Shantung Road Cemetery, New Cemetery (Pahsienjao), and Pootung Cemetery (1900)

240

6.2. Distribution of children exposed corpses in the French Concession in 1938

241

7.1. Four funeral processions in Shanghai

276











6.1. Distribution of adult exposed corpses in the French Concession in 1938–1940

xi

Illustrations

287



7.2. Itinerary of the Wandering Ghosts Festival in 1896 7.3. Itinerary of the Wandering Ghosts Festival in 1937



288

Figures 34

1.2. 1938–1939 smallpox epidemic in the French Concession

36

2.1. View of the Yangzhou coffin repository

62









1.1. 1937 cholera epidemic in the foreign settlements (Chinese population)

67

2.3. Individual coffins awaiting loading on a Shanghai wharf

84

3.1. Number of stored coffins in the International Settlement

110

4.1. Coffin left aboveground in a field

147

4.2. View of a charity cemetery near Fuzhou

157

5.1. Number of burials in the Lokawei Cemetery (1918–1938)

203

5.2. Squatter huts in the Pootung Cemetery

215 229



6.1. View of a baby tower near Fuzhou

















2.2. View of a common room at the Yangzhou coffin repository in the 1940s

235

6.3. People watch as SPBC employees encoffin an exposed corpse

238







6.2. Children encoffined in a single coffin at the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery



6.4. Tongren Fuyuantang pedicab used to pick up the exposed corpses of children

252

6.5. Truckload of coffins taken to burial by the Tongren Fuyuantang 253 264

7.2. Coffin on the move in the street

265





7.1. Chinese coffin shop in Shanghai (1940s)



7.3. Decorated funeral parlor for Fu Xiao’an’s funeral service (1940) 267 268

7.5. Funeral procession (1890s–1900s)

269

7.6. Chinese elite coffin catafalque with thirty-two pallbearers







7.4. Funeral procession of a Chinese official on Nanking Road

272 273

7.8. Funeral of a commoner in Beijing (1920s)

279

7.9. Funeral procession in the countryside around Shanghai

279







7.7. Large paper figures in a funeral procession

Introduction

This book was born from an unexpected, almost accidental encounter. It had never occurred to me that I would direct my attention to the topic of death. Like many of my fellow historians, I can trace the underlying forces that led me to study the various historical issues that eventually turned into books, even if the choice was neither conscious nor deliberate.1 My work on war resonates with the background of my family during World War II. Prostitutes, refugees, slum dwellers, and other social nobodies probably have to do with my growing up in a multicultural milieu of hard-working manual laborers. Studying death was not related to anything personal, even if this book is my tribute to those who brought me up. My first step into studying death in Shanghai was related to the cycle of workshops on history and visual sources Professor Yeh Wen-hsin (University of California, Berkeley) and myself started organizing in 2003.2 For our second meeting in Tokyo in 2004, we took the body as the main theme of the workshop. As my own research at the time focused on wartime Shanghai, the visual representation of bodies of combatants offered a potential line of investigation. I was not interested in the images of soldiers in action produced mostly for propaganda purposes. My focus was on the suffering body, on the pain and scars warfare inflicted upon the human body, on death in combat, and on remembrance. To my great dismay and surprise, my first foray into the archives revealed very little on military deaths, despite the magnitude of the carnage in 1937. Except for the partial records of hospitals for wounded soldiers and crude statistics, there was no record of the fallen Chinese soldiers. Eventually, but years later, I managed to dig up some materials on the casualties in the 1932 Battle of Shanghai.3

2

Introduction

­

The exploration of archives, however, proved extraordinarily rewarding. It opened windows on a whole range of issues on death in wartime Shanghai that eventually raised much broader questions about death in the city. The issue of death loomed large in Shanghai and Chinese cities in the modern era. In the rich body of historiography produced in the last two decades, however, this topic is almost absent. While works in urban history have brought an increasingly sharper focus on life in a whole spate of cities, on specific categories of the population, on cultural processes, death is hardly mentioned. In earlier historical studies, death was associated with political violence, repression, and summary executions (e.g., 12 April 1927), but these were collective and anonymous deaths. At the other end of the spectrum, death struck particular individuals, especially in times of revolution and war. Political assassinations, from Manchu officials before 1911 to Song Jiaoren or Shi Liangcai in the Republican era, reached their apex with the brutal murders the nationalist, collaborationist, and Japanese secret services perpetrated in the early phase of the Sino-Japanese War. Yet this remained within the realm of political violence.4 What could we learn then about ordinary death in Chinese cities or in a large metropolis like Shanghai? The short answer was very little indeed, as discussed below. In view of the numerical importance of deaths in Chinese cities and their conspicuous presence in the public space through funerals, the movement of coffins on the streets, or exposed corpses, I expected that studies devoted to popular or street culture would touch on this issue.5 Even in works devoted to hygiene and public health, death was simply alluded to, sometimes not at all, in relation to sanitary conditions, epidemics, or public health policies.6 As an object of scholarly focus, death in China has been the privileged domain of anthropology.7 The most serious attempt to address the issue of death in modern Chinese society was the volume edited by James Watson and Evelyn Rawski in 1985, Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China. By and large, however, this volume focused on rural society.8 Mechthild Leutner’s work on modern Beijing offered a glimpse on death in an urban setting, but its wide temporal coverage somehow undermined its purpose.9 In Chinese scholarship, death is almost totally absent from historical research, except for a couple of papers.10 All existing related studies—most appeared in the 1990s—are centered on the history of funerals (sangzang shi) and the study of customs, burials, and tombs from antiquity to Qing times.11 The modern period is rarely touched upon and only in philosophical terms.12 The geographical scope encompasses the whole country, though three studies focused on more specific areas like Jiangsu-Zhejiang, Sichuan, and the Lower Yangzi region.13 Cities as such were never taken as a relevant space for the study of death.14

Introduction

3

For an understanding of death in China, we are left mostly with the classic works of de Groot and Doolittle on nineteenth-century Fujian.15 These extraordinary studies, especially de Groot’s, are extremely detailed in their own way. Yet they focus essentially on the rituals associated with elite funerals and burials in the Quanzhou area. They do not tell us how cities dealt with death as they developed after the mid-nineteenth century. We come closer to the management of death in urban settings with the studies of the native-place associations in Shanghai and Hankou by Bryna Goodman and William Rowe. They have contributed most to what we know about various aspects of death in late imperial and Republican cities.16 Japanese historian Hiroyuki Hokari has also produced a wellinformed study on the role of community networks in managing death in Shanghai.17 This brief review shows that there was little historiographical basis to take up the issue of death in modern Shanghai. This fell short of the rich and varied historiography to be found in European history. In Europe, the history of death is linked to the work of French historian Philippe Ariès. His major studies of death in Western culture had a large influence and shaped the field.18 Yet the interest of historians in death predated Ariès’s work by two decades, with major books and dissertations since the 1960s. These studies fit in the broader historical trend of histoire des mentalités.19 The expression itself, “history of death,” faded away in the following decades, even if there was a new surge in the history of death by historians as well as anthropologists and sociologists.20 Of particular interest for my own research were the studies that focused on death and the dead body in the urban context, even if most examined the premodern period.21 British historians have contributed significantly to the study of death from a historical perspective.22 By and large, the Victorian era has caught the attention of most historians.23 Using both conventional historical materials and private papers, British historians have examined the transformation of the space of death in cities, especially the move away from churchyards to modern cemeteries to cremation,24 the economy of death, in particular the commoditization of the dead body,25 and the private realm of grief and mourning in an attempt to unveil the emotions of individuals.26 These were inspiring readings in my own attempt to situate the experience of death in the Chinese cultural context and in the specific urban setting of Shanghai, where both foreigners and Chinese were involved in redefining the norms and conventions under which the dead were disposed of.27 Before its opening to foreign trade in the mid-nineteenth century, Shanghai was a secondary city in the Lower Yangzi area, yet one that played a significant role as a commercial hub for major goods such as cotton. A customs station since the Song dynasty, the city thrived on trade that brought increasing numbers of sojourners from various parts of China.

Introduction

5

evolved through the friction between the set of time-honored values and the transformative force of urbanity and modernity. In Shanghai, but throughout southern Chinese cities, the care of the dead was the responsibility of families and native-place or benevolent associations. Whereas religion intervened in rituals, religious organizations played virtually no role in the management of death, nor did the Chinese state until the advent of the Nationalist government in 1927. The overriding concern for all Chinese was the issue of a proper individual burial site, a place that was one’s own, alone or in a lineage burial site. Mixing up bodies, as in the charity cemeteries, or dumping them anywhere, as in the practice of “coffins aboveground,” challenged social norms and was believed to have a potentially disruptive effect on the living. Improper burial not only was perceived as dangerous—the wandering and angry ghosts that resulted from bad deaths—but also was a sign of social disorder to be prevented at all cost. Finally, the overriding concern of sojourners for burial in the native place produced a culture where the sense of place, not, as in the West, a single sacred site, defined and molded a distinctive and elaborate system and economy of funeral practices. Throughout the Republican period, Shanghai was like a gigantic funnel that swallowed up lives by the thousands, even in times of peace. The city was not different from the premodern French cities that drained population from the countryside to maintain their lifeline or the British cities, especially London, of the first industrial revolution.29 By the twentieth century, however, mortality rates dropped sharply in Europe. In Shanghai, however, migration continued, not just to provide the city with the crucial manpower that sustained its industrial and commercial growth, but also to compensate the persistently decimated ranks of laborers. Poor people without relatives or whose relatives could not support them died or were dumped in the street, on the pavement, in squares, on marketplaces, in back alleys, virtually anywhere. Their exposed bodies became a threat to social order as well as a risk for public health. In Shanghai, taking care of the poor and destitute, alive or dead, actually became a major activity of benevolent societies.30 In studying death in Shanghai, my interest lies in the forms and expressions of death in a major urban setting, how the Chinese popular practices and beliefs associated with death evolved over time, and the modalities of managing death from the late imperial period to the first decade of the People’s Republic of China. While beliefs and customs tend to change only gradually, different factors and events have an impact that propels adaptation and eventually the adoption of new practices. War comes to mind as a type of event that creates circumstances under which society may lose its grip on established rituals. State power constitutes another major

6

Introduction

factor for change, not the least because each institution and regime tried to introduce or impose policies and rules to effect a major adjustment and transformation in society. While the foreign settlements sought to implement regulations that addressed mostly issues of public health, both the Nationalist and Communist regimes endeavored to regulate and transform more radically almost the whole spectrum of practices and beliefs associated with the disposal of the dead. From the relative laissez-faire posture of the late Qing to the prescriptive regulations of the Communist regime, the dead body became a central object of concern and a constant source of tension between state and society. The temporal scope of this study was defined by the sources as much as by the selection of the issues to address. Even looking into the nineteenth century from the time of the opening of the city to foreign trade, 1865 represents a new landmark with the beginning of the five-year census in the foreign settlements. As a historian, I am concerned with people, not just with norms, rituals, and regulations, and counting people provides an essential basis for an examination of death in a population. The final term of this study was dictated by two elements. In Shanghai, archives are open up to 1965–1966. There was too little beyond this threshold to uphold a research based on primary materials. Furthermore, the Cultural Revolution brought down most previous practices related to death and even destroyed the physical structures that still sustained these practices. This was the time when cremation eventually became the norm for the disposal of dead bodies. Part of the documentation in this text comes from European and American libraries and archives, but most of the source materials were collected at the Shanghai Municipal Archives. The “archives of death” are both very rich and sketchy. A large segment was drawn from the archives of the two foreign settlements in Shanghai. This was not a deliberate choice. It reflects the state of archival documentation. The “administration of death” did not rank high in the concern of the post-1927 Chinese municipalities until the Sino-Japanese War, while the archives of the Qing administration or those of the benevolent associations remain largely untraced.31 The archives of death are also partial for another reason. The authorities produced a considerable amount of documents on the routine management of infrastructures such as cemeteries, but they refrained largely from interfering with, or even regulating, the various institutions involved in the management of death in the city. Newspapers were a major source to supplement the archival trove. They infused the research with a more concrete sense of the tensions that stirred up the social body. Finally, a broad range of visual documents were collected and used, although here again there was a strong bias in favor of war-related pictures.

Introduction

7

As Ruby Watson points out, “Chinese popular religion did not put much emphasis on salvation,” which however was a major concern in Christian religion.32 From medieval times in Europe, a rich imagery presented believers with a wide array of representations of death, not the least with the body of Christ himself: “Visual culture prepared people for death during their own life-times.”33 Not so in China, where, in contrast, death was believed to have a pervasive negative influence and should be kept at bay. The only forms of visual representations of death were the portraits of the dead, later replaced by photographs. Chinese painters did not produce anything akin to the representation or the presence of death so common in European painting.34 Even in the twentieth century, photography never exhibited the body or the coffin of the deceased. Overall, however, the camera caught various aspects of funeral customs and funerary space that sometimes helped fill in the blanks of textual archives. Quite significantly, several attempts to identify literary texts that engaged with death beyond the mere mention of the passing away of a character failed to produce any substantial evidence. Chinese culture surrounded death with a thick wall of silence. My ambition when I started this research was to probe the “hearts and minds” of those who died in the past in the hope of writing a history of the social and cultural apparatus that framed the behaviors and the rules around the dead body as well as explore the individual emotions related to death, grief, and mourning. The private realm of people’s emotions, however, remained beyond my reach. I was able to touch on the change of sensibilities over time in studying how people reacted to certain situations, especially when facing official measures that challenged their beliefs or customs. This book is an attempt to delineate a social history of death in nineteenth- to twentieth-century Shanghai through a succession of vignettes on selected aspects of death in this large metropolis. Mostly, the focus is on the regular facets of death, excluding therefore the various forms of exceptional and brutal death such as military deaths, murders, and even suicides.35 Murder is a fascinating subject, even if Shanghai was far from being the murderous place popular stories depict and sometimes historians are prone to imagine. Yet there were murders and there are lots of murder cases in the archives that can take the historian to the murder scenes.36 Suicide is a topic on which much has already been written, especially female suicide. Except for Hou Yanxing’s and, in a different register, Bryna Goodman’s works, however, most studies have focused on statistics and failed to peer into the mountains of individual cases that await historical investigation in the archives.37 The study of death and death culture in Shanghai, and even more so in other cities in China, remains an open field.

1

Scythe and the City: The Measure of Death

Who died in Shanghai? What were the dynamics of mortality in the city? This chapter seeks to take the measure of death, to examine how death struck across age and social status and what caused people to die. The first difficulty in assessing what death meant in Shanghai is our ignorance of how many people lived in the city at any point in time. While the Chinese imperial administration had a long history of population count, the territorial unit in the premodern censuses—the county, not the city— encompassed both urban and rural areas. The main issue, however, was the absence of municipal administration and the loss of most archives during the rebellions of the nineteenth century. The situation in the foreign settlements was much better, even if actual population censuses started only in 1865. Yet the population in these areas represented only a small part of the total population until the turn of the century, when the settlements came at par with the Chinese-administered city. Moreover, the authorities in the two settlements conducted their population census independently and with different criteria and age groups. This chapter thus attempts to reconstruct the demography of the city to assess how many died in the city and to examine what managing death meant in such a large urban center. Numbers, however, do not tell the whole story. This chapter also explores such issues as the levels of mortality and the life expectancy of Shanghai residents to highlight the social distribution of death. Of course, reaching old age with generations of children and grandchildren was a strongly shared social ideal in Chinese society. Living in a city with modern amenities, medical infrastructure, and a higher standard of living should have created the conditions for a better and longer life. In the case of Shanghai, however, as in many other Chinese cities, other factors affected the life chances of the population, in particular epidemics that hit

10

Chapter 1

the city on a regular basis. Modern techniques of vaccination helped curb the death toll, but epidemics often left many dead on their trail for lack of access to proper medicine. The issue of infectious diseases became a matter of serious concern by the authorities that collected, albeit unsystematically, crucial data on the sanitary conditions in the city and on the health of the population. Wars and social disorders contributed their share of premature deaths, but diseases, especially the “diseases of poverty,” cut short the life of most people in large numbers and across the whole spectrum of age. Let us say it once and for all. We shall never know how many people actually lived and died in Shanghai. There is only a very dim hope that a complete set of statistical and demographic data will be dug up from some buried archives, especially for the nineteenth century, when archives were destroyed by fire. The historian needs to make do with this reality and work with the available series, which in spite of their inconsistencies shed enough light on the demographic transformation of the city to unveil several fascinating facets of the dark side of life and death in Shanghai.

Population Change in Shanghai

 

 

Over a period of 120 years, Shanghai experienced a dramatic population growth. In 1845, when the first foreigners moved into Shanghai, the city was a thriving and vibrant regional commercial center. Yet it was still a long way from the three-million international metropolis it became by the 1930s, a formidable demographic dynamic that went on after 1949. According to the post-1949 censuses, the Shanghai municipality had 6.15 million inhabitants in 1953 and 10.86 million in 1964, of which 5.35 million and 6.42 million lived in urban areas, respectively.1 This astonishing growth had serious implications on the demand for services to dispose of the dead.

The Demography of Shanghai: A Preliminary Assessment The demographic history of Shanghai is associated with Zou Yiren (1908– 1993). His study of population change in Shanghai before 1949 remains the classic work on which generations of historians have relied. 2 Zou’s work, completed in 1962, presents a compilation of demographic data gathered from published sources. As a result, the tables and figures on population form more a patchwork of available series than a systematic study of demographic sources.3 Zou’s difficulty in reconstructing the population data of Shanghai before 1949, however, could not be solved even with a full access to archival materials. My repeated forays in the collections of

11

Scythe and the City

 

the Shanghai Municipal Archives have convinced me that crucial documents were lost or destroyed.4 Although the surveys were made with detailed forms, these primary documents were not preserved or remain locked in archives to which scholars do not have access.5 In studying population change in Shanghai, the historian has to confront yet another difficulty: the heterogeneity of available data due to the existence of three separate administrative jurisdictions. After the establishment of foreign settlements in the city—International Settlement and French Concession—in the mid-nineteenth century, Shanghai developed under three different administrations, the Shanghai Municipal Council (International Settlement), the French Municipal Council (French Concession), and successive administrative bodies in the Chinese-administered districts before the creation of a modern municipality in 1927 (see Map 1.1).6 In the foreign settlements, the administrations carried out a population census every five years, with the last population count in 1942.7 Yet the two foreign administrations did not bother to coordinate their census practice until 1930. From 1865 to 1930, they used different statistical categories for age, sex, and so on. What they mostly cared about for a long time

Zhabei

an Hu

g p u R iv e r

International Settlement

Nanshi French Concession Street Railway Waterway Foreign settlement Village 0

1

2

3 km

map 1.1. General map of Shanghai. Source: Virtual Shanghai

12

Chapter 1

was simply to know how many people lived in their territory. They cared even less about how many died beyond crude statistics. It was not until 1937 that the issue of Chinese deaths became a matter of bureaucratic concern. In the Chinese-administered districts, the imperial administration made surveys of the population at the level of the county, not the city proper. Moreover, this population count was rather approximate and no archives from the nineteenth century have survived. The Shanghai Municipal Government (Shanghai Shi Zhengfu) carried out its first modern census in 1929, which thereafter it updated through the periodic registration of the population.8 The demographic history of Shanghai became blurry again with the war with Japan, both in 1932 and 1937. On the one hand, there were massive movements of population within the city and displacement out of the city. After 1941, because of food shortages, the Japanese military enforced a deliberate policy of evacuation to the countryside. After 1945, the city finally came under a single municipal administration that resumed the previous practice of systematic population registration. After 1949 and the takeover of the city by the Communist regime, the People’s Government strove to establish its administration on a serious basis. Both for political and economic reasons, it was essential for the new authorities to know how many people inhabited the city. For many years to come, the country would be placed under a rationing system that required the registration of all residents. Even if this was never fully accomplished—spontaneous migration interfered with a complete registration—the municipality definitely had a better grasp of its population count. Nationwide, a census was carried out in 1953, then again in 1964. Finally, one of the major stumbling blocks for a full comprehension of the demographic dynamics in Shanghai is the powerful flows of population that rushed into the city at times of disaster, resulting often from natural elements such as floods, but more frequently from conflicts and violence in the neighboring provinces. In the same way as people came, they left in high numbers once the crisis was over. The sudden influx of migrant population is especially relevant for our study of death in the city as these temporary residents increased the general mortality, sometimes substantially. Yet it is very difficult to estimate the number of people who moved in as they most often fell through the net of an inadequate registration system. It is even more difficult to assess how much they added to the mortality rate in the city. In the foreign settlements, the authorities introduced a system of death certificate for foreigners in 1870, but they failed to enforce this measure for the Chinese population.9 In the Chinese municipality it became compulsory after February 1928, but migrants and even permanent residents would simply evade these formalities.10 In 1942, the

Scythe and the City

13

­

superintendent of the Shanghai Municipal Police stated that approximately 40 percent of deaths in the International Settlement occurred without medical attention, therefore without the issuance of a death certificate.11 The generalization of death certificates was not in place until 1945, but even then the lower classes mostly did not bother with official documents. 12 As late as 1951, more than 40,000 exposed corpses were collected in the streets of Shanghai.13 In its original spatial configuration until 1845, Shanghai consisted of the walled city and its commercial and port suburbs along the Huangpu River. Zou Yiren assessed the population in 1850 at 544,413, but this figure clearly included more than just the residents of the walled city and its suburbs.14 It encompassed the whole Shanghai County. The successive editions of the Shanghai County Gazetteer (Shanghai xian zhi) provided population estimates that ranged from 527,472 in 1810 to 544,413 in 1852. Linda Johnston, in her study of pre-1842 Shanghai, placed the level of urban population in the early 1840s at about 250,000 adults, which a decade later must have been closer to 300,000.15 It increased steadily with the opening of the city to foreign trade as commercial opportunities drew thousands of new migrants from South China along with Westerners or lured them to Shanghai by the promise of jobs and trade opportunities. The 17-month-long rebellion of the Small Sword Society in 1853–1855 caused a serious setback, as thousands fled or died in the hands of the rebels. When the imperial forces regained control of the city, they carried out a merciless and indiscriminate repression, with entire neighborhoods burnt to the ground. Thousands of people were killed in the bloody conquest. There was no further massive massacre of population until the next century. On the opposite, the city received hundreds of thousands of refugees from the areas under the control of the Taiping armies.16 The total population was said to have reached 1.1 to 1.2 million living in extremely crowded conditions.17 While the largest part found their home behind the relative protection of the city walls, large numbers settled in the foreign settlements under the protection of extraterritoriality and foreign gunboats and soldiers. The momentum of sharp population increase lasted until the mid-1860s when the Taiping Rebellion eventually collapsed under the final assault of the imperial armies. With the return to peace and stability, the former residents of the main Lower Yangzi cities hailed back to their hometowns. Nevertheless, the Taiping Rebellion had left an enduring legacy of destruction that, combined with the expansion of foreign trade, definitely displaced the urban and commercial center of gravity in the Lower Yangzi area from Suzhou and Nanjing to Shanghai. The relative depression of the late 1860s made way for a renewed and steady increase of the population in the various districts of the city. An entirely new neighborhood emerged

14

Chapter 1

north of the International Settlement across Soochow Creek. Zhabei was on its way to becoming one of the most vibrant districts of Shanghai and, more tragically, one of the main purveyors of civilian casualties when war knocked twice on its doorstep in 1932 and 1937. For most of the nineteenth century, there is no population record to speak of in the Chinese-administered districts. From the 300,000 inhabitants of the 1850s, the walled city, its suburbs, and the new northern addition of Zhabei slowly grew to about 600,000 in 1910. With the development of modern industry after 1895, the population surged to 1,173,653 inhabitants by 1915. The first census in 1929 recorded 1,516,092 residents, but this included all the rural districts. In the city proper, the population stood at 961,846.18 At the time of the next census in 1935, the increase was formidable, as the population had passed the 2.0 million ceiling, with 1.3 million people in the urban districts. The Sino-Japanese War completely disrupted the distribution of the population as all the Zhabei residents left en masse to seek refuge in the foreign settlements and the residents of the southern districts proceeded likewise, though not entirely. In 1942, under a combination of political pressure and economic duress, the urban population decreased to slightly more than one million people. Demographic change in the foreign settlements was much better recorded. During the first decade of its existence, the British settlement had only a tiny population of a couple hundred to five hundred. During the Taiping Rebellion, however, the rule of exclusive residence by foreigners in the settlements was abandoned and the foreign settlements came to be populated by Chinese, hence the rapid growth from about 20,000 in 1855 to 92,000 in 1865. There was a slight depression until the mid-1870s, but in 1890, the figure had doubled from 1876 (97,335) and in 1905 it had more than tripled from the 1890 figure (171,950). Thereafter, a few benchmarks will highlight the constant progress: 500,000 in 1910, 1 million in 1930, and 1.2 million in 1937. The French Concession experienced a very slow development with only a few thousand residents before the Taiping Rebellion. There was a strong upsurge as reflected in the 1865 census, but the 55,925 recorded residents dropped to 33,460 in 1876. The area regained its 1865 population only thirty years later. In 1910, the population had doubled, but it took another fifteen years to triple to about 300,000, and then flirted with the 500,000 ceiling throughout the 1930s. There was an enormous population increase in both settlements after the outbreak of hostilities between China and Japan when nearly one million former residents of Zhabei and Nanshi sought refuge in the foreign areas. Even in 1942 when the population had decreased due to voluntary or forced repatriation to the countryside, the two settlements were home to

15

Scythe and the City

 

1,585,673 and 854,380 residents, respectively. Economic difficulties in the latter part of the war induced many inhabitants to leave the city. In 1945, the total population of the city had dropped to 3.3 million for the whole municipality, a loss of more than half a million since 1942. The civil war, however, soon pushed the figure upward. In 1946, the city had returned to its 1942 level, and in 1947, the police recorded a total of 4.2 million residents.19 In March 1949, on the eve of the Communist takeover, it had passed the 5.5 million ceiling.20 The new regime implemented a policy of evacuation of the population to decrease the pressure on jobs and food supply. Yet economic difficulties in the countryside again brought in large numbers of impoverished migrants.21 In July 1950, one year after the takeover, the total population stood at 4.8 million and by June 1951 it had gained 400,000 new residents.22 The introduction of hukou and a foodrationing system succeeded in reining in the fast demographic upsurge of the postwar period. At the first general census in 1953, the total population in the urban districts stood at 5.35 million. A decade later, the next census revealed an increase to 6.43 million.23 The demographic trajectory of Shanghai is impressive, although compared to London the growth may seem moderate—the population of London increased from 1 million in 1800 to 4.5 million in 1881 and 7 million in 1911.24 Both cities met with similar issues of housing supply, deteriorating public hygiene, litter in the streets, and polluted drinking water. Yet London’s built-up area kept expanding by swallowing rural land, while Shanghai’s remained much more concentrated, which resulted in much higher population densities. London’s highest density in 1941 was not even half the density in the Central District of the International Settlement. The experience of Shanghai resembles much more that of Bombay in the same time period.25 Moreover, Shanghai experienced sudden swings of population that placed considerable pressure on the city’s infrastructure. The much more hostile natural environment, renewed military conflicts, and lack of a unified municipal authority made the urban experience in Shanghai a bigger challenge which took its toll on the population.

Who Died in Shanghai? The measure of death in Shanghai establishes clearly that “old age” was not the most prevalent cause of death. Due to diseases, lack of proper medical attention, poor diet, and other factors, people of all ages died and in great numbers. Moreover, the various instances of violence, especially in 1932 and 1937, had a strong impact on mortality and its measure, both because more people died and because more deaths went unregistered.

16

Chapter 1

The International Settlement offers the longest series of vital statistics. The longest set covers the deaths of foreigners from 1880 to 1936. The data for the nineteenth century are partial and probably quite far off the mark. Although Jamieson, a prominent physician in the International Settlement, placed the mortality rate among the Chinese at 4.34 per mil for males and 6.13 per mil for females, the mortality rate was much higher until the turn of the century, between 18 and 25 per mil. Jamieson was aware of the deficiencies of his estimates, especially without a proper record of infant mortality or women’s death during or after childbirth, which could be as high as one in every five.26 In fact, Shanghai exhibited death rates that were about the same as in Paris in the same period, except in times of epidemics, especially cholera.27 The years 1910, 1925, and 1930 show high and stable mortality rates of 18–20 per mil among foreigners. As these figures were based on the fiveyear census, we do not know how the mortality rate fluctuated in the years between two censuses.28 In absolute numbers, however, foreign deaths in the International Settlement represented only a few dozen, 55 in 1880, to 560 in 1936. The Shanghai Municipal Council started recording vital statistics for the Chinese population only in 1902. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, the mortality rate was fairly stable. It fluctuated between 11 and 16 per mil, with an average of 12.3 per mil.29 The major difference, however, was in the absolute number of deaths. Every year, from 6,000 to 17,000 people died for whom no accommodation was made for burial in the municipal cemeteries. The land regulations proscribed the burial of Chinese in the foreign settlements, except for exceptional and limited cases such as preexisting charity or guild cemeteries. The several thousand bodies either had to find a place of rest in the local charity or village cemeteries (and after 1927 in the Chinese municipal cemeteries) or were shipped back to their native places, giving rise to a thriving business for transportation companies and guilds (see Chapters 2 and 3). In the Chinese municipality, from 1929 to 1936, the mortality rate slowly decreased from around 12.5 per mil in 1929–1931 to about 8 per mil in 1932 and 1935 and 10 per mil in 1934 and 1936. In absolute numbers, the total number of deaths hovered between 19,000 and 21,000, with a peak at almost 23,000 in 1930.30 In 1947, the population exhibited a low mortality rate of 6.4 per mil—26,700 deaths for a population of close to 4.2 million—which may have been due to the large influx of refugees, although it also reflected the lack of proper registration. The population increased by 600,000 residents in the course of the year. This compared with 65,206 births. Even if there was a clear reversal of the pattern of the death rate overshadowing the birth rate, the net increase in the population was due to immigration.31 In 1948, the situation continued to change with

Scythe and the City

17

another 400,000 new residents, of which 121,295 were due to new births. The total number of deaths reached 39,799 for the first ten months of the year, or a mortality rate of 7.8 per mil.32 All the figures about deaths, however, present a fundamental issue: many deaths were not reported. Only foreigners were duly recorded. Most Chinese residents did not report deaths. The highest number of unrecorded deaths, however, was of people whose bodies were discarded in back alleys and on vacant land throughout the city. As we shall see in Chapter 6, this was a widespread and massive phenomenon that needs to be reintegrated for a better understanding of population dynamics and the management of death in the city. Except in years of particular crisis, for example, 1932 or 1937, children under five represented on average 85 percent of the bodies collected in the streets of Shanghai. To take a simple example, the authorities recorded 8,888 deaths among those under fifteen in 1947. In the same year, the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery (SPBC), one of the major charity organizations in charge of collecting exposed corpses, picked up 13,638 bodies in the same age group.33 To come closer to the real level of mortality, therefore, it is not unreasonable to double the death rates for most years in the 1900–1936 period. This would place the rates at par with those in Hong Kong, where deaths were registered more systematically.34 Infant mortality was extremely high in Republican Shanghai. Whatever the set of figures, they point to a massive loss of lives among infants and children under five years. In 1938, 53.7 percent of all collected exposed bodies in the French Concession were infants under one year.35 In 1947, official statistics placed the infant mortality rate at 27.7 per mil. Yet this did not include the bodies picked up in the streets. By applying the same proportion of 53.7 percent to the 13,638 bodies collected by the SPBC, the mortality rate came to 127 per mil, almost five times more. Such high rates of infant mortality were more in line with the situation in nineteenthcentury European cities.36 The mortality rate for all infants in Paris declined from 16 per mil in 1881–1885 to 10 per mil in 1906–1910, even if higher rates could be observed in the poorer districts of the city.37 In London, infant mortality in the 1840s–1850s hovered between 12 and 16 per mil before declining to about the same level as Paris by 1891.38 Shanghai’s astounding high infant mortality rate certainly explains the widespread practice of dumping bodies without sepulture. Shanghai was a city of sojourners with a high ratio of unmarried residents, both males and females. In modern factories, for instance, female workers often worked a few years before returning to their home village to get married.39 All the other occupational sectors exhibited a clear pattern of male demographic dominance over women. Apart from the

18

Chapter 1

entertainment industry and prostitution, women gained a slow entry in the urban labor market as employees in administration, financial service, or department stores.40 Thus there was at all times far more male dead than female. The longest available series on the sex ratio come from the International Settlement. The ratio changed from nearly 3 to 1 in the 1870s to 2 to 1 at the turn of the century, to 1.5 to 1 after 1930. The sex ratio in the French Concession between 1910 and 1936 reflected very much the same pattern as in the International Settlement. In the Chinese municipality, however, there was a lower ratio, with 130 men for 100 women throughout the 1930s. This was the pattern still observed in 1947 with 126 men for 100 women.41 By 1950, the average stood at 1.2 to 1, but with great variations among the various districts.42 Given the transient nature of the foreign population in Shanghai, it is impossible to compute any kind of life expectancy. Yet a rich source provides some insight about age at death. Chinese guilds played a central role in the management of death in Shanghai, as discussed in Chapter 2. Depending on the size of their community, the guilds built coffin repositories where coffins were stored pending their shipping back to the home village. The guilds kept very precise records of the coffins entrusted to them. The age of the deceased was always recorded, which gives us the possibility to study the age at death of guild members and their families. I discovered several registers from the Huzhou, Guang-Zhao, and Yizhuang guilds for the modern period, from 1928 to 1941, with most of the data on the 1931–1940 decade. The people whose coffins were stored in the repositories represent a slightly biased sample of the population. The most well off probably would not place their dead with the guilds, while the poor were most often buried in the charity cemeteries. Yet it is also possible to consider that precisely the population that used the services of the guild fit in a large bracket of social status and occupation. They were representative of the common shimin, the petty urbanites who formed the majority of the population. This study used only the data from the Huzhou Guild because it is a very large sample that covers the 1933–1937 period before the SinoJapanese conflict. Altogether, the coffins of 2,845 people were recorded. This is not strictly speaking a demographically representative sample. It represents a section of the population—the Huzhou people—who died and entrusted their deceased to their guild. Yet it represents a sufficiently large group of people for whom we know the age at death to provide some insight into life and death in Shanghai (see Table 1.1). The share of children under 15 years stands at 24.2 percent. This is less than the percentage found in the official statistical records, especially when infants are included. Probably, many families did not incur the cost

19

Scythe and the City table 1.1. Age at death of Huzhou people in Shanghai (1933–1940) Age

85

Number

Percentage

Cumulative (%)

690 183 242 244 195 161 229 128 154 191 161 113 71 57 16 17 2,852

24.2 6.4 8.5 8.6 6.8 5.6 8.0 4.5 5.4 6.7 5.6 4.0 2.5 2.0 0.6 0.6 100.0

30.6 39.1 47.7 54.5 60.1 68.2 72.7 78.1 84.7 90.4 94.4 96.8 98.8 99.4 100.0

Source: Huzhou Guild, “Xiaotongjian jigui dice” [Register of entries], no. 3, 1936, Q165-6-33; “Zuotongjian jigui dice,” no. 5, 1936, Q165-6-33; “Xiaotongjian jigui dice,” no. 3, April–August 1936, Q165-6-34; “Youtongjian,” 1933–1937, Q165-6-37; “Youtongjian,” 1936, Q165-6-40, “Tebiejian,” 1931– 1937, Q165-6-37(2); “Tebiejian, Zhongzhengjian,” 1936–1937, Q165-6-39; “Zuotongjian, Tebiejian, Zhongzhengjian,” 1933–1936, Q165-6-45; “Xinjin jijiu haobu,” 1932–1936, Q165-6-41; “Nan nü daxiao lingjiu yunhu qingce, Nanxun,” 1936, Q165-6-46; “Dachang puyi gongmu di’er gongmu jizang lingjiu zhengshu,” 1936–1940, Q165-6-44; individual forms, 1936–1940, Q165-6-43; “Jijiu yi lan,” April 1938, Q165-6-38, SMA.

 

of placing a coffin with the guild and pay for the repatriation of their dead children. With one-quarter of the whole sample, this highlights the toll that diseases exacted on children. The second major observation from the table is that even in adulthood life was cut short in large numbers. There is a very regular distribution of age at death between 15 and 45 years. People in these 5-year age brackets died in quite similar numbers. In the sample used here, almost one-half of the people died before they reached their thirtieth birthday and nearly three-quarters had died before they turned 50. This is very different from current demographic data where age at death is pushed back to above 60 and very few die in childhood.43 Those who died in their later years represent a small proportion, 9.6 percent above 65 and 5.6 percent above 70.44 Life was short in Republican Shanghai as death could be expected at any age. Life expectancy rose substantially after 1949. Between 1951 and 1953, it increased from 44.6 years at birth to 58 years, to reach 65 in 1956. In less than 15 years, the Shanghainese gained 20 years, something that speaks for the general improvement in alleviating poverty and providing more adequate medical protection and services to the population.45

20

Chapter 1

 

­

After 1949, the number of deaths increased in line with the swelling population, even if the death rate went down. Of course, statistics in the early 1950s still underestimated the number of deaths due to the substantial number of people whose deaths went unregistered and whose bodies were dumped in the street. The Bureau of Public Health (Weishengju) admitted its vital statistics were incomplete and biased due to this phenomenon.46 It took about a decade to bring this long-standing situation to an end. After preliminary experiments in three urban districts, the bureau eventually designed a scheme that brought all births and deaths under a unified and compulsory system of reporting.47 For the period from July 1950 to June 1951, the total number of recorded deaths reached 64,834, but the total number of street bodies amounted to 44,661. In other words, the total number of deaths was at least 98,595, a figure that produced a death rate three times higher. These subtleties have been lost in later statistical reconstructions. In the yearbooks and similar compilations, the published figures diverge very much from those found in the archives. The number of deaths in the municipality and the urban districts remained stable until 1955 and then decreased until the end of the decade (see Table 1.2). From 1959 and throughout the first half of the 1960s, there was a steady decrease that reflected the probable improvement in the quality of medical services and living conditions in the city. table 1.2. Number of deaths and death rate in Shanghai (1950–1965) Urban districts

Municipality

Year

Number

Death rate

Number

Death rate

1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965

32,100 59,100 40,600 45,100 38,300 43,800 35,300 34,600 34,400 37,200 37,700 37,800 33,000 30,300 28,700 27,500

7.7 13.3 8.3 8.3 6.9 8.0 6.5 5.9 5.8 6.4 6.1 5.9 5.2 4.7 4.5 4.3

38,400 74,300 49,300 52,600 45,500 52,800 41,500 40,200 44,600 69,700 71,600 81,200 76,600 74,400 66,400 62,000

7.7 14.2 8.8 8.9 7.1 8.2 6.6 6.1 6.2 7.8 6.9 7.7 7.2 7.0 6.1 5.7

Source: Number of deaths: Shanghai shi guomin jingji he shehui fazhan lishi tongji ziliao (1949–2000), 364; urban districts: Shanghai shi renkou tongji ziliao huibian (1949–1988), 31–32; municipality: Shanghai shi renkou tongji ziliao huibian (1949– 1988), 33–34.

Scythe and the City

21

In the early years of the Communist regime, the pattern of a high infant mortality did not change at once. Yet the return to peace and stability and the decrease in refugee population lessened the risks of major epidemics. The basic policy of the Bureau of Public Health (Weishengju) was to give priority to prevention.48 In 1950, the bureau established 21,000 public health groups (weisheng xiaozu) in the thirty-three districts of the city to support a citywide health movement (weisheng yundong).49 Last, the authorities also organized massive campaigns of vaccination of the population throughout the city in 1950 and 1951. The second major factor was direct institutional enhancement. The bureau assigned medical establishments in six districts, each with six to ten beds to receive pregnant women. Each district was required to set up a women and children health care cell (fu’er baojianzu) to oversee all related issues.50 The final component of this policy was the establishment of small health offices down to the level of the lilong, the residential alleyways where most of the population lived.51 The major factories were required to set up similar health rooms (baojianshi), while smaller companies organized health stations (baojianzhan).52 The number of tuoersuo (kindergartens) where young babies could be taken care of increased from 196 in 1950 to 363 in 1951.53 More generally, there was a remarkable effort to expand medical facilities in the city. The combination of cleaning campaigns, massive vaccination, proper registration of the population, and expansion of public health facilities radically changed the demographics of the city. Infant mortality faltered, while general life expectancy improved markedly.

Death, Diseases, and Epidemics Cities have historically been places that had to recruit their populations from the countryside to compensate for the devastating impact of diseases. Before the advent of public hygiene and modern medical treatments, people lived for centuries in unsanitary environments that exposed all individuals to infection at any time. Overcrowded housing, lack of proper treatment of refuse, and deficient water sources helped produce and diffuse potentially lethal bacteria and viruses: “From the beginnings of agriculture and urbanization till well into the present century infectious disease was the major overall cause of human mortality and the most important stabilizer of population levels.”54 Life and death in peacetime depended very much on establishing and maintaining proper standards of private hygiene, safe environment, and of course public health. While wars and rebellions caused the direct annihilation of numerous lives, they also disrupted the normal order under which populations received food supply and sanitary

22

Chapter 1

protection. War magnified the effects of all the factors that affected health in normal situations. Shanghai was located in a wealthy area where food was plenty and, in general, affordable. Yet many sectors of the population did not receive adequate nutrition, which had a debilitating impact on their immune system. People also suffered from the lack of medical attention, with the result that even relatively benign affectations could turn bad and lead to death, especially among children. Due to the warm climate in the summer and the presence of water in and all around the city, people were exposed to the risks of bacteria, mosquitoes, and the like. Unfit drinking water could generate a sudden and violent epidemic.55 Finally, the role of Shanghai as a port brought to its harbor hundreds of thousands of travelers, migrants, sailors, and so on, who were the unwilling and unaware carriers of infectious diseases. The massive increase of population over a century until 1949 dramatically amplified public health hazards. Only the combination of modern drugs and the implementation of citywide public health policies managed to bring the sanitary situation close to that of modern nations during the early decades of the Communist regime.

Public Health in Shanghai: A Divided Realm One of the issues in preserving public health and protecting the population from infectious diseases was the very high density of population. Before 1900, most of the population resided in the walled city and its southwestern suburb along the Huangpu. In the 1860s, if we discount the population in the rural areas, Shanghai may have harbored about 350,000 people, or 109,000 per square kilometer. By 1910, the population in the same area and Zhabei had doubled and then doubled again by the end of World War I. Since the built-up area hardly changed, even with the extension of Zhabei and Nanshi after the demolition of the city wall, the density of population increased dramatically. Between 1929 and 1936, three police districts (1.2, 2.1, 4.1) topped the list of high-density areas with figures between 110,000 and 142,000 residents per square kilometer in 1929 to 132,000–180,000 in 1936, followed by three more (1.3, 2.2; 5.1) in the 80,000–95,000 range.56 The average density was much lower on average in the foreign settlements (see Map 1.2). In the International Settlement, it increased from 13,456 in 1900 to 50,838 in 1935. Even if the distribution of population was uneven and presented higher densities in some areas, only the Northern District, close to Zhabei, exhibited a figure above 100,000 in 1935. The Central District, the smallest area, remained more or less at the same

Scythe and the City

23

level (117,000–132,000) throughout the period.57 Population density in the French Concession was always higher due to its smaller territory, until after the last extension in 1914. Up to then, the average density ranged from 48,086 in 1879 to 80,518 in 1910. In 1914, it dropped to 42,545.58 In comparison with European or American cities, Shanghai ranked very high given the absence of high-rise buildings for housing until 1949. The highest density in New York was found in Manhattan with a peak at 40,000 in 1910–1920. In 1913, Paris had an average density of 37,000, higher than Berlin (26,500) and London (16,100).59 Yet in the mid-nineteenth century, some Paris neighborhoods had densities that ranged between 90,000 and 136,000.60 On the eve of the Kanto earthquake of 1923, most urban wards in Tokyo had population densities of 28,000 people.61 Overall, population density in Shanghai overshadowed anything experienced by Europeans who came to the city in the mid-nineteenth century and even later. By 1945, the distribution of the population was more or less the same, even if the war had generated an increase in the central parts of the former International Settlement. Throughout the postwar period, the same districts exhibited the highest density of population (see Table 1.3). Such concentrations of population did not provide a breeding ground for infectious diseases per se, but once an epidemic broke out, it created an environment that facilitated the spread of such diseases. These figures, however, do not take into account the wide swings in population due to natural or human disasters, especially wars. In most cases, the size of the refugee-seeking population did not rise above a few tens of thousands that poured into the city over a few weeks and stayed several months in makeshift camps. The largest influx of population caused by a natural disaster was the 1931 Yangzi flood, which brought tens of thousands of people to Shanghai.62 Man-made disasters had a far more severe impact when war loomed or raged around Shanghai and, eventually, in the city proper. While the post-1911 political instability sent regular waves of refugees throughout the 1910s and 1920s, these were minor additions compared to the human waves that swept into Shanghai at the time of the Taiping Rebellion or, far more crucially, in 1932 and 1937. In the 1850s–1860s, although hundreds of thousands came to Shanghai, a vast expanse of rural land bordered the city and offered possibilities to accommodate the swelling population. It was also a time when cholera epidemics took catastrophic proportions. In early 1863, James Henderson, later to become the first appointed public health officer by the Shanghai Municipal Council, reported visiting a “miserable shed” in which a hundred people had huddled together. Many were ill, all were starving, and several had been dead for a week, their corpses “rotting in the filthy straw . . . limbs stretched out . . . just as death’s agonies had left them.”63

1

2

3 km

map 1.2. Population density in 1935. Source: Virtual Shanghai

0

French Concession

International Settlement

413 - 21,781

(inhabitant/km2)

> 165,925 - 259,956

> 105,086 - 165,925

> 54,231 - 105,086

> 21,781 - 54,231

Density

Foreign settlement

Waterway

25

Scythe and the City table 1.3. Population density in Shanghai in the postwar period District

2 3 13 1 5 8 9 4

Laozha Xincheng Yimiao Huangpu Taishan (Songshan) Jiangning Beizhan Hongkou

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No.

1945

1946

1947

1950

144,260 116,837 90,706 79,751 78,787 69,141 64,193 62,490

142,857 108,828 109,350 79,477 83,213 73,779 77,268 85,694

146,132 115,593 128,207 83,653 88,550 79,959 91,632 101,813

137,617 110,951 139,806 74,542 93,289 80,918 99,097 109,491

Source: Zou Yiren, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian de yanjiu (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1980), 102–3.

Another major factor in the development of chronic disease was the combination of a hot and humid weather, especially in the summer months, and the presence of many small canals and arroyos, which offered an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes and other disease carriers. These adverse conditions caused foreigners to concentrate very early on limiting the impact of these propitious conditions for malaria and similar insect-borne diseases.64 In the 1850s–1880s, Shanghai was infamous among residents and the medical profession for its “fevers.” All accounts by Westerners lamented about the poor state of housing, streets, and of course canals and drainages in the walled city. Travelers and local and visiting doctors all pointed out the degraded environment resulting from the lack of maintenance and dredging of waterways by the Chinese authorities.65 Yet such views were strongly biased. The French physician DurandFardel in 1874 emphasized the potential risk of water pollution, even if the tidal movement of the Huangpu water washed away the dejections and other garbage that filled the drainages and canals.66 Foreigners loathed another practice—storing coffins in houses or guildhalls—which they viewed as a most repugnant health hazard in their midst.67 This practice became a point of contention, leading to riots, between foreigners and the Chinese population. Over time, the creeks and ponds disappeared due to the continuous building of streets and houses, but also as a result of a deliberate policy by the authorities of the foreign settlements. In the French Concession, the Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance distributed leaflets to the population to advise about the ways to prevent the development of mosquitoes. It also intervened in the most risky areas to sanitize the environment. Up to 1923, malaria still ranked high in the concern of the authorities.68 By 1941, the bureau finally declared the territory practically safe: “Drains and exiting ditches on vacant land have been leveled and filled with garbage collected in the neighborhood [. . .] the Office of Public Works filled in large tracks

26

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­

of low lying areas and pools. Ponds and creeks, bordered by tall grass have disappeared permanently from the concession [. . .] the work of draining and filling continues gradually year by year.”69 As this report indicates, it was a war fought over decades. In the neighboring settlement, the prevailing situation remained below this achievement due to a much larger expanse of underused territory in the Western and Eastern districts. Last, a decisive factor in the protection of population from infectious diseases was of course the role of public institutions. Public health was a major concern from the start, in view of both the natural and social conditions.70 Yet public health policies essentially tackled the well-being and protection of the foreign population. With the appointment of a health officer, a prelude to the establishment of modern public health bureaus—in 1871 in the International Settlement and 1910 in the French Concession— the foreign authorities started to keep track of infectious diseases in their territories and to implement gradual measures aimed at reducing health hazards.71 The Chinese incrementally came under the system of registration, especially for infectious diseases. Reporting became compulsory for hospitals and private physicians. Registration, however, could only make a record of an attack of epidemic. It could not address the causes or the measures to be taken for treatment. Public spending in health was not considered a priority until the newly established Nationalist authorities challenged the foreign settlements and compelled them to improve their offer. In the French Concession, the French authorities made little case of the Chinese population during the greater part of their administration, although from the 1930s they eventually made an attempt to catch up through various social policy measures, with the explicit aim to legitimize their continued presence. The inadequacy of the measures by the authorities of the concession was equally clear and visible in the gap between discourse and actual means. The discrepancy between the objective reality—the need to introduce measures of hygiene and public health or going against the habits of the Chinese population—and the authoritarian character of the regulations imposed by a foreign power without legitimacy undermined the capacity of intervention in this area by the French Municipal Council. Finally, in the fields of sanitary infrastructure and social assistance, rather little was achieved to service the Chinese residents, and even these initiatives were carried out in association with the institutions established by Catholic religious orders. The French authorities, however, did work out encompassing and fairly successful solutions in the fight against epidemics, especially after 1937.72 In the International Settlement, the Shanghai Municipal Council quite systematically maintained a heavy lid on public expenses for public health. The authorities chose to rely on the individual contributions made by

Scythe and the City

27

individuals, above all the medical establishments operated by missionary groups. It was a clear case that the actual cost of “managing Shanghai” was maintained artificially low thanks to gifts made in nature and money by private individuals and associations.73 Eventually, and with a far more limited budget than the Shanghai Municipal Police, the Public Health Department succeeded in implementing measures that made the city a safer place against health hazards, especially infectious diseases such as smallpox and cholera. Combining the sanitization of the environment with preventive measures such as vaccination drives and the promotion of general hygienic practices, the Shanghai Municipal Council eventually served all its population and beyond.74 Over time, the Shanghai Municipal Council built a first-class health infrastructure with the Public Health Department, one of the finest departments in Asia at par with other cities in Europe, that gave credence to the benevolent rule of the council, albeit too late.75 The protection of public health, however, also caused much friction with the Chinese authorities, which the Shanghai Municipal Council disregarded entirely, and the French Concession to a lesser degree. Politics and prejudice precluded a much-needed cooperation in a domain where there were no biological borders.

What Did They Die Of?

 

Throughout its history, Shanghai was the seat of all the disorders to be found in other cities, especially in harbor cities that received annually tens of thousands of people from all over the world. While most of the communicable diseases were endemic, they occasionally burst out into largescale epidemics either as a result of outside infection or due to unstable social and economic conditions in the areas around Shanghai. Physicians reported that the available medical statistics were not adducible, which prevented them from ascertaining the extent of death and its causes among the Chinese population.76 The Chinese did not keep a proper record of infectious diseases, while foreigners lacked the means or the will or both to enforce a system of registration. Until 1920, the cause of death for the Chinese was not registered in the International Settlement or the French Concession, except when death resulted from an infectious disease. Communicable diseases ranked high on the watch list of the foreign authorities in Shanghai. Both settlements kept a record of all the cases in their territory, first for the foreign population, then for the whole population, incrementally, starting in 1890. The process of categorizing and registering diseases, however, was an evolving one, with changes in the range of diseases to be recorded. Disease classification was also novel in Europe,

28

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as heralded by William Farr’s nosology, a system readily adopted by the health officers and physicians in the International Settlement. This system helped them in designing medico-sanitary measures that would guide the authorities in their fight against unsanitary conditions or the onslaught of infectious diseases.77 Over time, the classification of diseases became more comprehensive and better standardized. For the foreign population, registration started with a view to keep track of the impact of communicable diseases, then of all causes of death. Up to 1922, the list included thirty-one diseases, to which were added drowning, suicide, and “all other causes.” In 1923, the Public Health Department introduced a more detailed typology with fifty entries. This reflected both the need for more accurate records and the progress in medical knowledge and diagnosis. For the Chinese population, the Shanghai Municipal Council started recording cases of smallpox and cholera in 1890, scarlet fever in 1902, diphtheria and tuberculosis in 1907, flu and meningitis in 1918, and typhoid in 1923. The annual report published its first detailed “Return of native deaths” in 1922 with only thirteen diseases.78 In 1928, the Public Health Department introduced a more complete list of twenty-three diseases.79 The French Concession recorded the cause of death according to its own typology that overlapped with that of the Public Health Department for thirty-two diseases. The French had sixteen categories that did not match those of its neighbor. The divided nature of disease recording and the lack of homogeneity make it impossible to fully reconstruct the impact of infectious diseases or the share of the various ailments in relation to death in Shanghai. Yet these series allow us to examine some of the major infectious diseases, especially those that developed into large epidemics in the twentieth century. In the International Settlement, over a period of fifty-four years, the main killers among foreigners were tuberculosis (5,537), typhoid (1,291), scarlet fever (445), smallpox (427), and cholera (365). Scarlet fever and measles were diseases that affected mostly children, while the other diseases could affect people of all ages. Among the Chinese population, the order was tuberculosis (43,469), typhoid (15,132), cholera (8,817), smallpox (8,763), and scarlet fever (3,670).80 The general pattern for each group diverged substantially. Whereas tuberculosis and typhoid ranked highest for both, cholera and smallpox, two much dreaded diseases, caused a higher number of deaths in the Chinese population. Moreover, whereas there is a near completeness of the record for the foreign population, the accuracy of the statistics for the Chinese population is debatable, especially for tuberculosis. The Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance observed the “impressive regularity” of its development and its increasing share in the general mortality.81

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Over time, this pattern also changed. Such diseases as cholera, smallpox, and diphtheria almost disappeared as a cause of death among foreigners, even during the war. Only typhoid remained a real threat until 1942. In the analysis here, all foreigners are lumped together, although their social and economic situation varied considerably, with most Russians and many Japanese living in conditions quite similar to the Chinese. The improvement of the health situation of foreigners in Shanghai should thus be taken with a pinch of salt. The real breakthrough against infectious diseases came only after World War II. Antibiotics and other drugs helped eliminate premature death among the Chinese population, but between 1946 and 1949, with massive population movements and terrible economic conditions, cholera, typhoid, and diphtheria accounted for 2,051 deaths, each at about the same level. Smallpox killed close to 1,200 people. While most foreigners eventually survived or got rid of the previously prevalent infectious diseases, the Chinese population remained under the scourge of epidemics and chronic outburst of infectious diseases well into the 1950s. Children were particularly exposed to the risks of communicable diseases through the respiratory or digestive system. Foreign children on the whole tended to benefit from better conditions at various levels. Yet broad generalization should probably be avoided as the largest number of “foreign children” were Japanese whose living conditions in Shanghai were not those of a privileged population. In 1926, for instance, of the seventyone children aged one to five years who died, fifty (71 percent) were Japanese. The major illnesses that took their lives were by order of importance pneumonia (twenty), measles (sixteen), and scarlet fever (four).82 Diphtheria was also major killer. In 1923, the Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance in the French Concession observed its endemic character, but with much less lethal consequences.83 By 1941 diphtheria had disappeared among the foreign population and had become insignificant as a cause of death among the Chinese population.84 Among Chinese children, scarlet fever and probably measles and other childhood diseases were most certainly underestimated in official figures. These diseases had been equally lethal in London or Paris in the nineteenth century, but no longer so in the 1920s.85 No medical examination was performed on the bodies of the tens of thousands of children found in the street, and there is a high probability that deficient nutrition aside infectious diseases and diarrheas were the most common cause of death. Among adults, the main scourge in the city in the nineteenth century were the infamous fevers, many not clearly identified or distinguished from one another. They were so common that Western physicians spoke of Shanghai fevers. These fevers seem to have declined in the late 1870s,

30

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due in part to the cleansing of the fields and arroyos that crossed the city and the various measures adopted in the foreign settlements to sanitize their territory.86 Malaria was probably one of the main sources of such fevers.87 Diarrhea and dysentery were much more common forms of disease in Shanghai, yet again with a much lesser lethal impact on the population.88 Among the 2,107 patients treated at the Missions Hospital between 1868 and 1872, fever and dysentery represented 266 cases. Typhoid fever (69) and typhus (14) were also present. Yet only dysentery and typhoid fever took a significant number of lives. At the out-patient dispensary established by the same hospital, fevers represented nearly 4,700 cases, while diarrhea and dysentery together affected 3,800 patients.89 Hospital records all point to a prevalence of these infamous fevers among patients.90 Among the endemic diseases that affected the population, typhoid fever had a significant impact, especially among the Chinese population. In the early 1920s, a combination of factors—better control of drinking water, vaccination, flea-eradicating campaigns—contributed to a decrease of the incidence of the disease among the European population, but the same reverse combination meant the continued prevalence of typhoid fever among the Chinese population.91 In 1941, for instance, close to 1,000 Chinese died of this affection for 12 foreigners.92 The disease remained endemic due to the continued practice of spreading human manure in the fields as well as due to interhuman infection.93 In the French Concession, vaccination was introduced only during the war. In 1938 and 1939, 18,916 and 13,831 people were inoculated, but this figure dropped to an average of 5,500 in the following two years.94 In the postwar period, the municipality expanded its vaccination programs. The war years brought increased pressure on the authorities due to the larger population, which remained far above its precedent level until 1942. In view of the potential threat from epidemics, in April 1938 the authorities decided to coordinate their efforts in battling infectious diseases. The French documents repeatedly called for “getting in touch” with the Public Health Department of the Shanghai Municipal Council or with the council itself. Indeed, some meetings took place with promises of collaboration. Yet there was little thereafter that confirmed close cooperation between the two administrations. For the most part, this was about exchanging information such as vital statistics and a few measures to prevent diseases. Having read through the two sets of archives, one definitely fails to see a genuine sense of coordinated action between the two foreign settlements. Each designed and enforced its own policies and practical measures in its own territory. The areas beyond the settlements were seen by and large as places from where disturbances might erupt and spill into the settlements.

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There was almost no contact with the Chinese health services, even if there had been a change of attitude in the latter half of the Nanjing Decade. Yet the war wiped away all progress made and the foreign authorities reversed to their long-held prejudices about the areas under Chinese administration. Infectious diseases remained a challenge after the war. A municipal report in 1949 pointed to a steady decrease between 1946 and September 1949 from 9,135 cases in 1946 to 5,542 in 1947, 7,175 in 1948, and 3,733 in the first nine months of 1949. These cases of infectious diseases resulted in the death of 2,286, 1,690, 2,196, and 902 patients, respectively. With a morbidity rate of 25–30 percent, infectious diseases still represented a serious hazard.95 By then, however, the authorities were prepared to react to the appearance of new cases and have the diseased promptly removed to an isolation hospital.96 Even if infectious diseases remained rampant in the city, they killed much less due to better medical services and better surveillance among the population. This also reflected the impact of vaccination. Hundreds of thousands of residents received vaccines against most infectious diseases between 1946 and 1949 (see Table 1.4). The general situation continued to improve in the early years of the People’s Republic of China, even if infectious diseases remained a major factor of death.97 In the urban districts of the city, there was a constant increase in the number of cases between 1950 and 1957, in pace with the general increase in population. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there again was a sharp increase, possibly due to reduced food rations and greater vulnerability to disease. In 1957, the number of cases of infectious disease, slightly above four million, was more than ten times higher than in 1951. In 1958–1959, it surpassed seven million cases and remained at a high level until 1965 when it returned to the level of 1955. Moreover, the morbidity rate dropped continuously, especially after 1963. Thereafter, there was an almost steady decrease that made infectious disease inconsequential in the general death rate of the population.98

table 1.4. Number of vaccinations in the Shanghai municipality (1946–1949) Vaccine

Smallpox Diphtheria Cholera Typhoid Typhus Rabies

1946

1947

1948

1949

536,573 31,513 2,087,599 88,021 500 3,287

2,252,006 26,096 2,359,285 111,482 0 3,671

2,464,381 75,447 2,613,949 344,464 0 4,041

1,350,127 25,250 3,814,014 274,001 0 2,226

 

Source: “Shanghai shi renkou chusheng ji siwang shu tongjibiao,” 1946–1949, 13, B242-1-74-61, SMA.

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Epidemics

­

The diseases that erupted in the form of epidemics were no different from those that struck in European cities. The two major differences were the higher density of population that facilitated the spread of viruses and microbes and a more inadequate basic infrastructure. Water supply and the quality of water, for instance, became a major concern early on, especially in relation with cholera.99 Nevertheless, in the International Settlement it took more than ten years after the first serious debate in 1871 to establish a water treatment plant. The Shanghai Waterworks, inaugurated on 29 June 1883 with all due fanfare, contributed most significantly to rid the foreign settlements of the diseases related to water pollution.100 Waterworks developed thereafter in the French Concession and the Chinese-administered districts, bringing more safety to people’s everyday life. Yet only one part of the population had access to running water, and until 1949 wells remained the major source residents tapped from for their daily usage. If the quality of water was a major factor in preventing the outbreak of epidemics, especially cholera, some diseases were unrelated to this factor, as in the case of smallpox. Cholera came to Shanghai on the heels of the invading Western forces in the nineteenth century and, most probably too, via the intestines of Chinese sailors.101 It was rife in the city already in the late 1840s, even if the city was spared the first major pandemics that shattered European and American cities.102 In 1850, the North China Herald reported that Shanghai had “thus far been mercifully preserved from its ravages.”103 The first most severe epidemics occurred in 1860 and 1862. Compared with the previous years, the major difference was the conquest of Central China by the Taiping armies which pushed hundreds of thousands of people to seek refuge in Shanghai. The massive rush, however, had dire consequences when it met the rampant cholera virus. The epidemic was highly devastating. The dead bodies were so numerous that they were not even buried.104 Neither Chinese nor Western medicine was able to cope with the disease, despite claims that a treatment made of a mix of Chinese plants had been successful.105 In 1863, cholera visited Shanghai again in mid-June, but the epidemic subsided one month later. According to the testimony of James Henderson, the mortality among the Chinese during these few weeks was very high, with 700–1,500 deaths every day.106 After 1864–1865, greater care about drinking water and efforts to experiment with treatment based on intravenous saline infusion contributed to a decrease in fatalities among Westerners, but cholera remained “prevalent and fatal” among the Chinese population.107 In 1866, the British Medical Journal reported that up

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to 3,000 Chinese died daily.108 These massive Chinese deaths were never properly recorded, nor did they trigger stronger state intervention in the walled city.109 By and large, the cause of the disease or its mode of transmission was still unknown and physicians remained short of an efficient treatment. Nevertheless, by the late 1870s it was clear to many that water pollution by dejecta from people infected with cholera or other infectious diseases into the rivers and arroyos greatly enhanced the risks of an epidemic since they were the main source of drinking water supply.110 The Shanghai Municipal Council produced the most continuous record on cholera. If we take the number of deaths as an indicator of the prevalence of cholera in the International Settlement, the disease constituted a serious threat in 1883, 1902 (1,500), 1912 (1,321), 1919 (680), and 1938 (1,727).111 In each case, the largest number of deaths occurred among the Chinese population (above 95 percent). Between 1923 and 1945, the number of cases varied widely, but disasters were clearly a decisive factor. Both in 1932 (flood refugees) and 1938 (war refugees), the number of cases increased tremendously (5,439 and 8,053 cases, respectively). Yet, in view of the size of the population in both years, the death ratio shows that the authorities were able to efficiently control and bring to an end these outbursts. Whereas a “regular” outbreak produced a death ratio that oscillated between 8 and 15 per 10,000, major epidemics pushed this figure to 400–500 per 10,000. In 1923, 1926, and 1926, about 11 percent died, but in all other years the ratio was often below 4 percent. In other words, even if cholera remained endemic and threatened the life of the busy harbor, the actual damage remained far below the frightening level of infection and deaths of the major pandemics that hit the planet in the nineteenth century. Cholera struck again in 1937 and 1938 after the massive displacement of population into the foreign settlements following the Japanese assault on Shanghai in August 1937. In both years, the disease killed on average one-fifth of the patients. The lack of adequate facilities, faulty reporting, and late diagnosis combined to produce a high death toll.112 The 1937 epidemic started late, on 28 August, in connection with the beginning of hostilities in mid-August, and lasted until December.113 The epidemic developed very suddenly and died out over two months. Figure 1.1 presents incomplete data on the spread of the disease among the Chinese population.114 One can surmise from this graph how fast the disease spread and took out a large number of lives. At the end of the fifth week, cholera had killed 349 people from 1,742 cases.115 According to French reports, despite their number, the refugee camps were not the main foci of infection. The main worry of the health services was the lack of centralization in the management of the refugee camps and thus the inability to carry out coordinated and coherent prophylactic measures.116

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600 500 400 300 200 100 0 W1

W2

W3

W4

W5

French Concession

W6

W7

W8

W9

W10

W11

International Settlement

figure 1.1. 1937 cholera epidemic in the foreign settlements (Chinese population). Source: “Evolution hebdomadaire du choléra,” 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes

In May 1938, while a large part of the refugee population was still in the settlements, the approaching summer season brought renewed worries about cholera. In the French Concession, the Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance ordered more than five times the regular quantity of vaccine from the Pasteur Institute.117 When the first cases appeared in the foreign settlements, the authorities were not caught in the situation of emergency. Yet the precautionary measures did not prevent an extensive wave of cholera. Cholera broke out early on 18 May when the first case, a refugee in a camp on Hungjao Road in the Western District of the International Settlement, was brought into the Isolation Hospital on Sinza Road. This marked the beginning of a massive campaign aimed at limiting the spread of the disease. Yet less than three weeks later, 291 new cases had been reported.118 In the French Concession, the Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance decided to inoculate the whole population west of the rail track where the disease had appeared. All the wells received a solid amount of bleach.119 Altogether, there were close to 3,000 cases and 337 deaths in the French Concession and 1,711 cases in the International Settlement.120 On 7 June, the Japanese authorities declared Shanghai a cholera-infected area and decided to restrict access to Japanese harbors for all the vessels departing from the city.121 Access to Hongkew and the Japanese-controlled

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districts came under strict verification that all in-coming individuals carried a valid certificate of vaccination with them.122 Vaccination on a grand scale started in the city, but the number of available health agents was far below the ambition to inoculate the population.123 Navy surgeon and medical staff were enrolled to help reach the population at large. Aside from vaccination in the permanent centers, mobile stations were positioned in the street. In the two months of August and September 1938, 2.9 million doses were injected. Up to 120,000 individuals were inoculated per week. Wharves came under close monitoring, mostly for the population that shipped food and other materials from across the Huangpu River.124 To inform the population, the authorities launched a mass campaign through the press and the radio as well as through posters (36,000) and leaflets (85,000) distributed throughout the city.125 Despite its inevitable loopholes, the massive effort eventually reached 2.2 million people. The second most important infectious disease in Shanghai was smallpox. It was a very ancient disease that had killed millions all over the planet for centuries.126 Europeans were of course still quite afraid due to its endemic character in China, whereas it had nearly disappeared in Europe after the turn of the century due to systematic vaccination.127 In Shanghai, if we judge by the number of deaths among the Chinese, major outbursts of smallpox occurred in 1902, 1904, 1907, 1938, and 1939. Given the relatively high level of morbidity, the number of deaths amounted to several thousand in each case. The worst epidemic, however, struck in 1907 when smallpox killed 8,063 people.128 In the International Settlement, the Public Health Department encouraged the population to get inoculated. After 1912, it worked to reach the Chinese population through its branch health offices. In 1929, 58,213 people came forward for vaccination against smallpox.129 This fell short of the actual needs of the population, but as in the French Concession, only times of severe crisis moved the authorities to enforce broad sweeps of vaccination. Smallpox remained a real threat throughout the Republican period, even if the campaigns of vaccination that started in the 1920s reduced its devastating effects. In 1938–1939, with an inflated population living in difficult conditions, a small epidemic of smallpox broke out in Shanghai. The epidemic started with a few cases in the International Settlement and spread very quickly to the French Concession (see Figure 1.2). People could only be diagnosed after the disease had developed fully in the body, but in between the infected persons had contaminated others, although unknowingly, and spread the disease. When the first cases were reported in the French Concession, the consul general made the vaccination of all newborn compulsory and advised the general population to make use of free vaccination in the health

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300 250 200 150 100 50 0

Oct. 1938

Nov. 1938

Dec. 1938

Jan. 1939 Cases

Feb. 1939

Mar. 1939

Apr. 1939

May 1939

Deaths

figure 1.2. 1938–1939 smallpox epidemic in the French Concession. Source: Rapport de fin d’année, 1939, U38-5-1274, Shanghai Municipal Archives; graph and table, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes

centers.130 Yet it was already too late to prevent the disease from proliferating. The epidemic peaked in mid-December in the International Settlement and one month later in the French Concession. The Saint Jean Isolation Hospital on Rue Massenet was soon overwhelmed by the number of patients. To accommodate the growing number of patients, a temporary hospital opened in the former hospital for prison inmates on Avenue Haig.131 By early January, both institutions had reached their maximum capacity. In the first three months of the epidemic, more than one-third of the patients died. The authorities used radio stations, in several languages, to warn the population against the risk of infection and proposed free vaccination in its health centers.132 Whereas 145,234 people had been vaccinated until the end of September 1938, 124,626 received the vaccine in the last three months of the year.133 In the French Concession, the smallpox epidemic eventually affected 645 people, of which 22 were foreigners and 623 were Chinese. Incomplete data for the International Settlements reported 1,479 cases by early January. Although few people died among foreigners, the morbidity rate for Chinese reached 38 percent. Most died during the peak period of the epidemic between December 1938 and February 1939.134

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Vaccination

­

Vaccination brought tremendous progress in the protection of the populations against infectious diseases. The major breakthroughs were made at the end of the nineteenth century with further improvement in the following decades. New treatments and a better grasp of the etiology of diseases also contributed to tame, if not cure, several affections. It was not until World War II and the rise of antibiotics that the most widespread infectious diseases became a thing of the past or, at least, no longer threatened life. In Shanghai, vaccination was introduced fairly early, but the impetus by the authorities remained feeble, except in wartime. The Chinese had no special reluctance against vaccination against smallpox. It had been practiced, albeit in a premodern form, for centuries. Yet there had been no movement in China for systematic vaccination. In the foreign settlements, vaccination was available, most often free of charge, in the foreign hospitals. About 1,200 people received vaccination each year at the Gutz laff Hospital, with greater numbers when the disease struck the population. Over several decades, tens of thousands of Chinese must have been vaccinated.135 The French municipality started to inoculate the population against smallpox belatedly. In 1923, a high number of cases among the European population caused the authorities to implement measures of vaccination.136 Yet it was not until the 1930s that the French Municipal Council carried out vaccination campaigns against smallpox and cholera. The number of inoculated people against smallpox in 1930 (12,328) speaks to the limited effort of the authorities. Vaccinations tripled the following year and doubled again in 1932. Thereafter the number leveled again for three years at about 50,000. If the year 1936 saw a substantial increase in vaccinations (close to 90,000), the wartime period created greater risk of widespread outbursts of smallpox. The number of inoculations increased dramatically to become nearly universal. It reflected the massive effort made from 1937 onward when hundreds of thousands of refugees settled in the French Concession. Throughout the war years, the Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance launched systematic campaigns. In 1937 and 1938, 209,238 and 285,633 people received the vaccine, respectively. In late 1938, a few cases among both foreigners and Chinese alerted the authorities. By November, 37 cases had been reported. In the following two months, the number of cases exploded to more than 200 each month. By February and March 1939, the epidemic receded. On average, 38 percent of those who contracted the disease died eventually.137 In 1939 alone, 540,091 people were inoculated. In the following two years, an average of 400,000 received the vaccine.138

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The French authorities stepped up their operations with a view to reach everyone. The vaccination campaign in 1939 was organized in a very systematic way. The police first surveyed all the major concentrations of population (schools, factories, apartment buildings, etc.). These places represented easily identifiable targets where the municipal service sent its officers to propose vaccination. Since the majority of the population lived in the numerous houses and alleyways, the alternative method was to draw a plan that covered the whole territory by blocks of streets. Groups of vaccinators were each assigned one block to make contact and inoculate as many people as possible. Last, since some people could not be found at home, the Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance sent its teams to the major crossroads for each block and again offered free vaccination against smallpox and cholera.139 In 1941, the same effort was maintained, with the avowed objective of inoculating the whole population. Moreover, inoculation became compulsory in the maternity clinics in the French Concession. There were only six cases of smallpox during the year.140 Cholera was another vaccination priority, even if we know nowadays that proper treatment, mostly by compensating the loss of fluids through an IV injection, can efficiently combat the disease. In the Chinese municipality, the Bureau of Public Health was very active in the work of prevention, with very intrusive methods, as in 1934, when it made vaccination compulsory to certain categories of the population.141 The policy of the French authorities differed in the case of cholera, as discussed above. It was administered when the authorities observed the emergence of cholera cases and declared a state of epidemic. It was not just a local matter as all harbor cities dreaded the risk of being infected by incoming travelers or sailors from an infected city. If a city was known to have a significant number of cases, all people traveling to other places would either have to provide proof of vaccination or be placed in quarantine. Even within the city, restrictions on the circulation of persons applied in times of epidemics. In 1939, after a cholera outburst was registered, the Japanese consulate informed the two foreign municipalities that the Naval headquarters had decided to impose a proof of vaccination to all the residents in the foreign settlements.142 If we examine the statistics of vaccination in the French Concession, the trend points to an ever-increasing number of vaccinations. Obviously, the French authorities did not bargain on the cost—vaccination was free—and certainly inoculated more than their own population. Close to 1.5 million were inoculated in 1939, with more than 1 million the following year. In 1941, the last year for which we have data, 875,683 people came under the plan.143 Observations by health officers confirm that many Chinese came from neighboring districts under Chinese administration to receive

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inoculation in the French Concession. This was also true in the International Settlement. The concern of the French authorities was real and genuine and, by that time, all past prejudices had been set aside. The two foreign municipalities had come to realize that infectious diseases knew no administrative, social, or racial barriers. Protecting a particular segment of the population rather than the whole population was not an alternative. A serious epidemic could literally cripple the local economy. In New York, while there was some initial resistance to the vaccination forced upon the population by the municipal authorities, companies soon realized it was in their best interest to have their workers come under the protection of vaccination.144 The French municipality and the Shanghai Municipal Council had come a long way, but eventually they established a full-encompassing system of vaccination against major infectious diseases. Concerns for general public health eventually prevailed over consideration of immediate costs.

The Overall Pattern of Diseases and Death Epidemics of infectious diseases were spectacular in that they could take thousands of life in a matter of weeks. Yet most deaths resulted from less prominent factors. In the International Settlement, data for the 1921–1930 period highlight five major causes of death: tuberculosis (9.5 percent), pneumonia and bronchopneumonia (9.6 percent), typhoid and paratyphoid fever (5.4 percent), beriberi (3.6 percent), and heart disease (3.4 percent). Yet close to a quarter of all deaths came under “all other causes” despite the elaborate list of fifty possible causes.145 Lungs were obviously the most serious cause of trouble, well ahead of heart, liver, and brain.146 Throughout this period, the annual number of deaths among foreigners remained close to 500 and then rose to 650 after the mid-1920s to pass 800 after 1930. Of these, children represented 25–29 percent in 1921 and 1931. Thereafter, children were no longer counted separately. Over this ten-year period, the ranking of diseases by order of importance among these 5,716 cases was tuberculosis (573), pneumonia (428), typhoid fever (292), beriberi (220), heart diseases (204), bronchitis (172), cancer (172), and smallpox (157). Cholera ranked very low among foreigners who benefited from better access to filtered water, better housing conditions, and less proximity to crowded quarters. Yet tuberculosis and typhoid fever, one transmitted by airborne particles and the other by polluted food or water, remained a real scourge among foreigners.147 The cause of death among the Chinese was recorded according to a shorter list of twenty-seven categories that covered mostly infectious

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diseases.148 The number of reported cases as shown in the annual reports of the Shanghai Municipal Council represented between 18 and 29 percent of all deaths in the International Settlement. Quite a large number went unreported, which may affect our reading of the actual distribution of the causes of death. For the period 1922–1930, the Public Health Department recorded about 25,000 cases. On this basis, the hierarchy of lethal diseases followed a familiar pattern. Tuberculosis was undeniably the major killer, with almost one-third of all cases, a clear sign of the prevailing poverty to be found in any poor community.149 By and large, there was little at hand for the population to help in the treatment of the disease as in Europe.150 Typhoid fever, with 12.5 percent, confirmed its prevalence and lethality. Measles (9.4 percent) and scarlet fever (4.7 percent) exacted their toll on children. Smallpox, dysentery, and cholera formed an equivalent trio at 3–4 percent each. The data for the French Concession in 1937 spread the cause of death among forty-one possible factors.151 The authorities registered 11,406 deaths in that year. If we discount accidents, suicides, unspecified causes, and senility (hardly a medical factor), the main identified killers followed different pattern among the Chinese and the foreign population. Out of a total of 318 deaths, foreigners died of heart disease (66), tuberculosis (52), cancer (33), and diarrhea and enteritis (25). These four categories represented more than one-half of all nonaccidental causes. With pneumonia and cerebral diseases, it was close to three-quarters. Among the Chinese population (11,026 deaths, of which 8,692 were from disease), there was a much larger range of diseases. Tuberculosis ranked first (1,426) with other diseases of the respiratory system (541). Next came typhoid fever (971), followed by heart diseases (909) and diarrhea and enteritis (902). The first four major diseases among the Chinese caused 48 percent of all nonaccidental deaths. Except for heart diseases, three were infectious diseases that resulted from poor nutrition, defective water supply, and crowded and unsanitary housing.152

Conclusion The demography of Shanghai remains a puzzle with many missing pieces. Statistics offer at best snapshots of a situation in time, but they very often fail to catch the dynamics, especially the powerful swings of population that marked the history of the city. Shanghai received an interrupted flow of migrants that placed the population on an ever-ascending curve. If we take into account only this rising curve, the evolution was impressive, but not so exceptional compared to other major European cities. If,

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however, we take into account the high incidence of mortality, with little improvement until after 1950, it becomes obvious that the broad gap left by mortality was compensated by ever-increasing numbers of migrants. The city could not have thrived as it did without literally sucking up lives from outside, mostly from the countryside. Although children were born in great numbers, an incredible proportion just did not pass their first birthday. High infant mortality was one of the most compelling conclusions that even imperfect statistics establish about life in Shanghai well into the 1950s. The faulty recording of the population and its transformation and their limited investment in health and education reflected the relative indifference of the two foreign municipal councils toward the population that lived in their territory. There was a permanent concern to keep municipal expenses at a minimum. In the field of public health, it is obvious that far greater care was taken to properly register diseases and deaths among foreigners, but by and large the foreign municipalities refrained from getting involved in health and education, even for foreigners. The private sector, including the missionary operations, was left to substitute for such services. The situation was certainly not better in the territory under Chinese administration as the existing institutions failed to design public health policies until the twentieth century. Yet, even after 1927, the lack of resources and the disruptive impact of war foiled much of the efforts aimed at protecting the population. It was in fact the situation of warfare in the late 1930s that eventually led the two foreign administrations to implement all-encompassing measures of prevention through vaccination. If modern life contributed its share of new causes of death, such as traffic and industrial accidents, the main factors of death in Shanghai were diseases, especially the most prevalent forms of infectious diseases. The nineteenth century saw successive waves of cholera epidemics, local extensions of the larger pandemics that swept across the planet. They were devastating and highly lethal, but except for the deaths of foreigners, the documentary trail on this tragedy is extremely thin to permit a real assessment. The general pattern of disease did not differ very significantly between foreigners and Chinese. The main difference was the much higher prevalence of infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis, the curse of the nineteenth century in Europe, but a curse that thrived well into the following century for the Chinese population in Shanghai. Cholera and smallpox also remained potential killers well into the late 1930s, even if the vaccination campaigns in the foreign settlements eventually succeeded in putting a halt to their ravages. War was of course an undeniable factor in various instances in magnifying the impact of epidemics, but nonetheless the major ailments that

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afflicted the bodies of the Chinese population were diseases of poverty. Poverty created the conditions for the spread of the diseases and poverty placed available treatments out of reach. The fairly quick reversal of health conditions after 1950 points to the efficacy of establishing just the basic services that provided the population with immediate and affordable access to medical care.

2

Guilds, Charities, and the Community Management of Death

The development of large cities hosting millions of individuals created a new challenge for the division of space among the dead and the living in modern societies. In Europe, long-established practices—for example, burial in the churchyard or even in the churches themselves—had to make way to new means of dealing with the increasing number of deaths within their walls. New cemeteries, private or public, were established outside the city limits, away from the residential areas. For most urbanites, the final place of rest was the local cemetery in the city where they lived. Chinese cities, however, presented a much more complex system of managing the death of their residents, especially in the large commercial centers where the population was made up of sojourners. To these sojourners, the city where they lived and worked remained an alien land. They belonged to the land where they or their forebears were born. Therefore, they expected to return to the homeland after their death. The spectrum over China must have varied greatly, depending on the size and nature of the city. Practices also depended on social status, position, and of course the state of transportation technology, but even from as far away as the West coast in the United States Chinese immigrants organized the repatriation of their remains to China.1 In Shanghai, sojourners constituted the vast majority of the population. Even before its rapid ascendency in the wake of its opening to Western trade in the mid-nineteenth century, the city had been a major harbor along the Chinese coastline, a key link between the wealthy Jiangnan hinterland and sea routes to North China and South China. From the time when it served as a customs station under the Mongols, thereafter elevated to the rank of county (xian) in the Song dynasty in 1292, the city received and harbored migrants from the northern and southern provinces. By the

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­

eighteenth century, substantial sojourner communities represented a large share of the local population.2 The establishment of foreign settlements, the development of maritime trade, and the turmoil created by the Tai ping Rebellion all nourished the steady, sometimes hectic, growth of the population. Sojourner communities changed under the impact of economic opportunities and political development. Merchants from Shandong dominated the bean and soy fertilizer trade from the mid-seventeenth century until their demise two centuries later.3 After 1842, the Cantonese came in increasing numbers on the heels of Western traders and remained the largest group from South China until 1949. Conversely, the Fujianese, an equally forceful presence until the Small Sword Rebellion in 1853–1855, nearly vanished after the brutal repression by the imperial forces.4 Yet death was more than an issue of sheer demography. People died not just in numbers in Shanghai, but with a great variety of cultural and social backgrounds. Since only a minority had the means to take care of themselves after death, especially for those hailing from remote places, community organizations took over the responsibility of catering to their deceased members. They played the same role parishes played in England or France, yet to a degree and with a range of services that surpassed anything to be found in European cities.

Native-Place Associations and Sojourners in Shanghai Chinese society was based on a system of interlocking networks. Individuals were part of family, professional, or regional networks on which they relied to minimize risk or to pool resources. Although it is conventional wisdom that cities offered far more anonymity than rural society, such networks played a crucial role in everyday life in Chinese urban centers. Of course, not all individuals were integrated in such networks. Yet those who came without such support had far more chances to fall through the net, to end up with menial jobs, and in case of serious difficulty, health problems, and so on, to die alone, their bodies dumped in a charity graveyard.5 Mutual help was the key rationale for the rise of the organizations that brought together people originating from the same place to take care of each other in an alien city.6 Bryna Goodman and William Rowe have produced the most thorough studies of the guilds (huiguan) and corporations (gongsuo) that structured urban society in late imperial and Republican China.7 The native-place associations served three major functions: they were the arbiters of trade and craft, enforcing rules and standards among each community; they were a major conduit with the local authorities that

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relied on them to raise tax, guarantee order, and relay official decrees to their members; and they provided a range of mutual help services to their constituency. It is the latter aspect that this chapter is concerned with, focusing on the role of the huiguan and gongsuo in the management of death.8 Guilds and corporations overlapped, not the least because the two terms were used interchangeably to designate the organizations based on native place or a line of trade. Quite frequently, too, a given line of business or craft was dominated by people originating from the same locality. Bryna Goodman offers a clear and illuminating discussion of this easily confusing situation.9 In Shanghai, both guilds and corporations established institutions to deal with the death of their members, even if the guilds were obviously much more involved due to their larger memberships. Table 2.1 shows that only a small group of guilds were established in Shanghai before 1842. Most associations came into being after the opening of the city and the beginning of successive waves of migration. This table is not a record of all existing guilds and corporations in Shanghai before 1949. It records only the native-place associations that provided funeral services. The year refers to the date of their foundation, not to the time when they became involved in managing death. If for some guilds this involvement started from the time of their foundation—a few claimed this was their initial purpose—many started such services at a later period, when the size of their communities elicited the need for funeral arrangements. Finally, some guilds stopped their activity in this field, even if they continued to service their members in other ways. In 1950, the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government made a survey of all the guilds involved in funeral services. A total of forty huiguan and gongsuo reported an activity. Only four were corporations, with two of them made up of people who shared the same originative place. The funeral practices of the native-place associations fit in the larger context of the local society in which they operated. Local residents were buried near Shanghai. We know from various records that tombs and graveyards covered the whole area around the city wall, except along the Huangpu River (see Chapter 4). Moreover, even for sojourners, the option to have their remains shipped back to the ancestral village was beyond the means of most and those of their guilds. The practice of storing coffins pending their return to the home village was probably limited to a small elite before the nineteenth century. As a socially more diffused practice, it was a recent development linked to modern means of transportation. In 1853, the Cantonese and Fujianese in Shanghai numbered approximately 80,000 and 50,000, respectively, while the Ningbonese stood at about

46

Chapter 2 table 2.1. Guilds involved in managing death in Shanghai (1950)

Name

1737 1754 1757 1759 1797 1809 1847 1851–1861 1857 1857 1860 1864 1864 1872 1873 1875–1908 1876 1877 1878 1880

­

Zhe-Shao Gongsuo Yongxitang Huining Huiguan Quanzhang Huiguan Chaozhou Huiguan Siming Gongsuo Yizhuang Gongsuo Lingnan Shanzhuang Tanshui Lühu Cunrentang Zhening Hongbang Muye Gongsuo Shanghai Shibei Changsheng Gongsuo Shanghai Siye Huiguan Huai’an Liyi Huiguan Huai’antang Gongsuo Guang-Zhao Gongsuo Xing’an Huiguan Jinhui Huiguan Shaoxing Huiguan Pingjiang Gongsuo Dinghai Shanchang Gongsuo Zhejin Gongsuo Jishantang Jiangning Liu Xian Gongsuo Hunan Huiguan Suzhou Jiyi Gongsuo Molisan Shantang Xijin Gongsuo Qianjiang Gongsuo Jingjiang Gongsuo Haichang Gongsuo Taizhou Gongsuo

Year of foundation

1881 1886 1887 1887 1888 1889 1893 1902 1902

Name

Jianghuai Gongsuo Yanping Shanzhuang Jiajun Gongsuo Qilu Bieshu Huzhou Binyiguan Tong-Ru-Chong-Hai-Qi Wuxian Huiguan Xiying Gongsuo Jiangyin Gongsuo Changzhou Huiguan Huaiyang Gongsuo Jinting Huiguan Shushang Gongsuo Sanshan Funing Huiguan Guangdong Lühu Shunde Huiguan Piaoshui Shuilu Gongsuo Dongting Dongshan Huiguan Pudong Gongsuo Yangzhou Qiyi Lühu Gongsuo Doumiye Fujihui Huarentang Bingshe Suzhou Yiji Shanhui Wujiang Huiguan Hubei Huiguan Huining Shexian Tongxianghui Chaohui Shanzhuang Chaozhou Wuyi Shanzhuang Guangdong Sanshui Rongxianghui Anhui Huiguan Jiaping Baoshan Gongsuo Minqiao Shanzhuang Suzhou Changshantang Wenzhou Gongsuo

Year of foundation

1904 1904 1906 1906 1908 1908 1908 1909 1910 1910 1910 1910 1911 1900–1912 1900–1912 1912 1915 1915 1920 1921 1922 1923 1923 1930–1932 1930–1932 1949 Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

Source: “Shanghai shi huiguan gongsuo shanzhuang diaochabiao,” 1950, B168-1-798, SMA.

60,000.10 If we apply a death rate of thirty per thousand—this is a crude estimate for the nineteenth century, not taking into account epidemics— this would produce a death return of 2,400, 1,500, and 1,200 annually. Such a volume was not beyond the number of ships available (between 3,500 and 3,600), but none of the available sources refer to this particular practice or activity. Moreover, the most critical point for transportation was the purchase of high-quality and tightly sealed coffins, which most people could not afford. In view of these preliminary elements, it is safe to assume that a large number of sojourners were buried in local cemeteries run by either their guild or charities. This point will be revisited later.

Guilds, Charities, and the Community Management of Death

47

Managing Death: Guilds and Corporations

­

The role of native-place associations in the management of death raises various questions beyond their own involvement. What happened in a city in late imperial times when somebody died? What was the process that led to the disposal of the body? Before the emergence of funeral parlors in the late 1920s, who took care of funeral arrangements and burials? How much did the local authorities intervene in or regulate funeral practices? In China, the funeral of an individual called for three related elements: a ceremony, a coffin, and a place of rest (or temporary storage). Nineteenthcentury sources provide limited information on this aspect of urban life since Shanghai did not exist administratively as a city and there were no records of death. Only the local gazetteers (difangzhi) shed some light, but except for famous figures and cursory mentions of local practices, these texts hardly touched upon the issue of death and funerals.11 The most consistent aspect they mentioned were the numerous charity graveyards, which tends to support the idea that most people lacked the means of a proper funeral and were buried locally.12 After 1872, news items in the Shenbao offered further glimpses into these issues, though mostly on the public aspects of funerals. For most people, therefore, the main concern was to purchase or obtain a coffin and a burial ground. As a rule, sojourners turned first to their native-place associations for help. Charities also provided for such needs, but as discussed in Chapter 4 they were the last resort. Guilds were indeed the main providers of funeral services. They were not commercial ventures, a point they asserted repeatedly in their correspondence with the local authorities to avoid taxation. Yet they managed their operations like companies. The difference lay in the use of their funds that, for the most part, served to maintain and expand their properties and help the members of the community. To fund their action in the management of death, they strove to strike a balance between their ambition to take care of each member in need of support (wood, coffin, repository space, coffin shipping) and the basic constraints of economics: they could not afford to lose money structurally, even if they also relied on gifts by wealthy members. By and large, each line of activity was run in such a way as to produce balanced accounts by charging more the affluent members who sought the services of the guild. This was true of the distribution of coffins, admission into a repository, or the shipping of coffins. Yet the guilds also raised money from their constituencies through fund-raising drives or individual donations. The proceeds were used to make up for a deficit, to fund regular repair work, or to establish a reserve fund. From the various sets of accounts found, there was little variation over time, except during the hyperinflation period in the late 1940s.

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The second major source of income were the land properties that guilds were able to accumulate over time. The guilds supported all kinds of operations beyond the management of death, mostly schools and hospitals. There were of course major differences and inequalities among the guilds and few could afford the range of services the Siming Gongsuo, the wealthiest and most influential guild in the city, offered to its members. Many, however, managed to acquire enough property to support a school. We have very incomplete records of guild properties and only a few examples can be offered to shed light on the situation of guilds on the property market. For example, the Guang-Zhao Guild acquired a very large lot in 1872 at the corner of Jiangxi Road and Ningbo Road in the International Settlement to build its new premises after their destruction in the 1850s and 1860s turmoil. This area was located right behind the Bund and became prime land in the following decades. The guild sold or rented most of its property, notably to banks. In 1928, it built a multistory building rented out to banks, except for the fifth floor, reserved to guild offices. In 1950, it still owned 1 acre (6 mu) covered with multistory buildings on this lot. On North Sichuan Road, it owned a large plot divided between its own schools and eighty-six rental houses.13 In 1950, most of its revenue came from rents (81.5 percent), with donations (5.3 percent) and cemetery fees (13.5 percent) making up the rest.14 The nineteenth-century guilds usually inscribed in their charter their responsibility toward their members after death.15 The most elementary form of support was to provide wood to make a coffin. Wood was an expensive material distributed free of charge to the poor sojourners to make a simple coffin. Yet guilds also provided ready-made coffins to their poor members. These were coffins of average quality that could not sustain long-range transportation, coffins to be buried locally. The larger guilds had wood storage and workshops that turned out coffins all day. Usually, besides free coffins, they proposed a large range of coffins against payment. The Siming Gongsuo offered eighteen different grades of coffin.16 A major means of support was to provide storage facilities for the coffins until such time when the family had enough money for a funeral or when the propitious time had arrived to send the coffin back to the native place. Although the storage of coffins was open to any member, it was conditioned upon depositing a tightly sealed coffin that required a larger expense. The coffins could stay for months or years on the premises. A related service, therefore, was to provide coffin shipping at a low price or even free of charge. As we shall see, this was a later development spurred by a combination of rising expectations and cheaper transportation. Finally, as most members could not afford the good-quality coffins required for shipping, the guilds owned land where the poorer members of the community were buried, in a

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table 2.2. Range of funeral services offered by guilds in 1950 Service

Funeral subsidy Wood (free) Coffin (free) Burial (free) Graveyard Repository Shipping

Guild

3 5 18 14 10 22 4

Source: “Shanghai shi huiguan gongsuo shanzhuang diaochabiao,” 1950, B168-1-798, SMA.

­

ground that belonged to the guild where only fellow members were admitted, hence forming a substitute to the native place. Few guilds offered the full range of services. Over time, their capacity might also change, depending on the state of their accounts, the size of the community, or other factors such as official pressure. It is impossible to reconstitute for all the identified guilds how they served their members over time. Yet, for obvious economic reasons, the guilds usually focused more on facilitating local burials and the storage of coffins than on organizing coffin shipping. An official survey made in early 1950 shows the distribution of services (see Table 2.2). Quite clearly, the focus of the guilds was on facilitating local burial with free wood, coffins, and burials. Only one guild, the Siming Gongsuo, proposed almost all items. The Siming Gongsuo acquired land as early as 1797 to establish a repository, with extra land serving as a graveyard. Members raised money in 1831 and opened a charity coffins office (yucaiju) to dispense free coffins.17 In fact, the guilds that owned a graveyard usually did not pay for burials as this came with the place. One-half of the guilds that paid for burials did not have storage facilities for coffins. Their members either took care of themselves or were buried in local graveyards. Conversely, among the eighteen guilds that ran a coffin repository, only four owned a graveyard. In fact, most distributed free coffins or free wood to those who could not afford purchasing and depositing a good-quality coffin in their repository. This radiography of early 1950 is representative of the more elaborate and varied landscape that existed for most of the modern period, except for coffin shipping, in which a greater number of guilds were involved before 1945. At any time, guilds, associations (tong xianghui), and corporations made available to their members facilities and services that depended on their financial resources. These capacities depended on the size of the community but increasingly over time on their

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assets—land and houses—and donations by the wealthy members of the community. The Ningbonese and the Cantonese, for example, ranked first in funeral services to their communities. The high level of financial investment in serving the dead was an element of identity building among the native-place associations.

The Distribution of Free Coffins The distribution of free coffins was the most elementary but essential form of funeral support. The encoffined body could then be buried in a charity or guild graveyard. In 1903 and 1904 the Siming Gongsuo distributed 910 and 648 coffins, respectively. The following year the number decreased to 413.18 In each case, the credentials and economic condition of the applicant had to be established through a guarantor, himself a member of the guild. The Siming Gongsuo maintained a large inventory of coffins to meet exceptional circumstances. It increased from about 500 in the mid-1930s to more than 1,000 during the early wartime period.19 It also kept a very large stock of wood for coffins, valued at 241,379 yuan in 1939.20 The distribution of free coffins relied on funds raised among the sojourner community. In 1939, the annual report listed all the contributors, with gifts between 1 and 5 yuan for a total of 2,489 yuan.21 If wealthy merchants were the main players when it came to large fund raising, the continuous flow of small donations by ordinary people highlights the widespread sense of solidarity among sojourners and their concern with death among the poorer members of their community. The tradition continued unabated even in times of economic instability.22 The sale of coffins was another way of supporting the free coffin program. Between 1934 and 1937, the Siming Gongsuo sold an average of 4,138 coffins, with a peak in 1938 of 5,346 coffins. In 1939, the sale of coffins garnered 314,788 yuan, or about one-half of the total income for this program. The sale of coffins more than covered the cost incurred by the Ningbo workshop to produce them (216,885).23 While various guilds ran similar programs, some guilds introduced them to help their members meet exceptional circumstances. The Wenzhou Native-Place Association (Wenzhou Tongxianghui) adopted a plan to distribute charity coffins only in 1937. The association estimated the need for free coffins at forty coffins per year, for a total cost of 600 yuan. It also assessed the number of coffins shipped back to Wenzhou at eighty per year, one-half of which required subsidizing. Like the Siming Gongsuo, the Wenzhou Association planned to sell coffins of a higher grade for a profit to fund those who could not pay. All the other documents in this file were

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in draft form and we do not know whether the association implemented the projected scheme.24 Yet these documents give us a glimpse of both the concern and the mode of operation of the native-place associations in taking care of their deceased members.

Guild Graveyards While the establishment of a coffin repository was closer to the ideal of sojourner imaginaire, the prosaic reality—demographic and financial constraints—drove the guilds to provide a place of rest for those who could not afford the cost of a sturdy coffin and shipping, those who died alone in the city, and of course all those who died in massive numbers in times of war or epidemics. The investment required to build and manage a repository was not insignificant and many small guilds lacked the resources for this level of expense. The purchase of a piece of land required only a small capital. Several guilds adopted this solution to provide their members with a dedicated place, one reserved exclusively to tongxiang. For most of the guilds, a burial ground was also necessary to bury the unclaimed coffins that would otherwise pile up in the repositories. All the guilds had rules by which a coffin that remained after a set period of time would be buried in their graveyard or in a charity graveyard. The history of guild graveyards has left little documentary trail. They were inconspicuous properties that did not attract much attention, except in a few notable cases of conflict with the authorities. Since there was no unified administration in the city, whatever registration existed was filed under three or more administrative bodies. The local gazetteers recorded these cemeteries, but only at a very late date and with many loopholes.25 Finally, the People’s Government made a general survey in early 1950 in the course of its takeover of all funeral services. Yet many guilds and corporations that owned burial grounds did not appear in these surveys and those that did appear had purchased land only during or after the war under official pressure.26 They were perhaps too small and insignificant for the purpose of the new regime that planned their extinction or their conversion into municipal cemeteries (see Chapter 10). An overview of the main functions of the guild cemeteries is provided below, with a focus on a few exemplary cases. From the time of their establishment, several guilds bought land and opened a charity cemetery around their premises if they were located outside the walled city. The standard practice by the Chinese was to have their burial grounds outside the built-up areas, a major difference with intra muros churchyards in European cities. Most guilds bought a piece

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of land in the countryside, sometimes far away from the city, but still in areas that became urbanized in the following decades (see Table 2.3). The guilds that owned land south of the walled city were more fortunate than those that acquired land in the northern and western rural areas. When the consular representatives of the United Kingdom and France negotiated the location of the land on which to open their settlements by virtue of the Treaty of Nanjing, the Shanghai daotai (circuit intendant) selected precisely the whole area north of the city wall, between the Huangpu River and a creek (labeled Defense Creek later on). The entire area was a major burial ground, especially between the city wall and the Yangjingbang Creek that separated the two foreign settlements. There were a few major sites, for example, the graveyards and compounds of the Siming Gongsuo and the Fujian Guild. The establishment of the foreign settlements initiated a process of urban development that forced the guilds to relocate their premises and graveyards.27 It generated tensions at times, but by and large the course of action was peaceful. Families and guilds received a financial compensation for the proper removal of the remains. There were also the well-known cases of resistance by the Siming Gongsuo, but as we shall see, the graveyard itself was not the main source of tension. It is very difficult to identify the exact location of guild cemeteries because the address was expressed only in vague terms (the name of a river, a bridge, or at best a village). A substantial list can be found in a 1918 local gazetteer, but with their distribution in the administrative divisions (bao and tu) on official maps. Among the thirty-four recorded guild graveyards, nineteen were located in the 25th bao and eleven in the 27th bao.28 The 23rd and 24th bao on Pudong had two each (see Map 2.1). Altogether, the graveyards covered 130 acres (793 mu) of land. Ninety percent of the burial land was concentrated in the 25th and 27th bao, with a large share in tu 2, 12, and 13 (44 percent) in the 25th bao and tu 11 (20 percent) in the 27th bao. Although we do not know their precise location, Map 2.1 table 2.3. Year of foundation of guild graveyards Name

Year

Name

Year

Huining Sigongtang Fujiian Jinhui Gongsuo Ranye Gongsuo Molisan Shantang Jiangzhen Gongsuo Rundetang Siye Rongyitang Chaozhou Tunrentang Xing’an Guoshantang Siqianye Chongyitang

1855 1855 1855 1855 1855 1860 1861 1861 1862

Siming Yisuo Shangchuan Huiguan Chengshantang Jiling Gonghui Liuyitang Yanye Gongsuo Zhe-Shao Yongxitang Guang-Zhao Shanzhuang Huining Sigongtang Guangdong Dapuxian Hengshantang Huangzhang Huiguan

1862 1863 1863 1864 1870 1872 1875 1875 1877

Source: Yao Wennan, Shanghai xian xuzhi, no. 3 (Shanghai: Nanyuan, 1918), 272–78.

Guilds, Charities, and the Community Management of Death

53

27-12 North 25-1

27-13

27-12 S outh

27-11

27-10 25-2 25-3

27-9

27-8

27-3 27-7

25-5

25-9

27-6

25-10

27-5 27-2

Number of guild cemeteries per bao-tu

25-6 25-4

25-8 25-11 25-16

25-13

5 2 1

25-7

25-12

25-15

27-1

Limit and number of bao-tu Street

27-4

24-12

Railway

25-14

27-1

Waterway

0

1

2 km

International Settlement French Concession

map 2.1. Distribution of guild cemeteries in and around Shanghai in 1918. Source: Virtual Shanghai

shows that many guilds selected locations in the southern bao districts. This area urbanized very late, except for the two 25-13 and 25-12 districts located just south of the former walled city. A few chose locations far to the west or on Pudong (not shown here) that remained rural well into the 1950s. Yet a few were located in the very area that became the foreign settlements after 1842. Of course, some graveyards were very close to walled city, such as the Siming Gongsuo graveyard that lay next to the wall or the Fujian Guild graveyard, just 20 yards north of the wall. Yet they were located in areas with hardly any traffic of people or goods. In fact, these were very quiet rural areas compared to the vibrant commercial Liushipu District that stretched between the wall and the Huangpu River. The Sand Junk Guild (Shangchuan Gongsuo) owned a cemetery near Wusong, a convenient location to receive the sick or dead sailors.29 The main observation is that in Shanghai, unlike premodern European cities, the dead were buried outside the city limits. The density of population, as well as the topography of

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the city with its numerous canals, left no alternative. The local representatives of the imperial state did not police the creation and management of graveyards. Except for charity organizations, the guilds were the main driving force in the emergence of large graveyards around Shanghai. When urbanization caught up with their graveyards, they generally relocated and transferred the remains to a new burial ground. It was not before the advent of the Nationalists from the late 1920s onward that zones of exclusion were defined that pushed the guild graveyards further away into the countryside. In the management of graveyards, two communities stand out, although they followed a different path. The Ningbonese represent a case of steadfast resistance to move away from their original location. The Cantonese, in contrast, left a long trail of successive locations all over the city. The Siming Gongsuo maintained mostly coffin repositories and did not establish a large cemetery in Shanghai until the 1940s, although it owned plots of land near its premises where Ningbo natives were buried. The Cantonese organizations, the Guang-Zhao Guild (538 mu) and the Chaozhou Guild (108 mu), eventually owned the largest guild graveyards in Shanghai, followed by the Xijin Guild (50 mu) of the Wuxi natives. Throughout the Republican period, political decisions and military events had a direct impact on the establishment, the transfer, and the management of guild graveyards. This story will be taken up with the case of the Cantonese graveyards to examine the footprint of guild graveyards in the city. The Cantonese formed a very large community in Shanghai. They hailed from various districts and regrouped under several organizations, with the Guang-Zhao Guild and the Chaozhou Guild as the two main representative native-place associations.30 Guangdong was also one of the most distant regions from Shanghai, which explains the focus of the Cantonese organizations on graveyards, even if some also owned coffin repositories. The cost of shipping must have been prohibitive until the advent of modern steamship vessels. The Lingnan Cemetery (Lingnan Shanzhuang) was the first Cantonese burial ground in the city. The Chaozhou Guild and the Guang-Zhao Guild initially established the joint graveyard in 1847 on 3 acres of land (19 mu) less than 1 mile outside the West gate.31 A group of Cantonese merchants purchased the property to serve as a charity graveyard for the Guang-Zhao natives and eventually entrusted the graveyard to the Guang-Zhao Guild. The graveyard and its three buildings twice suffered damage and destruction during the conflicts that gripped the city in the late imperial period. Its buildings, burnt down in 1853, were restored in 1856. Then in 1862 the imperial army occupied the place, which was again destroyed by fire. It was not restored until 1875.32 As a result of fighting and destruction, the Guang-Zhao Guild even lost the title deed

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that established its ownership of the property. Although it tried to obtain a new deed in 1936 with the support of the then Cantonese mayor, Wu Tiecheng, disputes between competing Cantonese organizations foiled this attempt.33 The Lingnan Cemetery remained in use until 1930 when all burials stopped, according to a 1950 report.34 Yet the Lingnan Cemetery received new burials in the wartime period when access to the cemeteries outside the city was closed. Eventually the Lingnan Cemetery again found itself without a title deed in 1947 when the municipality challenged its presence in the urban area and imposed the removal of all graves.35 The first major Cantonese organization, the Chaozhou Guild, originally owned coffin repositories outside the walled city, which it eventually changed into a graveyard. In 1913 the Bayi Repository became the Bayi Graveyard near Baxianqiao to the west of the city wall. Like many such burial grounds, it found itself surrounded by densely populated areas. The French Municipal Council exercised pressure to curb its activities. On three different occasions, it requested portions of the graveyard to build roads. At times, disagreement erupted between the parties, but only on the issue of financial compensation. It never became contentious, as in the case of the Ningbo Graveyard. The negotiations were made more complex by the fact that the burial ground was the joint property of the three different bang (subgroup) that composed the guild and, as such, each bang had a veto power on the decision to part with land.36 In its transactions with the French, the Chaozhou Guild enlisted local Chinese officials and at the same time hired an attorney to conduct the talks. Eventually, the guild decided to give up its graveyard altogether and to rent out the land. It purchased a large track of land (19.3 acres, 87 mu) in Jiangwan, near Zhangsanqiao to open a new cemetery.37 On 15 July 1923, the guild held a ceremony that marked the official transfer of the former graveyard to the new cemetery. By 1946, the cemetery covered an area of 30.6 acres (186 mu).38 The Guang-Zhao Guild emerged from a split with the original Chaozhou Guild.39 It established its own first graveyard in 1872 on 11.5 acres (70 mu) of land located in the countryside, between Soochow Creek and the future Sinza Road. The site received both the main guildhall and the coffin repository.40 In 1882, the guild had no less than 8,000 coffins on its premises, including 500 coffins that had decayed beyond repair.41 As urbanization progressed, the guild started to worry about the planned extension of the International Settlement (1899) and in anticipation bought a large piece of land (133 mu, 22 acres) in the rural area across the Soochow Creek.42 The guild gradually transferred the remains of the sojourners to the new location.43 The new graveyard met the needs of the Guang-Zhao community for a quarter of a century, but by 1920 the everincreasing Cantonese community produced such a large number of deaths

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that the graveyard started to fill up. The guild also faced the same issue of urbanization. A vibrant district, Zhabei, had developed and threatened to absorb its graveyard, located on prime land, right behind the busy North Railway Station. Whereas in 1896 Zhabei had hardly existed, by 1920 the whole area was covered with streets, workshops, and rows of houses.44 After much debate, in 1924 the guild purchased a very large track of land (49 acres, 300 mu) between Jiangwan and Dachang, two small towns a few miles to the north. The guild funded the project from its reserve (116,000 yuan), which it supplemented with donations by Cantonese sojourners (238,000 yuan), grave reservation fees (105,000 yuan), and loans from Chinese banks (83,000 yuan). Altogether, the guild invested 538,000 yuan in its graveyard.45 Yet the purchased land was located in a remote place without road access. The guild asked the Hubei Bureau of Works, Police, and Taxes (Hubei Gongxunjuanju) to open a road, to no avail. The Shanghai Municipal Government eventually opened a road three years later, but in the meantime the guild was not able to use its brand new cemetery.46 The consecration of the cemetery took place on 30 August 1930 with a whole body of Daoist and Buddhist priests. Opera companies performed Cantonese and Beijing opera. The ceremonies lasted for several days between 30 August and 20 September.47 However, it was not until 1932 that the new cemetery became fully operational. The Guang-Zhao Guild was very proud of its cemetery and adopted a strict set of rules. The charter claimed that the Guang-Zhao Cemetery should be a modern “model cemetery.”48 The cemetery was open to all Cantonese irrespective of their origin. Smaller Cantonese organizations kept their own cemeteries, but the Guang-Zhao Cemetery, although formally devoted to the sojourners from the Guangzhou and Zhao qing counties, had an all-encompassing vocation.49 In its documents, the Guang-Zhao Guild referred explicitly to the 200,000-strong Cantonese community in Shanghai.50 The large cemetery was expected to accommodate 10,000 public (or “model”) graves, 15,000 pauper graves, and 8,000 children graves. The cemetery charged a fee for the model graves and used the proceeds to pay for the burial of paupers. The model tombs came with a perpetual lease, whereas the paupers’ tombs were excavated after ten years, the bones placed in urns and reburied. The guild claimed this accorded with the practice in Cantonese society and respected the sensibility of the people.51 Although the cemetery was located in the area where heavy fighting took place in August to November 1937, it was saved from major damage. After the war, the guild launched a general cleaning of the cemetery and a program of restoration of the roads and tombs.52 Yet inflation eroded the financial capacities of the guilds. In January 1947, the income from the sale

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of burial lots covered only one-half of the amount spent for the cemetery. While it maintained its free paupers’ graves, the guild increased the price of regular graves.53 Over the years, the guild continued purchasing additional land to meet the increasing demand for graves. By 1950, the cemetery covered 88.6 acres (538 mu). By then, it had received the remains of 40,000 paupers, 4,000 regular burials, as well as the remains of some unidentified Cantonese soldiers who died during the 1932 Battle of Shanghai.54 There was a second major wave in the creation of guild cemeteries in the early and mid-1920s. Two factors nurtured this movement. The first one was the emergence of private “modern cemeteries,” a commercial response to increasing social demand (see Chapter 4). The second factor was the inability of many guilds to accommodate the higher turnover of coffins on their premises and the dilemma of accumulating unclaimed coffins. The guilds followed two main strategies. Those with enough resources shipped the unclaimed coffins to their native place for burial in a local guild or charity graveyard. Those with lesser financial capacity chose to establish a cemetery in the vicinity of Shanghai. Although there were earlier initiatives—from at least 1914 the Huining Guild owned a graveyard for children55—the pattern was unmistakably new. In 1926 the Pudong Gongsuo opened a cemetery in Pudong, which it advertised as modeled after the Wanguo Cemetery, the first Chinese commercial cemetery in 1919 (see Chapter 4).56 It was a small 10-mu cemetery with two sections, one for paupers and one with fee-based burial lots.57 The same year, the Jiangxi Guild opened its own cemetery with 600 burial lots.58 In the late 1920s, the Huining Guild established a charity graveyard in Minhang to bury its unclaimed coffins.59 The Marine Carpenter Guild (Shuimu Gongyesuo) opened a cemetery in Dachang to bury its unclaimed coffins from at least 1926.60 In 1930 the Dapu Guild (Dapu Huiguan) made plans to open a 40-mu cemetery in Jiangwan or Pudong.61 The Dongting Dongshan Guild advertised the opening of its cemetery two years later.62 There were sometimes delays between planning and actual realization. The Jiangxi Guild took more than four years to achieve its project.63 The Changzhou Guild proposed a cemetery in 1926, but it did not take action until nine years later.64 Some, for example, the Huizhou Native-Place Association, started with a cemetery and a repository in Shanghai and later purchased land in the native place to establish a second repository and cemetery.65 In 1924, the Siming Gongsuo announced its intention to establish a cemetery in Ningbo. It envisioned a large cemetery patterned after the modern Wanguo Cemetery. The guild presented six arguments for opening a cemetery which focused on helping the less privileged in the community, saving land, and providing a burial ground that met the prerequisites of individual graves in a well-designed environment.66 Eventually, the guild

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owned two locations for the burial of its unclaimed coffins in Ningbo. Yet it did not consider establishing a modern cemetery in Shanghai proper, even if it originally buried some of its members in its original graveyard and other plots of land near the city wall. In March 1935, Fu Xiao’an, the general manager of the China Commercial Bank, made public a letter to the Ningbo Native-Place Association (Ningbo Lühu Tongxianghui) and Yu Xiaqing, one of the most influential Ningbo merchants, to advocate the establishment of a large Siming cemetery (200–300 mu) around Shanghai. He argued that the Ningbo community had become extremely large, which produced a high number of deaths every year. Many families lacked the resources to ship back their coffins or, even when they did, had no place for burial in Ningbo. It would save a lot of trouble and money to have a local cemetery.67 The letter failed to impress a sense of urgency among the board members of the Siming Gongsuo. The guild took action only under strong government pressure in the 1940s. The last wave of new guild cemeteries started during wartime, but it unraveled mostly in the postwar period. It was the result of the combined pressure by the Chinese municipal authorities on the guilds to evacuate the unclaimed coffins from their repositories and the increasing demand of the population for local burial grounds. The cost of a coffin repository or shipping was beyond the means of most people, while the tax raised on stored coffins by the municipal authorities placed the guilds in a financial quandary. Should they continue subsidizing the dead or use their resources to help their current members in times of hardship? The guilds acquired land in the areas defined by the municipality as the Repository Zone (Bingshequ), far away from the urban districts. In 1942, the Hunan Guild acquired 108 mu (17.8 acres) in Qingpu, 60 miles west of Shanghai.68 In 1945, the Chonghai Guild established a new cemetery.69 There was a larger movement toward the opening of cemeteries by the guilds, even if many did not bother to register their property. Shortly after the takeover of the city by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a document listed eleven guilds with active cemeteries (see Table 2.4). The document fails to mention a few major cemeteries (Guang-Zhao Cemetery), but it gives a sense of the size of the guild cemeteries, the size of the various communities, and the financial capacity of their guilds.

Storing Coffins Pending Burial: Jijiu Daizang A coffin repository was often the cornerstone of guild foundation. Besides defending the community’s interest vis-à-vis officials and the other sojourner communities, providing the dead with an adequate facility before

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table 2.4. Size of the guild cemeteries in 1950 Guild cemetery

Siming Gongsuo Xijin Gongsuo Yanping Shanzhuang Hubei Huiguan Shandong Huiguan Taizhou Huiguan Yangzhou Qiyi Huiguan Huai’an Liuyi Zhejin Jishan Huaiyang Gongye Yiyuan Gongsuo Dongting Dongshan Huiguan

Size (in mu)

124 61 44 37 37 21 7 5 5 8 8

Source: Untitled document, 1950, Q118-1-6, SMA.

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their burial was a major concern of the guild directors. From the uncertain records we have about the year of foundation of the guilds and that of the opening of a coffin repository, in most cases this was concomitant. In the sample of forty-two guilds surveyed in 1950, about one-quarter started without a coffin repository, but the temporal gap ranges from over a century to only a few years. The Pingjiang Gongsuo (Suzhou) and the ZheShao Gongsuo (Shaoxing) established repositories between 100 and 166 years after their establishment. In 1878, the Huining Guild, established in 1754, publicized the opening of its coffin repository 124 years after its foundation.70 The Zhening Muye Gongsuo (Ningbo) took half a century, the Chaohui Gongsuo (Guangdong) three decades, and the Xijin (Jiangsu Wuxi) and Pingjiang Gongsuo (Suzhou) 20 and 14 years, respectively. The four remaining cases (Dongting Dongshan Huiguan, Huaiyang Gongye Yiyuan Gongsuo, Jinting Huiguan, and Zhejin Gongsuo) show gaps of 4–10 years. Yet the obvious fact remains that three-quarters of our sample established coffin repositories at the same time as they built their guildhall. Of the seven guilds in this sample that predated the opening of Shanghai to Western trade, three founded repositories from the beginning. There was a variety of cases among the guilds that established repositories after 1850, but in the twentieth century they all included a coffin repository. In other words, native-place associations cared very much about the fate of their deceased members. This was less pronounced among the genuine corporations based on trade and among the more modern tong xianghui, in part perhaps because they catered precisely to the less affluent segment of each community.71 The corporations established around a group of tongxiang, however, were prepared to help their less affluent members. In 1893, the Shoe-Maker Guild requested permission to establish a coffin repository in the International Settlement. It argued that it

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employed a lot of workers and apprentices from the north of Jiangnan. As many died without relatives in Shanghai and might end up in the street, the guild felt responsible to build a repository for them.72 Storing coffins in a repository was reserved to the more affluent members of guilds, not necessarily the upper elite—the latter would not deposit their coffins with the guild—but in view of the demography of these communities, the discrepancy is significant enough to assert that most sojourners were excluded from this service. The Ningbo community offers a good example. Aside from its large constituency in the walled city, it represented about one-half of the Chinese population in the French Concession and probably a significant share of the population in the International Settlement. To accommodate the flow of coffins from such a large population would have taxed the capacity of the limited premises made available as repositories. Until the turn of the century, the Siming Gongsuo had only one location west of the city wall, an area incorporated in the French Concession after 1849. This location could store at most some 7,000 coffins.73 In view of the average length of stay of coffins, it could not receive more than 1,000–1,500 new coffins every year. But the actual figure was much lower. In 1890, the Siming Gongsuo was reported as storing 1,800 coffins.74 This figure is well below the number of deaths to be expected among the large Ningbo community at the time.75 The coffin repositories received exclusively the dead bodies of the members of the guild. Occasionally, when an unexpected death occurred, on a boat going through Shanghai or even in a more remote location, the body was brought to the coffin repository of the relevant guild, provided the regional identity was established. The repository served as a temporary mortuary until the family was informed and could repatriate or bury the body.76 Like the Siming Gongsuo, most of the native-place associations established their coffin repositories outside the walled city, but usually at a short distance. There were few cases of repositories located in very remote areas. The Chengshantang Repository of the Sand Junk Guild (Shangchuan Gongsuo) was adjacent to the graveyard the guild owned in Wusong. The Chengshantang accommodated the bodies of the dead sailors employed on the sand junks.77 A few guilds established their repository in densely populated areas. The premises of the Chaozhou Guild opened in 1811 on Yanghang Street, between the city wall and the Huangpu River, with about seventy rooms that served as coffin repositories. There was no clear distinction between the use of the buildings as guildhall and as repository.78 Many guilds selected locations that became inappropriate due to urban development or disputes with the administrations of the foreign settlements. The Piaoshui Shuilu Guild established its forty-room coffin repository in

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1864 north of Laozha. In 1887, by its own admission, it was surrounded on all sides by houses, factories, a garden, and so on.79 The Pingjiang Guild established its first repository outside the city wall, near the West gate in 1880. As it proved too small and increasingly impractical with the expansion of the French Concession, the guild bought a second piece of land in Sinza in front of the Guang-Zhao Guild. The guild also bought 5 acres (30 mu) of land near Suzhou to establish a cemetery. Yet it lacked the resources to start a new building. In 1895, it launched a major fund-raising campaign to construct the premises in Sinza.80 The drive was not very successful, however, and the guild had to borrow money in 1898. It was a fateful decision because the new premises found themselves one year later in the western extension of the International Settlement. In 1906, the guild purchased another piece of land (27 mu) on Robison Road where it built one hundred rooms. It dismantled the buildings (seventy rooms) on the original site to recycle them for the new repository. The guild built rental houses on the Sinza site.81 The Qianjiang Guild—a professional association for the Hangzhou silk shops—erected its coffin repository in the 1890s in the Sinza area, but thirty years later urban expansion was making it difficult to stay in the same location. In 1919, the guild relocated its premises in Zhabei.82 There were also intermediate forms of funeral organizations that stood somewhere between guilds and charities. The Yanxu Shanzhuang was one such organization that owned both a repository and a cemetery. One of its purposes was to bury unburied coffins, not by collecting them systematically like the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery, an organization solely devoted to collecting exposed corpses (see Chapter 6), but by responding to requests by families. The Yanxu Shanzhuang was an initiative by Ningbo merchants that catered to the Ningbo people as well as to a wider community. Its cemetery was entirely free, while the annual fee to store a coffin in 1892 was only 2 yuan.83 The Siming Gongsuo itself informed its members that the Yanxu Shanzhuang could help them with burial outside of its own services.84 The Yanxu Shanzhuang operated along the same lines as guilds, with a strict limit on the storage time on its premises. Unclaimed coffins were buried in its cemetery.85 Eventually, because of the pressure by urbanization, it acquired land in 1917 outside of the city in Wangjiazhai, although it maintained its original site until the early 1920s.86 In 1926 the Yanxu Shanzhuang again bought land (2.6 acres, 16 mu) near the Song Public Garden (Song Gongyuan) to erect new buildings.87 The old site was converted into rental houses.88 A similar organization was the Lianyi Repository and Cemetery, a Cantonese-based benevolent association that also served a broad spectrum of the population.89

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The coffin repositories of the guilds were very elaborate buildings. Their size and refinement depended of course on the resources of the guild, but since they were often part of the guild premises, they were carefully designed structures meant to convey a sense of comfort and elegance even as a temporary place of abode. There is no documentary trace (photographs, drawings) of the initial premises that existed in or nearby the walled city up to the nineteenth century. Fortunately, we have visual and textual traces of the coffin repositories built between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As part of the registration process imposed by the municipal government in the 1940s, the guilds provided detailed blueprints of their premises. Each differed in size, style, and decoration, but they all followed a similar architectural pattern. They were enclosed buildings surrounded by a high wall—when it did not exist, it became compulsory under municipal rules—meant to block outside viewers from seeing or even noticing the nature of the premises. Photographs show buildings that bore no distinguishing sign or distinctive architectural style. They were similar to ordinary temples or guildhalls (see Figure 2.1). They blended in the general urban or rural landscape. A main gate gave access to the main courtyard around which one or several halls were distributed. The repositories usually featured a main hall to hold the required ceremonies upon entry or exit and the regular rituals for the soul of the unburied dead at Qingming.90

figure 2.1. View of the Yangzhou coffin repository. Source: Virtual Shanghai, ID33098, source unknown

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The coffin repositories were not immune to destruction. The Siming Gongsuo lost all its premises outside the city wall to fire in 1853 during the fighting between the Small Sword Society and the imperial army. Five years later, the guild managed to rebuild its repository thanks to a subscription by wealthy members.91 Yet British soldiers almost immediately occupied the site in 1860 to defend the walled city against the Taiping armies. The Siming Gongsuo regained possession of its premises only four years later, by which time the buildings had been badly damaged. Under such circumstances, the guilds were not able to maintain their service to the community, except for temporary and inadequate sheds. In other words, the very fervent discourse that some guilds delivered when dealing with the authorities, both foreign and Chinese, about their unflinching responsibility toward the dead was part of a constructed imaginaire. This does not question their genuine sense of responsibility, but it is obvious that several times circumstances dictated otherwise and the guilds lost their capacity to even protect the coffins entrusted to their care. Premises and cemeteries were violated repeatedly by the intrusion of war and rebellions. Coffin repositories formed large compounds that could be used as dormitories, storage, and so on. Although the arbitrary occupation by army units or by refugees was essentially a postwar phenomenon, as early as 1924 a brigade of the Chinese First Division arbitrarily commandeered the Minqiao Shanzhuang, the Fujianese coffin repository. The Fujianese Native-Place Association sent a letter of protest to the military headquarters and made it public in the press.92 The Sino-Japanese War in 1937 had a more devastating impact. The Huzhou Guild lost all its property and its 245 stored coffins. It shipped back a small number of coffins salvaged from the damaged premises. The Lingnan Shanzhuang lost all its repositories and much of its cemetery.93 Some guilds chose to relocate, although only a very small number actually did. The Hunan Guild, whose premises were damaged by bombs and fire, built an unpretentious repository in the International Settlement.94 Even when their premises came out of the fighting unscathed, some guilds suspended their operation to avoid accumulating coffins that could no longer be evacuated or because their financial situation no longer allowed them to run a repository. They were also subject to the growing pressure of the authorities that saw the presence of open coffins as a potential source of pollution or infection. In January 1940, the Bureau of Public Health instructed the Chaohui Guild to remove the coffins from its coffin repository.95 It served the same notice to the Huzhou Guild. Although the guild protested and argued it was difficult to locate the family and to find transportation, it eventually decided to bury all the remaining coffins in the Puyi Cemetery in Dachang.96 Under the same pressure, in July 1941, the Hunan

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Guild announced in the press that 200 unclaimed coffins would soon be buried in the guild cemetery in Qingpu.97 The actual transfer and burial of the 200 coffins took place in October, followed by a second shipment of 107 coffins in November.98 To protect their buildings, the guilds defined the rules that governed the operation of repositories. Admittance into the premises was conditioned upon the presentation of a coffin receipt. The greatest risk in peacetime was that of fire. This was a major worry because a fire would not only damage the buildings but also burn the coffins and de facto cremate the bodies entrusted to the care of the guild. Great caution was exercised when handling candles during ceremonies.99 Yet danger could also come from outside. In 1947, on the occasion of a festival, the local residents held a small firework that ignited a fire in the premises of the Huzhou Guild, causing the destruction of four rooms and eighteen coffins. The guild sued the careless neighbors. The loss of coffins entrusted by families was certainly one of the worst scenarios for the native-place associations. Yet their location in highly urbanized areas exposed them to such risks. If public health dominated the concern of the local authorities to press for the displacement of coffin repositories to the suburbs, the issue of fire and other hazards was not absent either. The size of the coffin repositories ranged from a few rooms to genuine “dormitories” for the dead. In December 1941, the premises of the Suzhou Jiyi Gongsuo consisted of 139 rooms that stored 812 coffins. They were distributed in four main halls called fu (wealthy), gui (precious), chang (long), and chun (spring). It was a simple layout with the sole purpose of storage.100 The Taizhou Gongsuo, although larger, was also just a storage place. It was made up of two buildings with 17 rooms holding 463 coffins.101 The Dinghai Shanchang Gongsuo had 6 halls, with a total of 12 rooms divided in 6 first-class rooms and 6 regular rooms. The first-class rooms received only 32 coffins, while the plain ones gathered 619 coffins.102 The Zhejin Jishantang was more sophisticated, with a large hall to hold ceremonies and one building divided into four compartments. Three of them held 25, 30, and 46 coffins, while the fourth held 479 coffins.103 The Doumiye Gongsuo had a single building with a hall to receive the visitors (keting) as well as a ceremony hall (dating). The repository itself was divided into 35 rooms, holding 60–70 coffins each, and 2 common rooms (putong jian) with 103 and 95 coffins.104 These examples are representative of the structure and size of most guild-run coffin repositories. The repositories also provided all sorts of devices, artifacts, and objects to accompany the coffin or when ceremonies were held upon entry or exit or on various occasions (e.g., Qingming).105

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The Siming Gongsuo ran the largest and the most conspicuous operation in the city. From its original location outside the city wall it moved in different directions after its two confrontations with the French Municipal Council in 1874 and 1898. In 1883, the guild built a repository (Yongchang) on the northern bank of Soochow Creek, near Baziqiao.106 In 1889, it established a Western Repository near Chujiaqiao to the west of the foreign settlements.107 In both cases, these locations soon became residential areas. In 1900, the guild established an Eastern Repository in Pudong to serve the needs of the Ningbo natives who worked in the harbor facilities across the Huangpu River. It also purchased land south of the walled city in 1903 where it constructed its largest facility, the Southern Repository (Nanchang Bingshe).108 When it opened in 1907, however, the Western Repository and even the Yongchang Repository had lost their usefulness and remained empty. Both were transformed into rental houses and a hospital.109 Finally, in 1910, the guild reestablished the Northern Repository (Beichang Bingshe) north of the Hongkou area to serve the Ningbo sojourners who lived north of Soochow Creek.110 The Southern Repository (Nanchang) was the largest structure. It offered spacious premises enclosed by a high wall a few miles from the city wall in the Chinese-administered area. The Siming Gongsuo added several extensions to the original buildings to meet the demand of its increasing community.111 In 1920 the guild even rebuilt the whole compound.112 A staff of four were present at all times during the day and two watchmen at night.113 It was paramount for the guild to guarantee the safety of the coffins in which the families often placed jewelry and other valuable objects. The main gate on Xinqiao Road led into a complex made up of one-story buildings, altogether eight coffin repositories with 22 main compartments and 422 rooms.114 The first building to the left was the reception hall for visitors and on the opposite side were the offices of the repository as well as two halls for ceremonies. The Jishi Hall (Sishiting) was used to celebrate the entrance ceremony of new coffins. A special hall (dazhaoting) was devoted to the coffins placed therein the day before their date of departure from the repository, although the ceremony itself was held in the Dicang Hall.115 As one walked into the compound, a series of lilong-like alleys led to the various buildings. The first-, second-, and third-class compartments followed an east–west axis from Xinqiao Road. Further west, one would find another series of halls (ting) with compartments designated by a unique character (Justice, Rite, Will, etc.). The Southern Repository had several hundred rooms that could accommodate up to 15,000 coffins. In September 1941 it actually stored just half this amount (7,554), whereas in March 1951 it stored 13,654.116

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The Northern Repository exhibited the same characteristics, albeit at a smaller scale. It bordered a canal, which came handy for the transportation of coffins. The main gate opened to the south into a compact compound. There was no courtyard, but an altar to the God of Earth stood next to the entrance, on the left-hand side, followed by offices. Walking north, the first row of buildings accommodated the first- and second-class rooms. Further north, one would find larger premises with the third-class rooms (two buildings), then slightly to the right two larger buildings for the fourthclass rooms. The Eastern Repository in Pudong was the smallest operation. It was a simple compound opening to the south and bordered on the north by a small canal. It was fully enclosed, similar to the other repositories, with only three buildings. The first building to the right was reserved for the staff (office, kitchen, dormitory). On the other side to the west, the second building was devoted to the second- and third-class rooms. The third building in the back occupied all the remaining space. There was no first-class room in the Eastern Repository that received mostly the bodies of workers. Altogether, the Siming Gongsuo repositories comprised 827 rooms by 1950.117 Each building in the coffin repositories was given an individual name to indicate its particular status in the compound. The most common term for a building was jian (compartment), even if each jian actually had several rooms.118 Men and women were usually separated. The Siming Gongsuo introduced the separation on the second year of its opening in 1798.119 In the repository of the Huzhou Guild, men were placed in the Left Hall (zuotongjian) and women in the Right Hall (youtongjian). There was a separate hall for children (xiaotongjian). The distribution of coffins, however, followed a more elaborate hierarchy based on the level of rate paid to the guild. Again, there was no general rule as this depended on the degree of sophistication of the repository, but it was not uncommon to find different levels of accommodation. At the Huzhou Guild, the repository proposed two different degrees above the regular halls, the Central Hall (zhengzhongjian) and the Special Hall (tebiejian). In the former, rooms were numbered by location (right, left, north, south, etc.), whereas in the latter each room had a proper name. Admission into these buildings was based not on sex or age but on rate. The two higher rate buildings received adults and children of both sexes, although a more detailed register shows that all the children in the Central Hall were male. Yet girls’ coffins were also placed in the Right Hall for adult women. In the common rooms, coffins were stored together, one next to and above the other. There was no other choice than to pile up the coffins to accommodate as many as possible (see Figure 2.2). In the higher priced rooms, however, the number of coffins was kept low and

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figure 2.2. View of a common room at the Yangzhou coffin repository in the 1940s. Source: Virtual Shanghai, ID33097, source unknown

even provided for individual “cells” for each coffin. It was thus possible to regroup a small number of coffins for each sex in a separate enclosure or, even better, to have one coffin by itself in an individual space. The registers of the Special Hall recorded clearly whether a coffin enjoyed half a cell or a full cell.120 The spatial arrangement in the coffin repositories reflected the social hierarchy among the living. Families with substantial means could afford the rate that allowed their departed member to rest in an individual and nicely decorated space. Those with lesser revenue had to accept placing their coffin in a more or less cramped room. While the guilds construed a discourse that highlighted their benevolent role in providing a place of temporary rest for their members, it should be clear by now that this discourse concealed a more complex reality. There were in fact three modes of processing the dead among sojourners. The first choice was for the family to take care of the deceased and its coffin. After encoffining, the body was entrusted to a shipping company that took the coffin back to the native place. The next option was to deposit the coffin in a guild repository for a period limited to three years on average, after which the family had to withdraw the coffin for burial or repatriation. Despite the charitable

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nature of this offer, the guild perceived a fee to accommodate the coffins in its repositories, which excluded many if not most sojourners. In other words, coffin repositories represented less a form of charity work than a collective service offered to a segment of the community. Real charity work resided in the last option, the distribution of free coffins and the charity cemetery attached to the guild. The guild repositories kept detailed registers of inbound and outbound coffins. Most of these registers have disappeared, in part because they did not present any interest once all the deposited coffins had left, in part because of the history of war and revolution in Shanghai that destroyed many such premises or their archives. The Hunan Guild lost most of its registers during the fighting with Japan in 1937. Those that survived, listed in a 1941 document, were lost for good thereafter.121 The Shanghai Municipal Archives inherited a few such registers when the guilds came under a unified committee after 1950 and surrendered their documents. At the time of writing, the registers of only four guilds in the later period of their history could be found: Siming Gongsuo (1943), Huzhou Guild (1932–1937), Yizhuang Gongsuo (1942), and Hunan Guild (1945).122 Basically, the guild repositories kept two kinds of register, an account book (zhangbu) and a coffin register (binshe cunjiu piaobu). The Huzhou Guild repository had a separate register for each building and one to record the collective shipments of coffins by the guild.123 Typically, the registers recorded the name and age of the deceased, the number attributed to the coffin, and the date of entry. Aside from the registers, the repository established a detailed fiche for each coffin that, in addition to the elements listed above, noted the name and address of the contact person who deposited the coffin, the room assignment in the repository, and the name of the guarantor.124 The 1942 and 1943 records of the Siming Gongsuo show a similar pattern. These registers, however, were no longer left to the initiative of the guilds. The Chinese municipal authorities introduced standardized forms to collect homogenized data and to make the guild repositories more accountable. The form used by the Siming Gongsuo, for example, required the date of entry; the number of the coffin; the name, sex, and age of the deceased; his or her address; the duration of sojourning in Shanghai; the date and cause of death; and the name and address of the contact in the family. On the outbound form, the repository was expected to indicate the name, sex, and age of the deceased; the number of the coffin; the destination; the disposal at destination; the exit number; and the contact details of the person who retrieved the coffin. Usually, the information was complete down to “destination,” but the guild did not bother to fill in the remaining columns.125 The reach of the state was definitely on the rise in wartime Shanghai.

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Upon receiving a coffin, the repository issued a deposit slip (jijiupiao), which the family had to retain and produce to be allowed to withdraw a coffin.126 In the 1930s, the Huzhou Guild also issued an abridged version of the regulation of the repository.127 Admission into a guild repository was not automatic. As with many aspects of everyday life in Chinese cities, a known member of the guild had to guarantee the credentials of applicants.128 The role of guarantors (danbao) was essential because they could certify that someone had indeed deposited a coffin with the guild repository, especially when the receipt was lost or when the coffin was no longer in the repository. During the war, many people lost their documents or stopped paying the fee or simply left the city. When the situation became more stable or after the war, family members would turn to the guild to find where the coffin of their relative had gone. In all such cases, they had to present a letter cosigned by a representative of the family and the guarantor.129 The study of the population whose coffins went through the repositories sheds an interesting light on the funeral practices in Shanghai. The first striking element is the relative gender balance. There were more men than women, but this reflected the uneven sex ratio among the sojourner communities. My data cover only the 1930s when the sex ratio reached a better equilibrium. At the Huzhou Guild, the no. 5 register for the Women’s Hall (zuotongjian) numbered 76 individuals.130 In the 1932–1936 period, the Men’s Hall received 244 coffins, including 62 boys under sixteen.131 The general registers for the same period recorded 480 individuals (from a total of 1,330) with 227 men, 167 women, and 83 children. Most went into the common rooms. The Central Hall received 12 women, 17 men, and 2 children. The next upper level, the Special Hall, received 22 women, 35 men, and 2 children. The no. 3 register for the Children’s Hall listed 65 individual entries between April 1936 and August 1937. Forty-five children had less than five years.132 This number, although small, confirms that families with a decent income were prepared to pay to store the coffin of very young children and even incur the cost of transportation for proper burial in the native village. In the Southern Repository (Nanchang) of the Siming Gongsuo, the sex ratio showed the same bias in favor of men. The registers provide data about the coffins received in November 1942 and March 1943 as well as about those withdrawn in March 1943.133 For the latter, with 86 men and 87 women, the balance was almost perfect. In November 1942, the repository received 135 women for 161 men; in March of the following year there were 151 women for 187 men, or a sex ratio of 1.2. With a sex ratio at 1.3 in the Chinese municipality in 1936 and an even higher one, 1.4, in 1942 in the International Settlement, the sex ratio in both repositories was

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a fair reflection of the structure of the general population.134 Husbands and wives or their relatives cared as much for their male or female deceased members, adults or children. They cared enough to spend money on a place in a repository with the ultimate objective of returning their forebears to the native place. Since the coffins placed in the repositories represented a fairly broad social spectrum, it is fair to observe that by the 1930s men and women received the same treatment in death. This observation cannot be extended to earlier periods, but unless proved otherwise, the temptation is to view this as a constant. In Shanghai, for those who could afford the cost of renting a place in a repository, men and women counted equally. The registers of the Siming Gongsuo in 1942–1943 also provided a rare piece of information. They recorded the length of stay (juzhu nianshu) in Shanghai. This is important as it highlights one of the reasons people were strongly attached to burying their net-fo kin in the native place. Our sample includes a total of 634 individuals who died during the two months of November 1942 (338) and March 1943 (296). They represent a random slice of the Ningbo sojourners in a fairly normal period, even if the year 1942 was particularly difficult, following the blockade by the Allied Powers after Pearl Harbor. Yet, by November, there is no reason to believe that the death pattern had been affected in a significant way. The most remarkable feature that this sample establishes is the high level of circulation of the Ningbo sojourners. Recent immigrants to the city made up the bulk of the dead in both months. If we take 1943 as a benchmark, more than three quarters of the sojourners had come to Shanghai within the last five years. Table 2.5 provides the detailed figures. One could of course debate whether the mobility of the Ningbo sojourners in the early 1940s showed a bias, either due to the wartime conditions or due to the availability of transportation facilities. One certainly cannot project this data onto the nineteenth century, but there is no reason to doubt that this could be the dominant pattern all through the twentieth century. A study of the age structure does not depart from what was established in Chapter 1, except for the absence of children. Nevertheless, it confirms that people of all age groups died—there was quite an even

table 2.5. Length of stay in Shanghai of a sample of Ningbo sojourners (1942–1943) Years

Number Percentage

Up to 1

2–3

4–5

6–10

11–15

Above 15

136 22.0

195 31.0

158 25.0

90 14.0

23 3.7

25 4.0

Source: “Shanghai tebie shi siming gongsuo guanjiu jicun yuebaobiao,” 1942–1943, R50-1-458, SMA.

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distribution by the five-year age group—and that a great number died early (40 percent before the age of forty). An early death and recent roots in the city explain that relatives would care about the return of the deceased to the native place and would seek the support of the guild to achieve this end. In the absence of data about other sojourner communities, a broad generalization would be hazardous, but the high level of circulation of sojourners was probably a characteristic of those that came from the neighboring counties in Jiangsu and Zhejiang province. This could be the key for an understanding of the central role the guilds played in the management of death in Shanghai. They had to cope with recent immigrants with strong roots in the place of origin who met with an early death before they had a chance to settle in the city. Each guild defined the length of stay of coffins in its repository. It varied from three to six years, with three years as the most common rule. After the term had expired, the unclaimed coffins were either buried in a local graveyard or shipped back to the native place for burial in a guild or charity graveyard. Yet there was a tendency to make exceptions, although the pressure depended on the flow of coffins itself. Depending on the size of the community and the flow of coffins, the population of accumulated coffins could reach extraordinary numbers, especially among the guilds whose members originated from far away areas. In 1882, for example, the Guang-Zhao Guild had accumulated 8,000 coffins.135 Five years later, the guild published a notice asking families to retrieve the coffins with more than six years on its premises. This was the maximum length of time, but the guild stated that some coffins had been there for more than twenty years.136 Obviously, even if the guild organized the shipping of coffins at least once a year on behalf of the families—the coffin owners supported the cost of transportation—the guild applied its regulation with a certain degree of flexibility. In the public notices published after 1887, it frequently referred to “coffins stored during the Tongzhi reign” (1862–1875). Although the post-1887 notices stated that the unclaimed coffins above six years would be buried six months after the publication in the newspapers, this was not implemented systematically.137 In 1892, the public notice mentioned specifically the coffins stored between 1865 and 1884 had to leave its premises.138 Over time, the guilds became more restrictive about the time coffins could stay on their premises. In 1898 the standard length of storage was lowered to five years; then in 1908 it was reduced to three years.139 In 1908, this also was the rule that applied at the Chaohui Guild.140 It seems that by the early twentieth century, three years became the norm. The Siming Gongsuo adopted a more stringent time limit in 1920. Coffins could be stored for a year, after which they were moved to the Yongchang

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Repository for another year before burial.141 The Huzhou Guild offers another interesting example. Its regulation exposed clearly that beyond three years the unclaimed coffins would be buried. At the time of the conflict with Japan, the repository in Zhabei had 335 coffins in storage. The vast majority (88 percent) had indeed been deposited less than three years earlier, most of them in 1935 (81 percent). A small number had been allowed to stay beyond the mandatory three years. There is nothing in the available documentation that explained this flexibility. The 41 overdue coffins included persons of all ages and both sexes. Neither age nor sex provided an explanatory factor.142 The guilds routinely buried the unclaimed coffins. In October 1878, the Zhe-Shao Guild planned to move all the unclaimed coffins older than three years to a charity graveyard in Pudong. It informed the families by press of the impending measure.143 The guild also organized the shipping of the stored coffins regularly. In 1886, it was preparing the ninth shipment of coffins and the twelfth in 1889.144 The pressure on premises was the major factor in pushing the guilds to adopt more stringent rules and to curtail the length of stay of coffins in the repositories. In 1886, the Dongting Sanshantang announced that it would store coffins for no more than a year. If the families did not retrieve them, the guild would transfer them twice a year to its charity cemetery.145 In 1898, the Fuzhou Repository stated that, in spite of regular shipments, its premises were filling up due to many overdue coffins. It decided that all coffins beyond the normal term would be buried.146 The Garment Trade Association (Yiye Bingshe) buried all the coffins that exceeded the set length of stay in its charity cemetery in Nanxiang.147 The Marine Carpenter Guild had a cemetery in Dachang to transfer the unclaimed coffins in 1926.148 The Minqiao Shanzhuang—the coffin repository of the Fujianese community (Sanshan Huiguan)—shipped the unclaimed coffins to its charity cemetery in Fujian.149 Yet there was no end to the issue of unclaimed coffins. In November 1921, the same guild advertised for a whole week in the Shenbao and the Xinwenbao that it would transfer more than a hundred coffins at the end of the year to a charity cemetery.150 In October 1926, the Yanxu Shanzhuang had to move to its new location. It published notices in the press as early as September 1925 to advise the families to retrieve the stored coffins. By the summer, however, the repository was still saddled with hundreds of unclaimed coffins and ran another press campaign with a new deadline of mid-July.151 On the basis of this sample, it is clear that the guilds enforced their own rules, though with some flexibility. Not all of them advertised in the press, perhaps because they did not all face the same turnover of coffins. When their resources allowed it, they favored shipping the unclaimed coffins, at their own cost, for burial in the native place.

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The flow of coffins clearly conditioned the length of stay in repositories. It was impossible to store coffins for a long time without expanding the premises. With the records of the Huzhou Guild, it is possible to assess the average flow of coffins that entered the guild repository. Of the coffins in store in August 1937, 94 had come in 1937 and 174 in 1936. From April 1936 to August 1937, the incoming coffins included 72 coffins for the Children’s Hall, 76 for the Men’s Common Hall, 76 in the Women’s Hall, and 78 in the two upscale halls.152 From these incomplete figures, the average flow of incoming coffins can be estimated at 300 in the 1930s, or about 25 per month. The volume of coffins was much larger at the Siming Gongsuo. In March 1943, the guild recorded 296 incoming and 155 outbound coffins in its Southern Repository alone.153 Based on the inventory of coffins in the other two Northern and Eastern repositories, the number of coffins the Siming Gongsuo received monthly in the 1940s was probably close to 350–400. To support their operations, the guilds maintained a permanent staff that increased in times of “intensified traffic,” as during an epidemic or a military conflict, to cope with the higher number of coffins. Yet the additional staff served above all to bury the larger number of coffins rather than to help with their accommodation in the repository. The size of the permanent staff also varied according to the size of the sojourner communities, although there was probably a limited change for most guilds since their communities did not increase or decrease to the point of altering their operations significantly. The data on staff is sketchy at best. It is fairly complete for 1950 when the guilds had to submit detailed reports on their properties and staff, but it does not reflect the situation for the whole period under study here. The 1950 data probably reflect the situation in the mid-1940s. Archival documents show that guilds with a large operation sought to maintain their staff at all costs and strove to find them jobs in the new economy after 1950. In 1920, the Siming Gongsuo maintained a staff of eight people at its Southern Repository. It included a manager (shuwuchang), an accountant (sizhang), two maintenance workers (changshi), two tea attendants, and two gatekeepers. Other employees (guanding) were hired as needed.154 On the eve of the Communist takeover in Shanghai, however, the permanent staff of the guild had increased to 313 people. The largest group was employed in the repositories and the workshops that prepared the coffins: the carpenters, painters, sawyers, wood sculptors, and drawers who produced the coffins. There were also bearers for the transportation of coffins (inbound and outbound movement). There was a large group of 126 workers who produced the ritual objects used for ceremonies. Altogether, the share of the staff involved in funeral services was not inferior to 180 people.155

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The fee the guilds charged to keep a coffin varied among guilds and according to the category of rooms where the coffin was placed. In its Southern Repository, the Siming Gongsuo charged 60 yuan per year in 1920 for a two-coffin cell in the Fuzi Hall, 16 yuan for a four-coffin cell in the Luzi Hall, and 6 yuan in the Shouzi Hall. The rate for first- and second-class rooms was 4 and 2 yuan, respectively. Coffins were stored free of charge in the common rooms. In addition, the repository charged an entrance fee (menpiaofei, also named fengkou fei) and a transfer fee (zhuanpiaofei, also named kaimen fei) that varied according the class of room (0.2–2 yuan for the entrance fee and 0.2–1 yuan for the transfer fee). In the regular rooms, the closing fee (fengkoufei) amounted to 0.2 yuan. Separate fees applied for the use of the ceremony halls: 1 yuan per day to celebrate the departure of a coffin.156 By comparison, in 1921 an unskilled worker earned about 10 yuan per month, a skilled worker 15–25 yuan, and an engineer 40–90 yuan.157 By 1939, inflation had taken its toll and rates had increased substantially. The admittance fee reached 1,440 yuan for the Fuzi Hall, 3,936 yuan for the Luzi Hall, and 3,078 yuan for the Shouzi Hall. The Northern Repository was more affordable. The fees for the same category of halls stood at 60, 448, and 180 yuan, respectively. The entrance fee for the Children’s Hall was set at 4 yuan in each repository. The Eastern Repository applied a flat rate of 72 yuan, but even this amount must have excluded most workers.158 The guild earned 9,222 yuan from admittance fees in the three repositories.159 The use of one of the named halls was subject to the timely payment of the repository fee. In case of default, the coffin was transferred to the common rooms. The coffin repositories, even with these charges, were not commercial operations. The fees helped balance the accounts and served to subsidize the storage of the coffins in the common rooms. In 1925, the income derived from the three repositories brought 156,679 yuan (Southern Repository), 231,115 yuan (Northern Repository), and 5,365 yuan (Eastern Repository).160 Obviously, the Pudong Repository was a much smaller operation than the repositories located in the populated urban districts of Shanghai. The consolidated budget for 1939 showed a balanced account, with an income (645,118 yuan) slightly superior to expenses (625,219 yuan).161 The high rates charged by the Siming Gongsuo for its high-grade rooms contrasted with the modest rates of the Yanping Shanzhuang (Hebei) at the same period. The fee for a space in the first-class rooms was only 20 yuan per year.162 The Yizhuang Gongsuo charged two rates, 4 and 8 yuan per year.163 The Jinting Guild charged 20 yuan per year, but most coffins were admitted for free, at least during the war.164 The Huizhou Ningguo Guild provided three levels of accommodation, from 10 to 36 yuan per year. It

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also had three levels of special rooms at 50, 100, and 150 yuan.165 In the Huzhou Repository, the coffins of children were not subject to any fee in 1934. The coffins of adults placed in the Special Hall, the highest level, were charged 3 yuan per month. The rate in the Central Hall was set at 6 yuan per year to be paid in advance. The guild also charged admittance and exit fees of 1 yuan for the Special Hall and half this rate for the Central Hall. There was no fee for the common rooms. Ceremonies and offerings were charged four and two jiao in the Special Hall and the Central Hall. If payment was not made on time, the coffin was sent to the plainer no. 2 coffin repository of the guild south of the South gate in Nanshi. In case of persisting arrears, the coffin was buried in a charity cemetery.166 The Huzhou Guild used the Puyi Cemetery in Dachang where its graves were all placed in the same section.167 During the war, several guilds officially canceled their fees to alleviate the difficulties of their members The Siming Gongsuo, the Zhejin Gongsuo, the Dinghai Shanchang Gongsuo, and the Taizhou Gongsuo declared they would accept all coffins free of charge.168 The accommodation the repositories provided in death mirrored the standard of living in real life. The coffins received for free were stacked together in large rooms similar to warehouses. The more one was willing to pay, the more space and privacy the coffins enjoyed in individual rooms. The Shandong Guild had four categories of rooms in 1937: 11 rooms in first class, 30 in second class, 141 in third class, and 191 in fourth class.169 The Yanping Shanzhuang had 12 first-class rooms, with 2 coffins each, 14 rooms with 4 coffins each, and 3 large third-class rooms with 200 coffins.170 The social hierarchy was imbedded in the spatial structure of the repositories. The guilds conceived these places not as charities, but as status-based community institutions. The building and maintenance of a repository represented a substantial investment for decades, if not centuries. The Siming Gongsuo first made its initial purchase of land in 1797. By 1831, the repair of buildings necessitated 16,000 yuan.171 The guild left no indication about the cost of reconstruction after 1853 or 1861, but its Southern Repository necessitated 181,800 yuan in 1904, the Northern Repository 216,000 yuan, while the Eastern Repository required much less, even if the guild was able to raise 230,000 yuan for this purpose.172 Since the repositories were located in the countryside, the cost of land was negligible. The land for the Southern and Northern repositories cost 3,527 yuan and 9,990 yuan, respectively, in addition to which the guild spent money for roadwork (altogether 10,331 yuan). The construction proper represented a more substantial share, with 120,112 yuan, 122,125 yuan, and 10,758 yuan for the Southern, Northern, and Eastern repositories, respectively.173 In most cases, these operations were made possible by individual merchants who donated to a fund

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in which each had a share, not with a commercial purpose, but for the sake of a public recognition of their deed. The names of the donors were carved in stone on the steles erected in each repository.

Coffin Shipping It is unclear when the practice of shipping coffins on a regular basis started. As discussed above, this was initially the privilege of only a few wealthy guilds, even if more became involved, but for very particular reasons, in the postwar period (1946–1949). The practice of shipping the coffins varied considerably among the guilds. The dense network of waterways that connected the cities, towns, and villages in the Lower Yangzi area facilitated this practice, all the way to Anhui or Hubei, for example, or northward to Henan. Even the coffins bound to Ningbo followed waterways rather than sea routes. For the provinces located far away in North or South China, however, sea transportation was the sole option, which steamships made cheaper over time. Nevertheless, distance remained an important factor in the final cost, especially as, unlike the Cantonese migrants in California, the full body, not just the bones, were shipped back.174 The various communities were not in the same position and faced very different constraints and costs (see Chapter 8). The Zhe-Shao Guild was one of the earliest guilds to organize the shipping of coffins back to Shaoxing, Yuyao, and the other xian from which its members originated. It also had the most consistent record with two batches of coffins every year. The first mention of coffin shipping appeared in the Shenbao in 1875. The measure applied to the coffins with more than three years on its premises.175 Over the years, depending perhaps on its resources, the guild also buried its unclaimed coffins in charity cemeteries near Bailianjing in Pudong.176 Then, from November 1886, it resumed the shipping of unclaimed coffins to a charity cemetery outside Shaoxing before Qingming or to Yuyao in the autumn. In 1896, however, it again sent the unclaimed coffins to Bailianjing in Pudong.177 It must have been a temporary measure as the following year the guild resumed shipping to the various hometowns.178 Thereafter, there was a relative continuity in the management of unclaimed coffins with regular shipping to Zhejiang. Yet, by 1909, it introduced a different policy with the burial of the unclaimed coffin in its charity cemetery in Pudong, while those claimed by families were shipped to the various hometowns for a moderate fee.179 Except for mentions in the archives, the only way to trace the practice of coffin shipping was to track their announcements in the press. It provides only an approximate record of the guilds involved in this activity.

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The first mention of coffin shipping by the Dongting Guild (Dongting Sanshantang) appeared in 1880.180 The Guang-Zhao Guild organized the repatriation of coffins no later than 1882. The public notices published in the Shenbao indicate that coffins were not yet shipped annually.181 In 1883, a Cantonese guild announced its fifth shipping of coffins.182 The Chaohui Guild contributed 15 yuan to the less affluent families to pay for the repatriation of their coffins in 1908.183 In 1916, the Huizhang Guild advertised its upcoming shipping after the winter solstice.184 Notices appeared in the press throughout the Republican period.185 The shipping of coffins by the guilds was a late development. The charter of the Siming Gongsuo only mentioned the establishment of a coffin repository in 1797. In the documents related to the two disputes with the French Municipal Council in 1874 and 1898, one cannot find a single mention of coffin shipping. In 1879, the guild published a notice stating that its premises were full despite the construction of a new building. The notice asked the families that had stored coffins for more than two years to retrieve them.186 Since people were sometimes unable to gather the sum needed for transportation, the Siming Gongsuo started to accept individual applications for financial support. In 1882, it adopted a specific rule (fa) on shipping coffins. In 1901, the guild took another step and contracted with Butterfield and Swire and the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company (Lunquan Zhaoshangju) to ship 400 coffins annually. The rest left on sailboats. In 1905, the Siming Gongsuo repatriated 1,800 coffins.187 There was a close connection between the beginning of coffin shipping on a regular basis and the mounting pressure, both political and physical— an increasing load of coffins—on the wake of the confrontation with the French Municipal Council. Combined with the purchase of land for burial in Ningbo and the construction of additional repositories in the city, this points to the growing awareness that the guild could no longer maintain its existing setup. The contract with shipping companies, however, was only meant to facilitate the shipping of coffins. The guild did not take responsibility directly for the movement of coffins. In 1905, it charged the families 2 yuan for the repatriation of a coffin.188 In 1908, however, the board of administration of the guild realized that too many coffins still remained behind. It adopted a new principle: all the Ningbo sojourners with limited resources could report to the guild and the guild would take care of shipping expenses.189 A stone inscription authored by Shen Honglai, leader of the Changshenghui, a Ningbo association that later came under the Siming Gongsuo, stated that people in financial difficulties could apply to the association for support. The Changshenghui earmarked 50 taels each year for such cases.190 The statement was not dated, but Shen Honglai was active between the

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late 1890s and the 1911 revolution. The temporal closeness of the move by the two organizations to deal with the shipping of coffins points to a shared agenda. Hokari Hiroyuki suggests that the combination of a larger number of sojourners in the context of growing urbanization and a strengthened sense of displacement and belonging may explain the shift toward a greater insistence in being buried in one’s native place.191 There is some truth in this statement. Yet the practice of “returning the dead” to their ancestral village, as Elizabeth Sinn points out, started as early as 1855 and lasted until the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 among the Cantonese immigrants in California. It even developed into a profitable business between the West Coast and Hong Kong, which served as the main platform through which the returning bones passed on their way to inland Guangdong.192 This phenomenon highlights the extreme emphasis the Chinese placed on “place” when it came to burial. In Shanghai, what was true of the sojourners with resources became a more widespread expectation across classes. As discussed above, however, the generalization of this practice by the guilds started much later. Even for the long-established Siming Gongsuo, regular shipments started only in 1909.193 Thereafter, it became a quasi-industrial activity. By the late 1930s, the number of coffins per shipment was close to 1,500 coffins, or 3,000 per year.194 The same process was at work among the other guilds for which the Siming Gongsuo set the standard, although at a smaller scale. In October 1936, the Huzhou Guild shipped a total of 253 coffins from its main repository.195 The Shexian Native-Place Association shipped coffins by batches of ten.196 Because they shipped coffins on a regular basis, the guilds enjoyed preferential rates from the shipping company that benefited the families. It did not mean free transportation, even during the war. In 1937, the Huzhou Guild organized a shipment just before the conflict started. A small shipment of twenty-eight coffins left for Huzhou, for which the guild perceived 162 yuan, or an average of 5.8 yuan per coffin. The cost for transportation was higher for the coffins from the Central Hall (10 yuan) than for those from the common rooms (2.4 yuan). Children coffins were charged 1.2–2.4 yuan.197 In 1939, the Siming Gongsuo spent 10,667 yuan to ship coffins to Ningbo, while it collected 7,510 yuan in shipping fees from its members. The guild lost money on this activity because it covered the expenses on behalf of its poorer members.198 The cost of transportation to Anhui for the Garment Guild (Yizhuang Gongsuo) was 4–5 yuan per coffin, but free for the poor families in 1942.199 The shipping of coffins by the guilds became a routine operation in the first half of the twentieth century, not because of external constraints, but with a view to alleviate the

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pressure on space on their premises and to meet the growing expectation by sojourners to be buried in their native place. During the war, however, the Chinese municipality tried with a limited success to force the removal of coffins from the premises of the guilds. There was no opposition in principle, but the guilds were caught between the pressing deadlines of the authorities and their reluctance to remove the coffins without due process. In 1940, the Huzhou Guild tried to placate the Bureau of Health by arguing about the difficulty of locating the relatives and finding transportation back to Huzhou. Eventually the guild gave in and buried all the unclaimed coffins in its Zhabei repository in the Puyi Cemetery in Dachang.200 The Yizhuang Gongsuo received similar instructions, but its more remote location allowed it to weather the pressure. In 1942, it was still resisting the evacuation without prior contact with the family.201 In February 1942, the health inspector reported that the Piaoshui Shuilu Gongsuo had a large number of unclaimed coffins in its 1,520-strong inventory.202 The resistance of the guilds reflected a widely shared concern about the fate of mortal remains. There is ample evidence in the letters found in the archives that individuals were prepared to search extensively to find a displaced or buried coffin. In 1940, a man wrote to the Huzhou Guild about the coffin of a woman deposited in the Special Hall in January 1937. The coffin had been buried in the Puyi charity cemetery in Dachang. The man enquired whether the tomb could still be found after the war and asked the help of the guild with the paperwork and procedure to exhume and ship the coffin.203

Coffin Repositories: Regulations and Disputes The presence of stored coffins in the city was an enduring aspect of urban life. The quality of the coffins ensured durability and reliability in terms of smells and leaks. The Chinese local authorities never took notice of this practice, nor did they try to regulate it. They were far more concerned with the popular practice of leaving coffins aboveground, unburied, for months or years (see Chapter 4). The storage of coffins in the city proper became an issue only with the establishment of foreign settlements and the arrival of Western residents. The British took up the best part of the Huangpu riverbank north of the walled city. From there, the settlement extended 1 mile inland to the West. Its territory included individual tombs but no significant cemetery or guildhalls. Yet several guilds purchased land further to the west, which later became part of the expanded territory of the settlements. As early as March 1879, the Shanghai Municipal Council asked the

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Consular Body to obtain from the Chinese authorities a ban on the storage of coffins in its territory in the area comprised between the Bund and the Shantung Road Cemetery.204 The French Concession faced a very different situation from the beginning. It was established on the narrow strip of land encased between the city wall and the Yangjingbang Creek that separated the two settlements to the north (see Map 1.1). This area was used for tombs and graveyards, including massive guild buildings and coffin repositories. The French municipal administration faced two different issues. The first one was to develop its territory, which could only be done by doing away with the graveyards. The municipal council worked steadily to remove all the tombs and cemeteries from its territory, which it considered as hotbeds for infectious diseases. Its avowed objective was to eliminate all graveyards and to “change this vast field of dead into a city [. . .] populated with residents.”205 The French even managed to negotiate the voluntary departure of the Fujian Guild and its coffins in 1861 to make way for the municipal hall. By 1864, they could claim to have rid the settlement of all its buried and unburied coffins, except for one major institution, the Siming Gongsuo.206 The guild stood its ground against French encroachment, which resulted in two major incidents. The graveyard and the coffin repository of the Siming Gongsuo became what an historian aptly called serious “bones of contention.”207 More than the graveyard, the thorn in the foot of the municipality was the presence of hundreds of unburied coffins in the repository. This issue was not made explicit in the French claims against the Ningbo property, but it was the most pressing problem. In the 1870s, physicians were still in the dark about the cause of the major infectious diseases, especially cholera that killed people by the thousands. Even if no serious outburst had occurred in Shanghai in the previous ten years, cholera remained a much-dreaded threat. The increasing concern about public health and sanitation that pervaded urban management in Europe was also very much in the minds of the Western residents in Shanghai. The preservation of hundreds of unburied coffins by the Chinese guilds was in itself abhorrent, but combined with the genuine fear of potential epidemics it was a strong motivation to press for the removal of the coffins by all means. Bad smells and stench were the terms most frequently associated with the stored coffins. They evoked the looming specter of spreading diseases.208 The coffins placed in the guild premises presented no such danger. This was even confirmed by the French municipal health officer in 1898, but both in 1874 and 1898, cultural prejudice, the fear of disease, and the wrongful assertion of power led to a confrontation. The story of the two graveyard riots is well known. Bryna Goodman has provided the most thorough analysis and interpretation of these two

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events from the perspective of the guild’s action and role toward its community and the foreign presence.209 The events are discussed from the angle of conflicting cultural sensibilities about the management of death in the city. The two riots took place in two very different contexts. In 1874, the French Concession was hardly more than a patch of undeveloped land, except for the riverfront area. The Siming Gongsuo building and graveyard were located at the very end of the settlement, in a rural area that the French themselves called a “plain.”210 The arguments of the French Municipal Council to cut through the Ningbo cemetery were, as Bryna Goodman emphasizes, dubious.211 Having drawn plans for the layout of roads in 1862, the council considered it had the right to implement the plan, especially since the Siming Gongsuo had at one time sold its property to a French resident (a questionable assertion). The council also evoked the treaties that gave the right to foreigners to expropriate Chinese landowners in exchange for a financial compensation.212 When the guild directors protested and made a counterproposal, the French municipality rejected their arguments by asserting that “in the name of wholesomeness and even the peace that befit the places devoted to mortal remains, cemeteries should be transported outside populated areas.” The municipal council offered to contribute to the cost of removing the buried remains.213 Setting aside the issue of cultural prejudice, the French municipal councilors saw nothing wrong or special in their demand. They came from a country where since the eighteenth century cemeteries had been subjected to stringent regulations and were banned from cities.214 The hidden agenda was to get rid of the stored coffins in the guildhall or those left aboveground in the graveyard. Yet the conflict centered on the Ningbo Graveyard from which the guild directors steadfastly refused to exhume the remains of their fellow members. They stated that “the graves in our cemetery may not be desecrated, and that the bones of our ancestors may remain undisturbed.”215 From the perspective of road building, their arguments were reasonable. There was no need to cut though their cemetery. Their refusal to touch the buried remains, however, had little ground. There were many precedents in the two foreign settlements of removing tombs and even graveyards without much tension when urban expansion made it inevitable. The municipal council maliciously brought up a report dated 29 December 1873 in which the Siming Gongsuo was said to have required the permission to search for and exhume human remains in the northern section of the Rue de Saigon, previously a burial ground owned by the guild.216 The Siming Gongsuo had a genuine reluctance to disturb the graves in its cemetery, but it was also willing to save the remains of tongxiang from the ravages of road building in land it no longer owned.217 The dispute should not have led to the riot that erupted in May 1874. An

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unrelated event, which however occurred within this context of tension, set the disturbance in motion.218 The defeat and retreat by the French authorities sealed the fate of the Ningbo Graveyard as untouchable. No road, construction, or canal was ever to be built on the cemetery.219 For close to a quarter of century and despite their deep frustration, the French had to accept the storage of a large inventory of unburied coffins in the premises of the Siming Gongsuo. The second cemetery riot in 1898 may be seen as the repetition of the same events around the same set of issues. There were similarities and the basic ingredients of 1874 were present in the renewed incident. There were also profound dissimilarities. Bryna Goodman has established how much the 1898 riot by the Ningbo sojourners unfolded within a context of greater politicization of the merchant elite. Even if this fell short of modern nationalism, the resistance put up by the Siming Gongsuo was hailed as an example which other Chinese could emulate to protect Chinese rights against foreigners.220 Actual violence was limited and instead the closing down of shops and services and an anti-French boycott under guild guidance brought the French Concession to a standstill. The dispute still revolved around the presence of unburied coffins in the coffin repository of the Siming Gongsuo. Compared to 1874, there was now a much better knowledge of the factors that caused the spread of infectious diseases. Unattended corpses, as was common in Shanghai, could indeed be a source of soil and water pollution. But the coffins stationed in the Ningbo repository did not present any such risk. The French municipal health officer himself confirmed the tightly sealed coffins presented no danger. Yet the city had since experienced severe epidemics of cholera, as discussed in Chapter 1, and foreign municipal officials seriously fretted about the persisting presence of hundreds of corpses in the middle of the city. This was precisely the major difference with 1874. In a quarter of a century, houses, shops, and roads had colonized the land and the population had increased many times, so much so that the French, like the British, were negotiating an extension of their settlement. Another significant difference was the legal ground on which the French could argue for removal of the coffins. In October 1897 the Shanghai Municipal Council had obtained from the Chinese magistrate of the Mixed Court a proclamation forbidding the storage of coffins in the settlement. Likewise, the French Municipal Council had also pressed the French General Consul to introduce in its regulations an article banning coffin repositories within the limits of the French Concession.221 In each case, the legal ground was shaky as the properties of the guilds and temples in existence before the establishment of the foreign settlements enjoyed a sort of extraterritorial right within the settlements and were

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protected in the use of their land and buildings. Yet the French Municipal Council considered it had enough justification to demand the removal of all the coffins from the Ningbo repository within six months. Its plan included the condemnation of the Ningbo properties to make way for a hospital, a slaughterhouse, and a school. The guild directors must have sensed by then that they could no longer maintain a rigid posture about the stored coffins. Within six months, they shipped 2,500 coffins back to Ningbo. This failed to mollify the French authorities. On the set date, they sent sailors to supervise the destruction of the cemetery wall by workers. In the turmoil that followed, the French again emerged as the villains and the bullies. Six months of tough negotiations in the wake of the riot came to a sudden end with the discovery of the document that defined the terms of the final settlement of the 1874 troubles.222 The settlement of the two Ningbo Graveyard incidents, however, did not end with the return to the status quo ante. The guild bought several plots of land in various parts of Shanghai to establish new repositories as discussed above. The Siming Gongsuo had of course preserved its property, but its directors finally realized that the times had changed, even for the Chinese population itself. The guildhall could serve its previous purpose, but it had to find an alternative to accommodate its coffins. Likewise, the cemetery could no longer be used to bury people. It was no longer acceptable, even for a guild as influential as the Siming Gongsuo, to demur and maintain a coffin repository in the very center of the city. Moreover, after October 1906, the Siming Gongsuo became the collecting point for all the coffins from the various Siming Gongsuo across a wide area (Nanjing, Hankou, Tianjin, Taicang, Huzhou, Wenzhou, Wusong, Manchuria).223 In view of the large number of coffins that went through its premises, it was impractical to maintain a repository in the center of the city. The Siming Gongsuo finally followed the path that all the other guilds had taken earlier by relocating their coffin repositories to remote areas around the city. Several clustered around the same locations that remained unchanged for decades, except when they suffered destruction or became inaccessible during the Sino-Japanese conflict. The issue of unburied coffins was settled definitely in the foreign settlements, but the practice continued and even expanded with the formation of new guilds and corporations in the city after the turn of the century. The development of modern means of transportation that facilitated the movement of coffins back to the native place gave a further incentive to the practice of storing coffins before burial. In view of the sheer volume of coffins that went through the repositories, it is undeniable that there was a demand for this service from the sojourner communities. The guilds were major actors in a flow of coffins that also went through private channels

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figure 2.3. Individual coffins awaiting loading on a Shanghai wharf. Source: S.J. Joseph de Reviers de Mauny, Office Pontifical Missionnaire, Lyon. Reprinted with permission

for those who could afford the cost of transportation by a private company (see Figure 2.3). The Chinese municipal authorities did not attempt to curb a practice that somehow relieved the pressure on local cemeteries. This was also a major factor in the absence of any protest or demands for burial grounds on the part of the Chinese population in the foreign settlements. Yet the management of coffin repositories depended entirely on the smooth circulation of coffins over the transportation network that connected Shanghai to its hinterland and other coastal cities. In case of a major and persisting disruption, coffins would be stuck in the city. The Sino-Japanese conflict that erupted in August 1937 created the conditions for the emergence of a vast necropolis in the city itself, as we shall see in Chapter 3. In the late imperial period, coffin repositories were free of any administrative control or regulation. The main concern of the Chinese local authorities was the unburied coffins scattered through the countryside and around the cities (see Chapter 4). Nevertheless, there was also a growing concern about the expansion of coffin repositories in or near the walled city itself. In 1908, following the proclamation of the first law on local administration (Chengxiang zizhi zhangcheng) the Bureau of Works, Police,

12

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was simply to know how many people lived in their territory. They cared even less about how many died beyond crude statistics. It was not until 1937 that the issue of Chinese deaths became a matter of bureaucratic concern. In the Chinese-administered districts, the imperial administration made surveys of the population at the level of the county, not the city proper. Moreover, this population count was rather approximate and no archives from the nineteenth century have survived. The Shanghai Municipal Government (Shanghai Shi Zhengfu) carried out its first modern census in 1929, which thereafter it updated through the periodic registration of the population.8 The demographic history of Shanghai became blurry again with the war with Japan, both in 1932 and 1937. On the one hand, there were massive movements of population within the city and displacement out of the city. After 1941, because of food shortages, the Japanese military enforced a deliberate policy of evacuation to the countryside. After 1945, the city finally came under a single municipal administration that resumed the previous practice of systematic population registration. After 1949 and the takeover of the city by the Communist regime, the People’s Government strove to establish its administration on a serious basis. Both for political and economic reasons, it was essential for the new authorities to know how many people inhabited the city. For many years to come, the country would be placed under a rationing system that required the registration of all residents. Even if this was never fully accomplished—spontaneous migration interfered with a complete registration—the municipality definitely had a better grasp of its population count. Nationwide, a census was carried out in 1953, then again in 1964. Finally, one of the major stumbling blocks for a full comprehension of the demographic dynamics in Shanghai is the powerful flows of population that rushed into the city at times of disaster, resulting often from natural elements such as floods, but more frequently from conflicts and violence in the neighboring provinces. In the same way as people came, they left in high numbers once the crisis was over. The sudden influx of migrant population is especially relevant for our study of death in the city as these temporary residents increased the general mortality, sometimes substantially. Yet it is very difficult to estimate the number of people who moved in as they most often fell through the net of an inadequate registration system. It is even more difficult to assess how much they added to the mortality rate in the city. In the foreign settlements, the authorities introduced a system of death certificate for foreigners in 1870, but they failed to enforce this measure for the Chinese population.9 In the Chinese municipality it became compulsory after February 1928, but migrants and even permanent residents would simply evade these formalities.10 In 1942, the

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The second affair was also linked to roadwork and involved a powerful guild, the Jingjiang Gongsuo. The guild owned a graveyard by the West gate outside the city wall. It was a small plot of land (3.8 acres, 23 mu) bought in 1873 on which the guild had built houses and used the section along the creek as a graveyard. The Shanghai City Council required the sale of a small portion along the creek to enlarge the road for the passage of tramways. All the houses along the street were subject to the same request. The project caused an immediate uproar from the members of the guild. The daotai sent a mediator to ease the case between the guild and the council. He solicited influential leaders of the Siming Gongsuo (Yu Xiaqing, Zhou Jinxian) and the Shaoxing Guild (Xie Lunhui, Hu Luxiang) as arbiters. The stake was limited—8 feet along the full length of the graveyard—but a fierce dispute crystallized around the small strip of land. The majority of the board members voted in favor of ceding the strip of land, but a substantial number of members continued to oppose the move and made enough noise to compel the daotai to advise the guild to proceed with caution. The issue generated a flurry of articles in the Shenbao by both parties: the council as the proponent of modernization of the city by Western standards, the guild as a staunch defender of guild values and the peace of the dead.227 For three days, members of the guild even published a full page titled “Protection of the Graveyard” in the Shenbao with a detailed map to argue their case.228 Thereafter, the Shenbao lost track of the dispute and its final settlement, except for a humorous article on the defense of charity graveyards from all sides.229 The history of graveyards in Shanghai was one of continuous encroachment by land-hungry urban planners and one of displacement, each time involving the careful and complete transfer of the remains.

The Reach of the State: Regulating Coffin Repositories Even if the regulatory effort by local administrations remained modest before the advent of the Nationalist government in 1927, the guilds were no longer in a position to determine their own rules. After 1927, at both the national and local levels there was an unparalleled determination to improve health and to carry out various sets of measures to protect the population from diseases.230 In Shanghai, the newly established municipality carried out an ambitious program of reforms that covered several aspects related to the management of death in the city. “Hygiene” and “modern” were two major buzzwords in the rhetoric of the modernizing elite.231 On coffin repositories, the municipality adopted the first regulations that spelled out strict standards for the location, construction, and management

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of coffin repositories. As we shall see, this was part of a larger program by which the municipality invested in municipal cemeteries, defined land policies for cemeteries, and started promoting cremation. The intervention of the municipal authorities in the routine of the coffin repositories was a major departure from the past. While it did not radically alter the situation, it was a clear signal to the guild directors that they now came under regulations and were accountable for the proper management of their premises. It also marked the beginning of increasingly stringent rules for the opening and management of coffin repositories. In August 1928, the Shanghai Municipal Government published a regulation on coffin repositories that imposed new restrictions on the storage of coffins. The length of stay was limited to one year and the repositories were required to submit monthly reports. The guilds were taken aback by the unexpected severe reduction that ran counter to the majority of their own charters. The Federation of Guilds and Corporations (Huiguan Gongsuo Lianhehui) convened an emergency meeting to discuss how to address this issue, while its president, Wang Xiaolai, requested the municipal government to suspend the application of the regulation.232 There was no follow-up news about the negotiation with the municipal authorities, but other evidence, for example, guild charts, points to a gradual and uneven impact. Some guilds placed press announcements that they were removing coffins exceeding one year on their premises, with an explicit reference to the municipal regulation. Gradually, the one-year rule started to become the norm. In 1929, the Butchers’ Guild (Rouzhuang Gongsuo) referred to the municipal regulation in its call to families to retrieve their overdue coffins.233 The Haichang Guild (Haichang Gongsuo) and the Shanghai Federation of Actors also complied.234 In fact, even the repositories of the major guilds could choke under the overflow of coffins. After 1928, the Huining Guild published regular announcements about the scheduled burial of unclaimed coffins.235 The Jing jiang Guild also decided to enforce the one-year rule on a temporary basis, not because of the municipal regulation, but because its premises had an overflow of coffins. The families were given ten days to retrieve their coffins before the guild removed them to a cemetery.236 In March 1935, the Zhe-Shao Guild announced that the two locations of its Yongxitang repository were nearly full. All the coffins above two years would be placed in an open depot for one year following which they would be buried.237 In March 1936, the Baoshan Guild urged its members to retrieve the coffins placed one year earlier, although it did not completely rule out an extension provided they reported to the guild and paid the required fee. Yet the guild emphasized the need to comply with the municipal regulation.238 In March 1936, the Hubei Guild invited the families whose coffins had

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reached the one-year deadline to retrieve them or they would be buried in a charity cemetery.239 While there were signs that many guilds complied with the regulation, some resisted or simply disregarded the municipal regulation. The Huizhang Guild took no notice of the one-year rule and continued to provide shelter to coffins for up to three years.240 On 25 May 1931, the Shanghai Municipal Government persisted in its attempt to rid the urban districts of the coffin repositories. A new regulation defined the areas from which coffin repositories were excluded, which intended to pressure the guilds to move outside of the urban districts. In February 1935, the Chaozhou Guild received a reminder that its repository was located in an area unsuited for this purpose.241 Yet the municipal government lacked the means to enforce its regulations, in part because of the challenge the tens of thousands of coffins represented, in part because the issue was sensitive and likely to create a serious confrontation with the powerful guilds. The municipal government limited its intervention to blocking the opening of new coffin repositories in the urban districts. The major guild coffin repositories remained in their original site, like the Yongxitang of the Zhe-Shao Guild, located in a fully urbanized neighborhood (see Map 2.2). The regulations by the successive municipal administrations through the Republican period after 1927 followed the same pattern. By and large, they adopted almost word by word the same language and the same criteria. The first obligation, registration with the Bureau of Public Health, invariably prompted a visit by a health officer to check the suitability of the location, the quality of the premises, and of course the respect of public hygiene. The wartime period brought further changes. The major one was the obligation to report monthly to the authorities the movement of coffins in the repositories. Health inspectors toured the premises on a regular basis to verify the accuracy of the reports. If a guild failed to send its monthly report, the Bureau of Public Health sent a stern reminder.242 While progress was made during the Nanjing Decade, the war in 1937 caused institutional instability, with a succession of administrations in the Chinese municipality, each adopting its own set of regulations. I am not aware of a particular regulation under the Fu Xiao’an mayoralty (October 1938–October 1940), but under his successor, Chen Gongbo, the Bureau of Public Health took action to register all the funeral parlors and coffin repositories.243 In October 1941, a municipal notice required all coffin repositories and funeral parlors to register with the Bureau of Public Health. One year later, it announced new rules for the control of coffin repositories.244 In August 1942, a regulation imposed more stringent prescriptions, most of them a reenactment of the rule laid down by the first Nationalist municipality.245 The Bureau of Public Health, however, became

coffin workshop

map 2.2. Coffin repository of the Zhe-Shao Guild in 1946. Source: Virtual Shanghai

Dinghai Guild & repository

Taizhou Guild & repository

Other guilds

Zhe-Shao Guild

Huining Cemetery

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more assertive about the presence of coffins in the city, which it saw as a challenge to public health and city appearance (shirong). It eventually used taxation to compel the reluctant guilds to remove the stored coffins. During wartime, both in the foreign settlements and the Chinese municipality, municipal officials instituted a system of periodic inspection of the premises of coffin repositories. Because of the huge number of stored coffins, the task demanded full-time attention and the recruitment of additional staff (see Chapter 3). To pay for the extra cost incurred by inspection, coffin repositories became subject to an inspection fee. In the International Settlement, the Public Health Department collected the inspection fee only on the number of coffins. In the Chinese municipality, however, it was based on a system that took into account the number of coffins as well as the length of time in the repository. The higher the number of years, the more the repository had to pay.246 The guilds protested against the tax with the argument that they were charity organizations and served the needs of the poor people. They claimed to have abolished their various categories of rooms and turned them into regular rooms and to have stopped collecting fees for the storage of coffins.247 In a letter to the mayor, the Bureau of Public Health expressed sympathy with the arguments of the guilds, but it did not side with their demand. It was necessary to continue exerting pressure to obtain the evacuation of the stored coffins. The Garment Guild (Yizhuang Gongsuo) requested an exemption from the inspection fee, but it was denied. Two years later, in July 1943 the Bureau of Public Health rejected another request.248 Yet the bureau made an exception for four guilds on the ground that they were indeed not commercially driven: Siming Gongsuo, Ningshao Gongsuo, Ninghai Shanchang Gongsuo, and Taizhou Gongsuo.249 The argument was dubious as none of the guilds were commercially driven. The exemption was granted and the Siming Gongsuo even applied successfully for its renewal in August 1944.250 The inspection fee could indeed represent a substantial financial drain on the resources of the guilds. Some applied for a delay in paying the inspection fee, while others tried to evade taxation by abstaining from keeping a proper record of the number of coffins on their premises. It was a deceitful strategy as the Bureau of Public Health sent inspectors to take a full count. Yet this allowed these guilds to save some money.251 The municipal regulations did not deter guilds from offering an extension of the period of storage beyond the regulated one year provided the family paid for the extended period. In January 1943, the Chonghai Guild adopted a new charter that stipulated a storage period of one year but left it open to keep an unclaimed coffin for up to three years before burial.252 In May 1943, however, the Chonghai Guild paid 8,189 yuan for its 1,480 coffins.

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This financial pressure forced the guild to review its practice. In June 1945, it stated in a press release that its repository stored more than 2,000 coffins. On 8 June, it announced the transfer of 600 coffins to a cemetery.253 A second press announcement in October informed its members that the repository no longer received new coffins.254 There were also more brutal diktats. In March 1943, the Bureau of Public Health ordered the Cantonese Residents Association (Guangdong Lühu Tongxianghui) to evacuate all the coffins stored in the Lingnan repository. The guild prepared to comply, but eventually the lack of persistence by the municipal authorities allowed the association to postpone until after 1945.255 After the war, the municipal administration basically adopted the regulations of its predecessors, even if it formally enacted new regulations. The municipality was far more hostile toward a practice that contributed to maintain large concentrations of unburied coffins in the urban area. The legacy of the war—the presence of tens of thousands of coffins in the very heart of the city—greatly magnified its concern. While the regulations were not more severe than those of the preceding period, the Bureau of Public Health became more demanding on the sanitary standards. It also pressed for locations far removed from the city, especially for the repositories established in the former International Settlement or near its borders during the war. It exercised a mounting pressure on the repositories to ship the stored coffins or to bury the unclaimed coffins. The tax scale reflected this change with new rates for the coffins above five and ten years (see Chapter 3).

Conclusion A growing population meant a large number of dead bodies to be disposed of. In Shanghai, the guilds and corporations, most of them native-place associations, were the main organizations that assumed this burden before the emergence of commercial companies. There were of course other actors like the benevolent associations, but the native-place associations represented a socially acceptable “way out”: they were not tainted with the stigma of poverty, as were the charities; they catered specifically to their members with dedicated spaces; and they handled the repatriation of the bodies to the native place. The strong sense of place and local identity that permeated the sojourner communities nurtured a vital concern for sharing in death as they had shared while living. This concern was combined with the preoccupation of most people for a proper burial, something that was beyond the means of many, if not most, people. Resorting to the service of the existing funeral shops meant not only a certain level of expense

15

Scythe and the City

 

1,585,673 and 854,380 residents, respectively. Economic difficulties in the latter part of the war induced many inhabitants to leave the city. In 1945, the total population of the city had dropped to 3.3 million for the whole municipality, a loss of more than half a million since 1942. The civil war, however, soon pushed the figure upward. In 1946, the city had returned to its 1942 level, and in 1947, the police recorded a total of 4.2 million residents.19 In March 1949, on the eve of the Communist takeover, it had passed the 5.5 million ceiling.20 The new regime implemented a policy of evacuation of the population to decrease the pressure on jobs and food supply. Yet economic difficulties in the countryside again brought in large numbers of impoverished migrants.21 In July 1950, one year after the takeover, the total population stood at 4.8 million and by June 1951 it had gained 400,000 new residents.22 The introduction of hukou and a foodrationing system succeeded in reining in the fast demographic upsurge of the postwar period. At the first general census in 1953, the total population in the urban districts stood at 5.35 million. A decade later, the next census revealed an increase to 6.43 million.23 The demographic trajectory of Shanghai is impressive, although compared to London the growth may seem moderate—the population of London increased from 1 million in 1800 to 4.5 million in 1881 and 7 million in 1911.24 Both cities met with similar issues of housing supply, deteriorating public hygiene, litter in the streets, and polluted drinking water. Yet London’s built-up area kept expanding by swallowing rural land, while Shanghai’s remained much more concentrated, which resulted in much higher population densities. London’s highest density in 1941 was not even half the density in the Central District of the International Settlement. The experience of Shanghai resembles much more that of Bombay in the same time period.25 Moreover, Shanghai experienced sudden swings of population that placed considerable pressure on the city’s infrastructure. The much more hostile natural environment, renewed military conflicts, and lack of a unified municipal authority made the urban experience in Shanghai a bigger challenge which took its toll on the population.

Who Died in Shanghai? The measure of death in Shanghai establishes clearly that “old age” was not the most prevalent cause of death. Due to diseases, lack of proper medical attention, poor diet, and other factors, people of all ages died and in great numbers. Moreover, the various instances of violence, especially in 1932 and 1937, had a strong impact on mortality and its measure, both because more people died and because more deaths went unregistered.

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to circumvent or resist the new rules, the native-place associations eventually came to terms with this pressure. Other factors, for example, the mounting volume of coffins that their premises could no longer accommodate, diminished resources during and after the war and runaway inflation stifled their ability to maintain such a system. There was hardly any equivalent in Europe to the deep sense of identity and attachment to the native place the sojourners exhibited in Shanghai. But without any doubt, there was nothing even approximately akin to the role the guilds and corporations played in the management of death in the city. In Europe, the guilds were a thing of the past, something that did not survive the premodern period. In China, they remained the central organizations that structured urban society in the major sojourner cities. When it came to death, urban residents in European cities were buried locally, in churchyards and later in commercial or municipal cemeteries. Religion determined the final place of rest. In Shanghai, place was the paramount factor that orchestrated the elaborate social infrastructure that supported and drove the management of death. The native-place associations constituted an apparatus whose main social function was to dispose of the dead and to ensure that each of their members received adequate, though unequal, support in the search for a final resting place.

3

Funeral Companies and the Commoditization of the Dead Body

Death had always required the intervention of funeral specialists—funeral shops, Daoist and Buddhist priests, hired wailers and bearers—but in the twentieth century new forms of processing and managing dead bodies emerged in Shanghai to meet the growing demand for funeral space and services. Funeral parlors represented a major departure because for the first time they took charge of the whole process of disposing of the dead body. They also offered a new physical environment with modern scientific instruments and methods to prepare the body. Yet funeral parlors developed in earnest only with the Sino-Japanese War, which caused a sharp increase in mortality and triggered a new process of commoditization of death. War also induced a new line of funeral business, the storage of coffins, which heretofore had been the exclusive domain of the guilds and native-place associations. Due to the impossibility of moving coffins out of Shanghai, merchants saw a market opportunity in providing what amounted to large warehouses to store coffins. The practice became so widespread throughout the war years that Shanghai actually saw the rise of a vast necropolis. When the war ended, the city was saddled with an unimaginable number of unburied coffins that both private repositories and guilds were slow to move out despite increasing pressure by the municipal government. While the extraordinary development of funeral companies initiated a process of commoditization, the issue of disposing of the dead bodies became a major concern for the foreign and Chinese local authorities. The staggering number of coffins that accumulated in the commercial repositories, sometimes in the very heart of the urban area, generated protests by Shanghai residents. Space also had to be found to bury the coffins as long as the Japanese military denied access to the rural area around Shanghai. The municipal authorities became involved to an unprecedented degree in

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regulating the management of death. It constituted a new course of action from the light regulations, sometimes the absence thereof in the Chineseadministered districts that prevailed from the nineteenth century to the prewar period. Beyond regulation, the municipal institutions in both the foreign settlements and the Chinese municipality took concrete action to organize the shipping of coffins outside of the city or to carry out regular inspection of all the funeral businesses. Eventually, the companies organized into a trade association that became the main intermediary between state officials and individual businesses to defend the interests of the profession, especially to oppose the increasing threat of arbitrary action to remove the stored coffins from Shanghai.

The Early Commoditization of Death For most of our period, there was no specific organization that took care of processing bodies after death. Among ordinary people, family members would often wash and dress the body before placing it into a coffin. Most people could not even afford the cost of a coffin and obtained one from their guild or from a charity association. The poorest people simply solicited such organization as the Tongren Fuyuantang to take charge of everything, from encoffining to burial. Those who could afford a funeral could turn to specialists who prepared the body and organized the funeral. Chinese funerals could be grandiose, but even modest ones implied several types of participants and artifacts. Before the advent of funeral parlors, numerous small funeral shops in the city catered to these needs. They rented out all the paraphernalia and artifacts—the same shops catered for both funerals and weddings—to suit various scales of funerals. Although they did not organize the funerals themselves, they were connected to groups of people, usually through a “headman,” who could assemble a group as needed and take care of all the procedure from dressing the body to burial or depositing the coffin in a repository. There are very few traces of these shops and of their activities. From the mid-nineteenth century to World War I, the size of the population as well as the domineering role of the guilds and charities failed to encourage the formation of an identified profession and hence of any kind of corporation.1 Until the end of the nineteenth century, there was no company that offered funeral services in the city. In the late 1880s, Thomas Macdonald and Company had started to take care of Western residents in the foreign settlements. We know very little about this company, which lasted until 1943.2 Another company appears in the municipal records, A. Olsen and Company, about which we know even less, except its service was

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considered below standards.3 It disappeared after 1904. Yet these only served the foreign community and did not have any impact on Chinese funeral practices. In 1924 a New York–based firm, the China Casket Company, rented a house on Kiaochow Road to start a funeral parlor. It was also geared toward foreigners. Two years later, the local manager of the company, R. O. Scott, decided to go independent and start his own company. He formally established the first funeral parlor in Shanghai, the International Funeral Directors (Wanguo Binyiguan), in September 1926.4 There was no Chinese term to define this new activity. There was no earlier mention of this term in the Shenbao, and until November 1932 all references to binyiguan pointed exclusively to the International Funeral Directors. Scott publicized in the press for a proper name for “funeral parlor” and settled for the term binyiguan, which became the standard term used thereafter. The International Funeral Directors made a large use of advertising to promote its business among both Chinese and foreigners. On the commemoration of October 10—the founding of the Republic of China— it was among the group of Chinese companies that contributed celebratory advertisements.5 There were two major departures from past practices. The first one was the organization of the whole chain of services related to death under a single company. The second one was the introduction of science in the processing of the body. The International Funeral Directors picked up the body and transported it to its premises right after death. The previous custom was to take care of the body at home, from washing the body to encoffining. At the funeral parlor, the overseers processed the body more thoroughly than before in clinic-like, sanitized rooms with modern scientific equipment. They not only washed and dressed the body but also injected chemicals to preserve it longer and applied make-up to make it look good for public presentation. Finally, the body was placed in a coffin, ready to leave for the place of the funeral ceremony, unless it took place on the premises of the funeral parlor itself. It also offered space for the families to hold such rituals. Last, for the transportation of the coffin for burial, delivery to a repository, or for shipping, the funeral parlor provided a hearse, either a horse-drawn carriage or an automobile. In brief, the International Funeral Directors positioned itself at the crossroad of business, modernity, and funeral customs. It offered a full range of modern services that could accommodate and combine various forms of funerals by Westerners and Chinese. The International Funeral Directors became the leading company in the field. The company signed contracts with the Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Municipal Council for the funerals of their public servants. It also served private foreign families. Yet the International Funeral

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Directors targeted Chinese customers through a mix of astute commercial novelties. For example, it was the first funeral parlor to introduce an automobile hearse, a customized Chrysler car made to accommodate the bulky Chinese coffins. While automobiles were already a common view in the city, funerals were still performed using horse-drawn carriages. Another more garish but commercially efficient gadget was a coffin made in glossy copper. Whether it resonated as a simile of past Egyptian coffins or whether its shine evoked gold, the coffin became a major attraction and a must for the public presentation of the coffin for wealthy families. Later, funeral parlors competed in offering coffins made in unusual material, including glass. The International Funeral Directors undoubtedly became the funeral parlor of the elites and stars. It handled the funeral of major figures, thus reinforcing its reputation and its domineering position. Among the well-known individuals that went through the hands of the International Funeral Directors was Ruan Lingyu, the famous actress who committed suicide in 1935 (see Chapter 4). The brisk business the International Funeral Directors garnered generated interest among Chinese merchants. The Hudong Gongsuo, a Chinesemanaged company, opened in 1925, while a group of Chinese investors founded the Datong Jijiusuo in 1928. Although both offered the services of funeral parlors, they both chose names that still rang more familiar to the Chinese, gongsuo (trade corporation) in one case and jijiusuo (coffin repository) in the other. A few companies opened before the war with Japan, for example, the China Funeral Home (Zhongguo Binyiguan) in 1932, the Shanghai Funeral Parlor (Shanghai Binyiguan) in 1933, and the Central Funeral Directors (Zhongyang Binyiguan) in 1935.6 In view of the sustained population increase, this modest development confirmed that most people relied on guilds, charities, or traditional funeral shops. Along with funeral parlors, a few privately run coffin repositories also emerged. Up to 1937, I identified only two such companies, the Bao’an Repository (Bao’an Bingshe) in 1936 and the Tonghai Repository (Tonghai Jijiusuo) in 1937. Both were small-scale operations. The China Funeral Home was in fact the first commercial Chinese funeral parlor. It started its operation in late 1932, but it received its official accreditation only one year later from the Chinese municipal government. The China Funeral Home claimed its initiators had the will to provide Chinese customers with a service that met the national traditions and customs, which in its view a foreign-run company such as the International Funeral Directors could not deliver properly. It also professed to offer more reasonable and affordable rates to ordinary people. As part of its proclaimed Chineseness, the China Funeral Home pointed out in its prospectus that it hired female employees to process the bodies of dead females. The

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company could take care of the whole funeral process, including organizing any type of religious service, processing all formalities for burial in local cemeteries, and shipping to the native place. The China Funeral Home made it plain its prices included everything and that its staff was not allowed to receive any money from the bereaved families. The prospectus emphasized the modern aspect of the funeral home with a large number of photographs of its premises and equipment.7 Modernity, hygiene, and science were the implicit mottos in the advertising brochure. While it cannot be ascertained with absolute confidence that other funeral parlors or private coffin repositories did not appear before 1937, the records of the foreign settlements when registration was made compulsory in early 1938 leave little doubt. In view of the thorough job done by the police, not to mention the complaints of local residents against the presence of such establishments in their vicinity, there is hardly any chance that a funeral parlor would escape registration. These records did not cover the Chinese municipality, but these new companies would have opened in the foreign settlements to attract customers. Funeral parlors still represented a small share of funeral services in Shanghai. They had to convince the more affluent segments of the population that remained faithful to traditional practices, with much of the postmortem procedure and funeral rituals taking place at home, not in an anonymous place. The public discourse about modernization and public hygiene that became increasingly pervasive in the 1920s, especially under the Nationalist regime after 1927, must have contributed to a change of attitude. The management of dead bodies came under state scrutiny with renewed pressure to change past customs and to adopt modern practices.

War and the Commoditization of the Dead Body War represented a real watershed in the management of death in the city. The first consequence of war was a tremendous increase in the number of deaths and their concentration in a much smaller space. As hundreds of thousands of Shanghai residents sought refuge in the foreign settlements, more deaths occurred within in a shorter span of time. Due to fighting in areas under Chinese administration, most of the guilds lost access to their coffin repositories or even lost them altogether to bombing and fire. Some guilds managed to relocate in the International Settlement. By May 1938, four guilds (Hunan, Tongzhou, Pingjiang, Yangzhou) had reopened a coffin repository. Three more (Wuxi, Jiangning, Xijin) followed their path before the summer.8 The Ningbo Guild opened a temporary coffin repository (Gongping Jijiusuo).9 This was far below what the guilds used to provide.

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For those who cared for their dead and had the means to organize a proper funeral or who needed a space to store the coffin, there was nothing they could rely on beyond the few existing funeral parlors. Merchants were quick to seize the market opportunity. Funeral parlors and coffin repositories literally sprang up like mushrooms after a rain. War created a very specific configuration in the Chinese context. As discussed in Chapter 2, Chinese sojourners attached considerable importance to sending their deceased members to the native place. During the active phase of fighting in and around the city, all communication broke down and shipping inland or along the coast just stopped altogether. The standoff slackened a bit after the full conquest of Central China by the Japanese Army, but it took more than eighteen months before a relatively stable situation came about. All around Shanghai, the Japanese military maintained tight control on communication and transportation. Even with the intervention of the Shanghai Municipal Council to facilitate the removal of coffins inland, to many sojourners the trip between Shanghai and their native place remained full of hazards. There was continued fighting between the Chinese and Japanese armies. Later, groups of guerilla sometimes held up the coffin boats upstream. The coffins could also be caught in a crossfire. As late as 1942 a convoy lost its full load of eighty coffins to fire. These cases were probably rare, but they were enough to make the Chinese risk averse when it came to the remains of their kin.10 In October 1938, the Shanghai Municipal Council investigated the situation in the various guilds that owned premises for the storage of coffins in the settlement. The Yangzhou Guild explicitly advised its members against shipping their coffins upcountry. This was also the position of the Wuxi Guild, even if it hired one boatman to ship coffins occasionally. The Ping jiang Guild was facing difficult times, as did the Changzhou Native-Place Association. The premises of the first were full and the second had lost access to its repository in Nanshi. The Jianghuai Guild declared to have lost its premises in Zhabei during fighting. Most of its members (Subei) were too poor to afford the cost of removing the coffins into the International Settlement and shipped whatever they could directly from their huts.11 In other words, most sojourners made the conscious choice of keeping their coffins in Shanghai until they felt the situation was really safe. In fact, this never happened until the Japanese defeat, and even until 1949. The need for coffin storage space became extremely acute and triggered a commercial response. Eventually, the line between coffin repositories became blurred when funeral parlors also started to serve as storage facilities. There was little difficulty in opening a coffin repository. Mostly, a group of investors would rent a piece of land and apply for the construction of premises. Some rented existing premises and transformed them into a

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repository or a funeral parlor. Unfortunately, there is very little in terms of visual record. Very few pictures were ever taken of these installations. The application to the Public Health Department included a detailed blueprint of the planned construction.12 The initial investment could be quite limited, although the companies generated more income with better facilities. A basic construction called for no more than bamboo poles to erect walls and straw to make the roof.13 It was within the reach of any merchant to set up a coffin repository. A funeral parlor required more specialized equipment and facilities. Management was limited to monitoring the flow of incoming and outbound coffins. If the premises became overcrowded, another row of buildings could easily be added on vacant land around the existing structures. Landowners were very eager to rent land to a funeral parlor or a coffin repository, at least during the war. After the occupation of the Northern and Eastern districts of the International Settlement by the Japanese after the retreat of the Chinese army, the surviving factories and workshops moved en masse south of the Soochow Creek, mostly in the Western District. Hundreds of new industrial concerns saw the light in 1938 and 1939.14 Since coffin repositories also favored the same area, there was a strong competition for land. In the area north of Connaught Road, land owners could secure higher rentals from industrial concerns—up to five times more—which compelled the prospective coffin repositories to seek land south of Yu Yuen Road in the more residential sectors of the Western District. The Shanghai Municipal Council attempted to convince prospective funeral companies that the sector between the railway and the limits of the settlement provided a more suitable place on account of the noise from the funeral processions. Yet the managers of coffin repositories objected that this was beyond the jurisdiction of the council and too close to the Japanese military posts to guarantee free access and protection.15 There was a shared concern by the managers of both factories and coffin repositories to locate in the safe environment of the International Settlement. The Sino-Japanese conflict in Shanghai definitely marked the rise of commercial funeral business. From five companies before 1937, the number of funeral parlors increased to twenty-five by the end of the war, with two peaks in 1938 and 1941 (see Table 3.1). The growth of coffin repositories was staggering, from three to thirty-five between 1937 and 1943. One-third were established in the immediate aftermath of the war, with their first official registration in May 1938, although they may have started earlier. The Shanghai Municipal Council introduced a system of inspection when its health officers realized the extent of the funeral business in its territory. For the sole year of 1938, eighteen new establishments were

102

Chapter 3 table 3.1. Rise of funeral parlors and coffin repositories in wartime Funeral parlors

5 5 2 2 14

1941 1943 1944 1945  

Before 1937 1938 1939 1940 Total

5 1 1 1 8

Coffin repositories

3 1 13 3 2 21

October 1939 September 1940 September 1941 August 1942 September 1943  

Before 1937 January 1938 May 1938 September 1938 October 1938 Total

2 5 2 1 1 12

created. In the settlement itself, there were altogether twenty-three funeral parlors and coffin repositories at the end of November 1938.16 Although the practice of storing coffins blurred the line between funeral parlors and coffin repositories, the former remained by and large smallscale operations compared to the latter. Except for three funeral parlors (Dazhong, Leyuan, Shangtian), their stock of coffins would usually amount to no more than a few hundred. The issue of safety was of course paramount for the funeral parlors and coffin repositories. Almost all of them chose the International Settlement to erect their premises and open their offices (see Map 3.1). Among funeral parlors, sixteen settled in the International Settlement. Of the six that operated in the Chinese municipality, five had been created before the war. Coffin repositories had much at stake since their business was to provide precisely a safe and quiet resting place. Twenty-nine chose to build their facilities in the International Settlement and only six opted for the Chinese municipality. Three had started their operation before the war. Chinese merchants held a negative view of Japanese-occupied territory—the whole of the Chinese municipality—even after the establishment of the Chen Gongbo government in 1940. After December 1941, the takeover of the International Settlement by the Japanese army put an end to the protected haven. Yet the former International Settlement remained the place of choice.17 Some repositories had also settled in the extra-settlement roads area, formerly outside the jurisdiction of the Shanghai Municipal Council, but still patrolled by its police.18 According to a well-informed brief in 1939, the instability in this area therein made the Chinese wary of placing their coffins there. They preferred storage inside the settlement proper than a repository in the extra-settlement roads area (see Map 3.2).19

18

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entertainment industry and prostitution, women gained a slow entry in the urban labor market as employees in administration, financial service, or department stores.40 Thus there was at all times far more male dead than female. The longest available series on the sex ratio come from the International Settlement. The ratio changed from nearly 3 to 1 in the 1870s to 2 to 1 at the turn of the century, to 1.5 to 1 after 1930. The sex ratio in the French Concession between 1910 and 1936 reflected very much the same pattern as in the International Settlement. In the Chinese municipality, however, there was a lower ratio, with 130 men for 100 women throughout the 1930s. This was the pattern still observed in 1947 with 126 men for 100 women.41 By 1950, the average stood at 1.2 to 1, but with great variations among the various districts.42 Given the transient nature of the foreign population in Shanghai, it is impossible to compute any kind of life expectancy. Yet a rich source provides some insight about age at death. Chinese guilds played a central role in the management of death in Shanghai, as discussed in Chapter 2. Depending on the size of their community, the guilds built coffin repositories where coffins were stored pending their shipping back to the home village. The guilds kept very precise records of the coffins entrusted to them. The age of the deceased was always recorded, which gives us the possibility to study the age at death of guild members and their families. I discovered several registers from the Huzhou, Guang-Zhao, and Yizhuang guilds for the modern period, from 1928 to 1941, with most of the data on the 1931–1940 decade. The people whose coffins were stored in the repositories represent a slightly biased sample of the population. The most well off probably would not place their dead with the guilds, while the poor were most often buried in the charity cemeteries. Yet it is also possible to consider that precisely the population that used the services of the guild fit in a large bracket of social status and occupation. They were representative of the common shimin, the petty urbanites who formed the majority of the population. This study used only the data from the Huzhou Guild because it is a very large sample that covers the 1933–1937 period before the SinoJapanese conflict. Altogether, the coffins of 2,845 people were recorded. This is not strictly speaking a demographically representative sample. It represents a section of the population—the Huzhou people—who died and entrusted their deceased to their guild. Yet it represents a sufficiently large group of people for whom we know the age at death to provide some insight into life and death in Shanghai (see Table 1.1). The share of children under 15 years stands at 24.2 percent. This is less than the percentage found in the official statistical records, especially when infants are included. Probably, many families did not incur the cost

1

2 KM

map 3.2. Distribution of funeral parlors, guilds, and commercial coffin repositories (1940s). Source: Virtual Shanghai

0

International Settlement French Concession

Waterway

Railway

Street

Coffin repository

Funeral parlor

Guild repository

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The second foreign settlement offered a very different configuration. The French Concession allowed only one funeral parlor (China Funeral Home) in its territory and coffin repositories were fully prohibited. The French were especially sensitive to the issue of cemeteries and coffins, following their bitter experience with the Siming Gongsuo. In 1900, when the Chinese government granted an extension, the French Municipal Council explicitly prohibited any form of burial in the area under its jurisdiction. The ban held even when the settlement expanded again in 1914.20 The French never wavered about their policy, even during the Sino-Japanese War. They maintained a tight grip on their territory and managed to do it with much less qualm than their counterpart in the International Settlement. Whereas the Shanghai Municipal Council acknowledged it had no right to prohibit coffin repositories, the French Municipal Council simply imposed its own rule. The council went as far as to prohibit the entry of dead bodies, even in a coffin. The transit of coffins was allowed only with due medical certificates and on a case-by-case basis.21 This strict policy had the unfortunate result that coffins in search of a safe final destination within the city ended up in the International Settlement. The commercial funeral parlors and coffin repositories delineated a new geography of death that differed from the spatial distribution of the guild repositories originally located in the Chinese municipality (see Map 3.2). The formidable development of coffin repositories during the war reflected the economic profit that could be derived from the attachment of the Chinese population to preserving coffins until they could be shipped to the native place for burial. There was a wide range of rates among the private repositories and even within each repository (see Chapter 8). The funeral parlors and coffin repositories sought to cater to a wide spectrum of customers. They advertised widely in the press. In February 1941, the Shanghai Municipal Council produced a memorandum on the income of coffin repositories.22 The annual rate ranged from 10 to 1,200 yuan (see Table 3.2). This is a small sample of the total number of coffin repositories, but it reflects the major pattern in these establishments. The highest rates (400–720 yuan) represented only a few, sometimes only one coffin. At the other end, the lowest rates (36 yuan) formed the vast majority of the stored coffins: 84 percent at Dahua and 84 percent at Leyuan. At Wan’an, the lower two rates represented 75 percent of all stored coffins. Thus most of the families were prepared to pay for the storage of their deceased member, but they also sought the most economical solution. The highest rates could only cater to a small number of elite families. Calculated on a one-year basis, the income of the four coffin repositories was very substantial. The number of coffins definitely was critical in generating income. Nevertheless, the strategy of Zhonghua to cater to

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Chapter 3 table 3.2. Annual income of four coffin repositories (February 1941) Income class

Dahua Dahua Zhonghua Zhonghua Wan’an Wan’an Leyuan Leyuan

Coffins Rate Coffins Rate Coffins Rate Coffins Rate

1

1 720 31 11,160 4 2,400 1 400

2

18 2,160 35 8,400 12 4,320 16 3,840

3

2 120 115 13,800 24 5,760 22 2,640

4

5

6

485 17,460 155 18,600 240 14,400

193 11,580 1,417 51,012

408 14,688

Total

506 20,460 181 33,360 796 57,348 1,696 72,292

Source: Memorandum, Deputy treasurer, SMC, 21 February 1941, U1-16-2471, SMA.

high-income families was also rewarding. With hardly 181 coffins in store, its revenue was just one-half of Leyuan and its 1,696 coffins. A coffin repository required only a relatively modest investment and limited staff, except for the higher class establishments. The cost for maintaining the premises was low. There was hardly any movement and wearing out of the premises. Finally, with each additional year of storage, the coffin repositories turned a profit that came close to 100 percent. In the wartime context, coffin repositories represented low-risk ventures with a high return on capital and a profitable business. It also means that the managers of repositories had little incentive to see a rapid turnover of coffins.

The Rise of Shanghai’s “Necropolis” War radically transformed both the geography of death and the social institutions in charge of the dead. The major ingredient in this transformation was undoubtedly the difficulties the traditional organizations met in removing the dead from the city in a context of higher mortality. The two major actors in the field—the guilds and charities—used to remove the dead to places located outside the city proper. Even if there were exceptions, most guild repositories were located in the suburbs and served only as a space of transit before burial in the native place. Charities owned cemetery land all around Shanghai and in Pudong. By and large, these places became inaccessible during the early years of the war. Lastly, in the context of Japanese occupation, the Chinese were unwilling to bury their dead in the cemeteries around Shanghai. As a result, as T. K. Ho, deputy secretary of the SMC wrote: “Shanghai has literally become a place of refuge both for the dead and the living.”23 Indeed, most of the dead remained in the city during the greater part of the war period, almost exclusively in the International Settlement, which gave rise to a huge necropolis in its midst.

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­

Coffins remained in the settlement (including the extra-settlement roads area) under two very different conditions: burial under a shallow layer of earth and coffin repositories. The first form was initially a matter of expediency when the two major organizations involved in collecting the bodies of poor people in the streets, hospitals, homes, and so on, ran out of cemetery land (see Chapter 6). They would rent a piece of land and start depositing coffins therein. At the end of 1937, as a result of both fighting and the appalling conditions of refugees, the number of dead bodies increased steadily and, with them, the number of coffins to be buried. The Shanghai Municipal Council was aware of the difficulties of the charities in finding suitable burial ground and stepped in to negotiate access to land in Hong qiao, west of Shanghai, next to the large municipal cemetery the council owned. The charities turned the area into a massive burial ground, generating strong protests by the local—foreign—residents. The press reflected their concern with terrifying headlines: “Conditions in burial ground are appalling,” “Thousands of bodies carelessly dumped on open area,” and “Swarms of flies are menace to the District.” Newspapers wondered why Hongqiao had been chosen for the location of a large emergency cemetery. According to a report in the Shanghai Times, 3,000–5,000 bodies had accumulated. The interment of corpses was left in the hands of coolies whose duty was to “pile the boxes two or three high in long piles and to sprinkle a little dirt on top.” The sheer number of coffins that came in made it impossible for proper interment. With little cover, the coffins quickly decayed and cracked open under the effect of the weather, revealing their content. The pictorial record confirms the reality of hastily arranged burial grounds. The Public Health Department made an investigation but recognized that the cemetery was beyond boundary lines. The Public Health Department also admitted that the Shanghai Municipal Government was facing a situation with which it was unable to cope. Yet the department also acknowledged that most bodies found in the surveyed cemeteries came from the settlement, which itself made no provision for the handling of the dead.24 The Public Health Department definitely put its finger on a major deficiency in the management of the city by the foreign authorities. War had magnified this deficiency, which ranged from sheer neglect to outright discrimination toward the Chinese population. As residents around protested, however, the Public Health and Police departments of the Shanghai Municipal Council started imposing more stringent rules on the conditions to bury coffins. It was not unusual for the charities to remove the coffins two or three times in the first year of the war. They were indeed overwhelmed by the number of dead they collected in the city, but they steadfastly refused to give in to suggestions by

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the foreign authorities to cremate the unclaimed dead bodies. At some point, in 1939, however, both the Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Municipal Council imposed the compulsory cremation of the bodies picked up in the street. The measure was enforced until 1941 in the French Concession, but it remained in place at least until 1943 in the International Settlement (see Chapter 6). While cremation could be imposed on exposed corpses, this could not be done with the bodies collected from families and institutions. This created a sufficient flow of coffins to give rise to a vast necropolis in Hongqiao. In September 1941, the total number of buried coffins amounted to 11,536. The figure kept increasing until it reached 59,309 in September 1943. This is the last known figure from the Shanghai Municipal Council records. Thereafter the flow slowed down and the charities eventually managed to regain access to their cemeteries in Pudong or north of Shanghai in Dachang. By the end of the war, however, the Hongqiao area may have contained up to 100,000 coffins. Although these coffins were buried under less than ideal conditions, they were at least put underground. Yet another population of coffins was also growing aboveground in the funeral parlors and coffin repositories. From 1938, the Shanghai Municipal Council instituted a system of monthly inspection and records. The Chinese municipality introduced the same measure two years later, but whereas the records for the International Settlement are complete, those of the Chinese municipality are sketchy. The survey here is based on individual registration slips found in the archives for funeral parlors and coffin repositories. Summary tables as in the records of the Public Health Department were never located.25 Finally, some coffin repositories were registered twice due to their location in the extra-settlement roads that came under the surveillance of both municipal authorities. Yet these cases were easy to count out. The storage of coffins became the most obvious and visible part of Shanghai’s necropolis. The International Settlement received the highest number of coffins. With a population of about two million people in 1939 and a death rate of 15 per thousand, the settlement had a potential for about 30,000 new dead in the course of the year. Yet the actual death rate was substantially higher, even if it did not reach the level of the preceding year. The year 1938 was particularly lethal, much more than 1937, due to the impact of displacement, malnutrition, and disease. Moreover, the families of the people who died in the French Concession or in the Chinese municipality tried to transfer their coffins to the International Settlement for storage. In June 1938, the twenty funeral parlors, private repositories, and guild repositories in the settlement held respectively 287, 1,885, and 1,600 coffins.26 In the second half of 1938, however, the coffin population in these establishments increased steadily. In the first half

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of 1939, the repositories received 7,838 bodies for 4,776 burials in local cemeteries and 4,549 coffins shipped to the native place. Another 20,531 bodies were cremated, those of exposed corpses, both children and adults (see Chapter 6).27 In 1938, only 5,511 coffins had been shipped up country from the International Settlement. The following year, the figure reached 10,330.28 By comparison, there were only 5,733 coffins in repositories at the end of July 1938, but their number reached 23,552 at the end of June 1939. With an average monthly increase of about 1,300 coffins, the Public Health Department predicted that the remaining available space—6,000—would barely be sufficient for the rest of the year.29 The prediction of the health commissioner, however, proved wrong, not in his assessment of the increase, but in his underestimate of the capacity of Chinese merchants to provide extended facilities to accommodate the steady flow of coffins. The records of the Public Health Department documented this process carefully and regularly. They confirm that the number of coffins shipped from the departmentsponsored Penang Coffin Shipping Station on Soochow Creek remained quite stable and failed to make a dent in the ascending curve of stored coffins. In 1940 and 1941, 13,728 and 12,037 coffins, respectively, left the settlement. By April 1942, some 4,428 coffins had been shipped, which would produce about the same annual number as in the preceding two years.30 Throughout the war period, Chinese residents from the various districts of Shanghai sought ways to place their coffins in the International Settlement, to the dismay of the authorities: “We have not the machinery to stop this smuggling of coffins and corpses and this has to be recognized.”31 The Shanghai Municipal Police and the Public Health Department carried out investigations that established there was an extensive smuggling of coffins from the Chinese municipality. They identified several companies that engaged mostly in transporting coffins to the various repositories in the settlement. These companies used various routes to avoid detection by the police (Wuzhen Road Bridge from Zhabei, Great Western Road railway crossing in the western suburb).32 There were simply too many coffins on the move for the authorities to track them all. Formal applications were made when there was a risk of detection, as when a large load of coffins needed to pass through or leave the French Concession. In January 1939, the Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance issued eighteen transit permits, including one for a load of sixty coffins, and 729 individual passes. Yet the bureau also pointed out that coffins were removed daily by truck without bothering to apply for passes. Since they left the French Concession, the police refrained from interfering with their operation.33 Figure 3.1 shows the astonishing growth of coffin storage in the International Settlement. From a few thousand in May 1938 there was an

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120,000 100,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 20,000 0 May 1938

Sept. 1938

Oct. 1939

Sept. 1940

Sept. 1941

Oct. 1941

May 1942

Sept. 1942

Oct. 1942

Mar. 1943

Sept. 1943

figure 3.1. Number of stored coffins in the International Settlement

inexorable increase that bewildered the authorities of the International Settlement. Four years into the war period, on the eve of Pearl Harbor and the full occupation of Shanghai by the Japanese, the settlement was home to almost 50,000 coffins. Two years later, the figure had doubled to more than 100,000 coffins. There is little doubt that the number of stored coffins continued to increase until August 1945. Even a company established in January 1943 managed to garner 1,500 coffins on its premises by December 1946.34 Yet the figures above do not represent the full extent of the storage of dead bodies. On the one hand, despite the destruction of their premises, the guilds eventually resumed their operations in the Japanese-occupied Chinese municipality. Nevertheless, the capacity of the guild premises was no match to those of the commercial repositories. We have only partial data on the stored coffins in the Chinese municipality. In September 1941, a partial count recorded 11,536 coffins. Two years later, a more complete set recorded 12,302 coffins.35 As the two sets overlapped only marginally, it is safe to assume that the total number of stored coffins in the Chinese municipality must have ranged between 12,000 and 16,000 coffins. Taken together, these figures point to a population of 60,000 stored coffins in September 1941 and 120,000 in September 1943. A rough count also shows that about 85 percent of these coffins were located in the International Settlement. Thus coffin repositories accommodated a massive population of unburied coffins in mostly urbanized areas, even if many were located at the western fringe of the city. Yet, during and after the war, almost all these areas became congested and densely populated. Maps 3.3 and 3.4 are based on the statistics of the Public Health Department. Even

1

2

3 km

French Concession

International Settlement

map 3.3. Growing inventory of stored coffins (1937–1941). Source: Virtual Shanghai

0

Foreign settlement

Waterway

Railway

Street

Parlor

21

4,951

14,377

Number of coffins

Repository

Type of repository

1937-1941

Guild

1

2

3 km

French Concession

International Settlement

map 3.4. Growing inventory of stored coffins (1942–1946). Source: Virtual Shanghai

0

Foreign settlement

Waterway

Railway

Street

Parlor

Number of coffins

Repository

Type of repository

1942-1946

22

5,004

22,681

Guild

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if they did not include many of the guild repositories, these maps convey a clear sense of the spatial spread of this unusual necropolis. Local residents, especially foreign sojourners, were not particularly thrilled by the erection of coffin repositories in their vicinity. Because of the pressure by the Bureau of Public Health to avoid densely populated areas, the merchants in search of a place for a new funeral parlor or coffin repository often settled in areas inhabited by affluent residents who lived in spacious villas. Even if the population was sparse, this was a privileged population. The funeral processions around and in the funeral parlors also caused a nuisance to the neighboring residents. This is how the French owner of a villa on 600 Haig Avenue described his condition: On Saturday afternoon [. . .] between 2 and 3.30 p.m. two funerals were held with full brass bands plus Chinese music and crowds of wailing women, each affair lasted half an hour, the din was terrific, besides these two processions scores of other coffins were brought in with less noise, evidently poorer classes who cannot afford more than a few Chinese flutes, and a few paid mourners to wail. This morning at about 8 a.m. we were all awakened by howling and wailing women and children, they were paying their respects to one of the first inmates in a shed just a few feet from my house, the door of this shed was wide open and we had a full view of coffins and mourners, the burning of paper and joss sticks nearly suffocated us, this noise was carried out for over an hour. Even on Sunday morning we cannot rest.36

The derogatory tone in the letter is plain and obvious. The privileged residents of the western section of the foreign settlements were not used to being exposed to the nuisance of everyday life. The strong reaction of this resident, however, also points to a genuine difficulty: the inadequacy of locating funeral facilities in the midst of residential areas in a period when funerals kept increasing. As music and wailing accompanied such events, their sheer repetition could only lead to such reactions. Even at the Dalu Funeral Parlor, a small venture with less than 200 coffins on average, there was hardly a day without a coffin coming in or going out. Over a period of ten months in 1940, the parlor received 573 coffins, while it released 349 for burial or shipping.37 Each incoming coffin was accompanied by a procession, with music en route, on arrival, and at the repository. Coffin repositories in residential areas were undoubtedly a nuisance, as the Shanghai Municipal Police acknowledged, but all it could do was to warn the owners of repositories that it would withhold the issuance of procession permits in case of persisting complaints.38 In June 1938, further restrictions applied to processions in the western part of the settlement for both weddings and funerals. Music could not be played on the street in the area beyond Hart Road and could be played for only ten minutes indoors.

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A deposit of 25 yuan was required at the time of application, which the police would confiscate if it observed a breach of regulation.39 There was a continuous flow of protests with the Public Health Department about the erection of funeral parlors or coffin repositories in the residential areas.40 Mostly, residents argued that the stored coffins represented a health hazard. Yet the Public Health Department continually upheld the view that the quality of the coffins and the regular inspection of the premises by its staff guaranteed that there was no risk of contamination for the population.41 Jordan, the commissioner of public health, even found the flow of complaints annoying: “Certain individuals consider that coffins should be made to vanish into the air and that people should not be permitted to die within the Settlement or to be buried therein.”42 All the Public Health Department could do was to exert friendly pressure and advise the prospective managers of a new coffin repository to find a more suitable location away from residences.43 The Shanghai Municipal Council debated in earnest the issue of introducing a regulation on the location of funeral parlors and coffin repositories on its territory. The council convened a meeting in April 1938 to debate this issue. The only existing regulation was the 1935 Regulation in Respect of Undertakers and Funeral Parlors. It spelled out the rules for health, materials, and buildings under the control of the Public Health Department, but there was no definition of what would constitute a suitable location. The internal debate revealed that the council had no legal power to enforce the prohibition of such facilities. Even if the Chinese municipality had adopted a regulation, because of the privilege of extraterritoriality which placed the settlements solely under foreign laws, the coffin repositories could claim exemption from the local regulations. As long as the conditions in the coffin repositories did not contravene the regulations on sanitation, there was nothing the council could do to prevent coffin repositories from opening in the settlement.44 Yet the establishment of coffin repositories objectively created a certain anxiety. As soon as the phenomenon came to its attention, the Public Health Department started sending inspectors to check the conditions of their premises. If a place was found below standards, as in the case of the Fahua Coffin Repository, it was forced to cease its operation. 45 In June 1938, health inspectors visited the twenty coffin repositories and funeral parlors in the settlement. They reported all the coffins were in very good condition. At the time of the visit, there were altogether 3,771 coffins.46 The council took action against a couple of cases it found unsuitable, but when faced with a refusal to move, as with the Wan’an Coffin Repository, it found itself powerless.47 This may have caused the council to reconsider

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its initial position on its legal powers and to introduce a limited regulation. The Public Health Department prepared a plan to show the most suitable areas for coffin repositories, but it was more an incentive than strict zoning. In June 1938, a municipal notification stated that “coffin repositories close to residences will not be permitted.” This was one more step in the direction of a more stringent monitoring, although it fell short of a genuine regulation.48 The North China Daily News criticized the new regulation (“the mountain has conceived and brought forth a mouse”) but it came too late as a large number of coffin repositories were already in place.49 Yet, despite the harsh criticisms, the Bureau of Public Health actively implemented the regulation to discourage the erection of new coffin repositories in the settlement itself. It turned down seventeen new applications and removed a coffin repository established without authorization.50 The Public Health Department faced another unexpected process that contributed substantially to increase the coffin population. In June 1939, one of the chief health inspectors wrote the first report on the corpses that entered the International Settlement from the neighboring French Concession.51 There was no regulation that prohibited the entry of such corpses, although permission from the Public Health Department needed to be obtained. The funeral companies most often proceeded without seeking any approval. Eight funeral companies argued in a letter that the local residents had no means of encoffining and depositing their dead in the French Concession. The Public Health Department estimated that, by September 1939, about one-third of the stored coffins in the settlement had come from the French Concession.52 The chief health inspector upheld the view that the companies and the residents should petition the French Municipal Council to loosen its policy. Since the situation in the coffin repositories was becoming tense, he also suggested imposing restrictions on the transport of corpses from the French Concession.53 The Public Health Department complained bitterly about the selfishness of the French Municipal Council as the French Concession had more open space suitable for coffin repositories.54 After a lengthy discussion between the various departments of the council, M. Philips, the secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Council, met his counterpart on 28 July 1938.55 Yet the French council refused to budge on the prohibition of coffin repositories in its territory and even in the “military zone”—this designated the area around Xujiahui that the French commanded militarily although it was not part of their territory—with the argument that all vacant land would be turned into burial grounds and repositories. It only offered to suspend new transfer permits to the settlement and to encourage the removal of coffins to Pudong.56 Yet several hundred corpses continued to

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filter into the neighboring settlement every month.57 In February 1940, the secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Council instructed the Public Works Department to refuse new coffin repositories south of Soochow Creek and any extension of existing premises.58 The date of establishment of repositories, however, shows that the instruction was not enforced successfully. The Shanghai Municipal Council sought to facilitate the removal of coffins inland. Since the main channel for the transportation of coffins upcountry was Soochow Creek, the biggest obstacle was to obtain the right of passage from the Japanese military, which suspected that coffins might be used to smuggle goods, especially war-related materials, to the Nationalist army. The Chinese boatmen met with difficulties in obtaining permits. Another aggravating factor was the inability by many families to pay the cost of storage in a repository. They entrusted their coffins to boatmen who usually waited until they had a full load of about twenty-five coffins before sailing off. As a result, the river was clogged with a whole fleet of boats loaded with coffins.59 The presence of these coffins on water in the very heart of the city raised serious concerns. On 11 August 1938, the North China Daily News published an accusatory photograph showing a fully clogged Soochow Creek.60 The Public Health Department denounced the picture as a lie since the concerned section of the river was not within the limits of the International Settlement.61 The Japanese military became worried as well by the situation. At about the same period, they disinfected thirty-two boats with about 1,000 fragile coffins, which they towed away by steam launch up the west of Jessfield Village. After this operation, there remained nineteen boats with about 500 well-constructed coffins that awaited their passes.62 The Public Health Department observed that there was nothing to prevent thousands of flimsy coffins from being loaded on boats from the northern bank of Soochow Creek in the Zhabei District. The creek itself was Chinese territory.63 The Shanghai Municipal Council eventually negotiated the establishment of a single point of departure, Penang Station, close to the garbage incinerator. The station officially opened in the summer of 1938. Because the Japanese military suspected the Chinese of using coffins to smuggle weapons and other equipment, the shipments of coffins to the interior had to be inspected and certified by health inspectors.64 The station definitely spurred the transportation of coffins inland, but not as much as hoped by the authorities. Overall, however, the statistics show that the removal of coffins never kept pace with the storage of new coffins. Even after communication was restored, even with pressure on the guilds by the Shanghai Municipal Council to relieve the congestion on their premises, the Chinese population definitely preferred to keep its dead within a safe distance rather than take the chance of an upcountry trip.

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War and the State Control of Death The war brought much more control than in the past. While the management of death had come under various regulations before 1937, in both the foreign settlements and the Chinese municipality, they applied to a very small number of commercial companies. By and large, the management of the funeral process was in the hands of the native-place associations that implemented the same routines established for nearly two centuries. Local charity cemeteries, coffin repositories, and shipping companies formed a nexus that guaranteed the free flow of dead bodies out of the city. The local authorities hardly had any reason to get involved in a well-oiled system based on self-management. Military warfare, however, triggered an upsurge in the mortality rate, while it also caused a complete disruption of the established routes of coffin transportation. Faced with an expanding “city of the dead,” the local authorities took various steps to regulate the management of death in the city. Public involvement in the management of death was mirrored by the establishment of an active funeral trade association in 1941 that, as we shall see, became a major actor in regulating the trade and negotiating with the local authorities. In the Chinese municipality, the municipal government had introduced a system of registration and control of funeral parlors and coffin repositories in 1927. This was the first extensive regulation of funeral services. Its article 3 ruled out any such facility within 2 li of areas with about fifty shops or dwellings. Furthermore, it defined separate rules for funeral parlors and coffin repositories. Funeral parlors were not allowed to run a coffin repository. They were not allowed to keep more than five coffins on their premises, with a maximum limit of one month. In the coffin repositories, the maximum duration for the storage of coffins could not exceed five years. There was also a strict prohibition of noise (prayers, wailing, firecrackers) and music.65 In 1932, the municipality adopted another regulation on funeral parlors with more specific dispositions on hygiene, infectious diseases, and staff.66 Finally, the municipality defined a “repository zone,” actually four specific areas in four rural districts (Jiangwan, Caojing, Pusong, Yangjing) around the city where coffin repositories were to be located.67 The wartime period saw a succession of administrations in the Chinese municipality, each adopting its own set of regulations, although they replicated most of the original regulation. Even the short-lived Dadao government had enough concern for the issue of death management in the city to adopt a regulation on coffin repositories in February 1938.68 Yet it is safe to assume it remained a dead letter. Under Fu Xiao’an’s mayoralty (October 1938–October 1940), as under his successor, Chen Gongbo (November 1940–August 1945), the Bureau of

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Public Health engineered the registration of all funeral parlors and coffin repositories.69 In the International Settlement, regulation was minimal until 1937.70 Thereafter, the main concern of the Shanghai Municipal Council was the monitoring of the coffin repositories to ensure they did not expose the population to the risk of infectious diseases. The coffin repositories increased the workload of the Public Health Department. For the first two years, the Shanghai Municipal Council supported the cost of hiring new inspectors, but by 1940 it decided to recover its expenses through an inspection fee based on the number of coffins. The rate was fixed initially at 25 cents per coffin per month (or 3 yuan per year).71 The measure also targeted the guild repositories since previous attempts to persuade them to dispatch their coffins to the interior had met with limited success.72 In the Chinese municipality, public health was the responsibility of a section of the Bureau of Social Affairs. The issue of coffin repositories came to its attention in January 1940 when residents complained about repositories with open coffins therein. The Bureau of Social Affairs instructed the coffin repositories to remove all their coffins or they would be cremated.73 The Japanese had raised the issue of open coffins in the Zhabei District.74 In March 1940, the mayor instructed the police to implement the regulation on coffin repositories until the Bureau of Public Health was reinstituted. The regulation incorporated the basic requirements to be found in both the previous and following municipal regulations. The main emphasis was on maintaining proper public hygiene (premises, equipment, disinfection). There was no disposition about the length of storage.75 The police carried out regular inspection visits to check the condition of the premises. If found inadequate, the municipal services imposed repairs or transformation.76 In August 1940, a municipal notification encouraged families to apply for permits to remove their coffins from the repositories.77 With the Chen Gongbo government in 1941, the Bureau of Public Health resumed its regulatory work on the different types of institutions involved in the processing of the dead. It drafted a new regulation on funeral parlors that aimed to restrict their role to the preparation of the body before burial. The regulation was patterned after the text of the prewar municipal administration.78 Quite clearly, the Bureau of Public Health meant to draw a clear line between those in charge of dressing the dead bodies and those that provided storage facilities. The war had blurred the line, but it was time to return to this basic distinction. Yet all the statistics demonstrate that the regulation was ineffectual. Profit and public demand drove most to seek the expansion of their stock of coffins.79 In October 1942, the bureau announced new rules for the control of coffin repositories.80 Health inspectors visited each building to assess its suitability and

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the state of the stored coffins. Although the major guilds passed the examination without any trouble, some presented defects. In February 1942, the Nanshi office of the Bureau of Public Health reported that the premises of three guilds (Hongfang Gongsuo, Piaoshui Shuilu Gongsuo, and Chonghai Guild) were in bad shape, with the majority of coffins being stored over one year.81 Some commercial repositories stored coffins way beyond the capacity of their premises. The Anping Repository held 2,750 coffins in January 1942 but 3,400 nine months later with an official capacity of 3,000.82 Finally, the bureau decided to adopt the same policy as the Shanghai Municipal Council to levy an inspection fee to force the coffin repositories to ship their stored coffins outside of the city.83 In August 1942, two new regulations imposed more stringent prescriptions on the operation of coffin repositories. They prohibited repositories in densely populated areas, imposed walled premises, and limited the duration of storage to one year.84 The Bureau of Public Health stated explicitly that there were too many coffins in the city, which posed a challenge in terms of public health and city appearance (shirong). The novelty, however, was the attempt to compel the reluctant guilds and commercial companies to action by levying a tax on each stored coffin.85 The Chinese municipality introduced a multiscale rate that made it increasingly expensive for the repositories to store coffins for a long time.86 Coffins stored under one year since August 1942 were charged a monthly fee of 0.50 yuan, and those stored above one year were charged 1.0 yuan. The amount doubled for each additional year with a maximum of 16 yuan for all those stored above five years.87 The decision to levy a tax on stored coffins was bound to make a dent in the income of the commercial companies as a large percentage of the families were in arrears on their payments. Some repositories adopted a waitand-see attitude, but the Bureau of Public Health sent a stern reminder to the delinquent companies in early October to pay their fees within two days.88 The inspection fee garnered a substantial revenue to the municipality. In February 1944, the Bureau of Public Health reported the payment made by four coffin repositories for the past month. The Taiping (12,816 coffins), Da’an (9,009 coffins), New Pu’an (13,851 coffins), and Old Pu’an (11,331 coffins) had paid respectively 7,380, 3,042, 11,439, and 7,641 yuan. Altogether they held 47,007 coffins, for which they paid a total of 32,544 yuan.89 Over a whole year, this would represent close to 400,000 yuan. The tax substantially increased the operational cost of repositories, but it failed to deter them from accepting more coffins or working seriously to remove the stored coffins from the city. They passed the cost onto their customers. The establishment of the Funeral Business Trade Association (FBTA) in June 1942 was probably in part a response to the more determined policy

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of the municipal government to get rid of the stored coffins in the city. Its first move in May 1943 was to actively address the issue of transportation. The FBTA felt its members would be in a better position if they could run their own shipping company. For this purpose, it established the Joint Coffin Shipping and Burial Company (Lianye Yunjiu Yingzang Gongsi) with capital to be raised by issuing shares to its members.90 A few months later, the FBTA also planned to rent a wharf for the joint shipping company that would be devoted solely to the shipping of coffins. After an unsuccessful attempt at using the wharf of a charity, it decided to establish it on Soochow Creek to the west of Shanghai.91 At the same time, it negotiated preferential rates with the China Merchants’ Steamship Company in the name of the Joint Coffin Shipping and Burial Company to accelerate the evacuation of coffins and meet its obligations to the Bureau of Public Health. It made the same request to another shipping company, Ping’an Steamship Company (Ping’an Lunchuanju).92 The joint shipping company does not seem to have met with a great success. There was no information on its operation in the documents of the FBTA, but by October 1943, hardly five months after its beginning, the FBTA decided to close it down and return the invested money to its members.93 After the war, the municipal administration adopted the regulations of its predecessors.94 Its surveys confirmed that none of the existing twenty funeral parlors respected the municipal regulations prohibiting them from storing coffins.95 It took almost a whole year before the municipality was ready to start registering all the coffin repositories (guild, funeral parlors, and repositories).96 While the regulations were not much different from those of the preceding period, the Bureau of Public Health was more demanding. Registration was not a pure formality. In July 1945, the Ningbo Guild had applied for permission to open a low-cost funeral parlor in its South Repository to meet the needs of the poor people in the city who could not afford the cost of the commercial funeral parlors.97 The bureau turned down the application after its inspection revealed the guild did not provide adequate facilities for the processing of dead bodies.98 The guild, however, did not waver in its determination. After the change of administration in the wake of the Japanese surrender, it reintroduced the same application in January 1946.99 Yet the health inspector was also aware of the previous application and remained skeptical about the feasibility of the project. Eventually, he maintained that the planned installation did not meet the standards of the Bureau of Public Health and recommended to review the application at a later date.100 The wealth of materials found in the archives—inspection forms and monthly reports by the coffin repositories—tend to show that after 1942 the municipal government supervised very closely the issue of stored

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coffins. In November 1943, the Bureau of Public Health reported having inspected all twenty coffin repositories and nine funeral parlors under its watch in western Shanghai to determine the number of coffins stored over one year.101 The retrocession of the two foreign settlements created the conditions for the unified supervision of all funeral companies, even if each settlement kept its own administrative services. Mostly, the Bureau of Public Health continued to inspect the repositories and press for repairs or modification of those with a primitive installation or in a shabby state.102 In the postwar period, the municipal government persisted in its attempt to stem the flow of coffins through more stringent regulations. Despite its resolute monitoring, however, it failed to obtain full compliance to its rules. Shortly after the takeover of the city, the new Bureau of Public Health adopted a harder stance and a spate of new regulations.103 In July 1949, it prohibited the funeral parlors from accepting new coffins for storage and endeavored to confine their activity to preparing the dead bodies for burial.104 As we shall see, the return to normalcy and the tighter control the new regime imposed failed to solve the issue in the short term.

The Funeral Business Trade Association In the course of the war, a few company managers realized that the funeral industry represented a substantial group of companies with a large number of employees. They would be in a better position vis-à-vis the municipal authorities if they were recognized as a professional group. Sometime during 1942, a group of funeral companies established the Association for Funerals and Disease Prevention (Shanghai Shi Binzang Fangyi Xiehui). In June, however, its members decided to transform the association into the Funeral Business Trade Association (Shanghai Tebie Shi Binyi Jijiuye Tongye Gonghui).105 The FBTA had thirty-nine members, all of them commercial funeral parlors and coffin repositories.106 Various documents of the association point out Mao Jing’an, Yang Jingbing, and Hua Ronghai as the initiators of the trade association.107 The association claimed to incorporate all the organizations involved in the funeral business, especially the guilds. Although it made various attempts, its letters to the major guilds met with indifference or refusal. The FBTA sought the support of the Bureau of Public Health, but the authorities were clearly not inclined toward pressing the guilds into the association. At the end of 1943, the association claimed 41 members and a total workforce of 1,128.108 Yet, as new companies emerged, the FBTA had to seek the assistance of the Bureau of Public Health to discipline reluctant companies.109 In April 1945, its executive board voted to incorporate the

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cemeteries and the coffin shipping companies, though with little success.110 The association also established a welfare fund for its members supported by a 5-yuan fee levied on each incoming or outbound coffin, then by a monthly fee based on the number of stored coffins.111 After the war, the Nationalist authorities required all existing associations to conform to its new regulations.112 The FBTA pronounced its dissolution and established a preparatory committee (choubeihui) in charge of registering members and writing a new charter.113 The scope of the association included the funeral parlors, coffin repositories, guild repositories, shipping companies, and cemeteries. In fact, few guild repositories joined the association.114 The association held its founding meeting on 1 March 1946 at the Cangzhou Music Hall (Cangzhou Shuchang).115 With a membership of fifty-five, the association again started to track all the existing companies to bring them into its fold.116 The FBTA became the main channel through which the local authorities and the funeral companies interacted. The municipal government entrusted the FBTA with increasing responsibilities beyond its role as a professional organization. The association became involved in the management of funeral companies on behalf of the municipality. This was particularly true in three important domains. After 1942, the municipal government entrusted the FBTA with the collection of its inspection fee on stored coffins, except in Western Shanghai (Huxi), where it remained under the local office of the Bureau of Finance.117 If the funeral companies failed to pay, the FBTA was held responsible.118 The association also collected the income tax from its members and transferred the collected funds to the municipal government.119 After the war, the government introduced a new business tax. The FBTA was entrusted with the responsibility of the initial assessment of the turnover of all its members.120 Its involvement in tax collection meant not only that the FBTA would play a central role in explaining to its members the procedures in detail but also gave it access to their accounts and business situation.121 The FBTA was responsible for issuing the certificates (huzhao) that allowed the shipping companies to move coffins out of Shanghai. This was an initiative by the association in November 1943 to facilitate the procedure for shipping coffins.122 One can find many such certificates in the papers of the association.123 Yet their number is not so large that they could represent all the required certificates. Only a few companies appeared in the documents and a full explanation for the missing documents could not be found. Since this was part of a regular routine, the FBTA clerks may have failed to register most applications. Another explanation may be simply that the shipping companies did not bother to get a certificate. During the war period, the issue was less one of credibility than one of security.

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­

The Japanese worried about the use of coffins to smuggle goods and exercised tight control. Lastly, it may be that most companies shipped out from the former International Settlement and relied on certificates issued by the Public Health Department, even after the retrocession of the foreign settlements. The Nationalists revoked the right to issue the shipping certificates when they took over the city in August 1945. After a while, however, in part because the police could not keep up with the flow of applications, the FBTA requested to take over the responsibility of issuing the shipping certificates.124 Shipping companies complained about the delays incurred by going through the police, especially the small companies that shipped only a few coffins at a time and depended on the speedy delivery of certificates. Another interesting issue raised by the boatmen was that some certificate numbers included combinations of numerals the shipping companies viewed as unlucky.125 The police initially stalled the transfer, but by January 1947, the association was again in charge of issuing these certificates.126 The municipal government relied on the FBTA for another central operation: collecting data on the number of stored coffins in the city. Many companies were reluctant to invest the time to fill out the forms or to divulge their inventory of coffins and many failed to report to the FBTA.127 After the war, the municipal government became more intrusive. It used the association to collect information about the organization and ownership of the funeral companies.128 It also imposed a closer survey of the stored coffins. After September 1946, every ten days the FBTA had to report the number of dead bodies processed by its members to the Bureau of Public Health.129 In 1948, the police produced new forms to register vital statistics and asked the association to collect the information from the families. The FBTA declined on the ground that it was improper to bother mourners at the very time of death and funeral. It also argued that the workload of the companies left no time to add yet another responsibility.130 The task was probably beyond the administrative capacities of the FBTA. Yet we see here a pattern that laid the foundation for the use of the trade associations, not just to monitor the individual companies, but to transform them more radically and change funeral practices after 1949 (see Chapter 10).

The Reorganization of Coffin Shipping The transportation of coffins was mostly in the hands of the boatmen that plied the river network around Shanghai. Sea transportation was more

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costly and used only for shipping coffins to the more remote provinces like Guangdong and Fujian or to North China. According to a report by the Shanghai Municipal Police, individual boatmen were the main carriers of coffins before and during the war. Shipping companies were also involved, but they served mostly the needs of the native-place associations that sent shipments of several dozen or even hundreds of coffins at regular intervals. River boatmen had previously been involved in the transportation of goods and people between Shanghai and its hinterland. The development of modern means of transportation, however, especially steamship and railroad, had taken away a large share of this market.131 Boatmen found a new business niche in the transportation of coffins where time was a lesser constraint. Moreover, their boats could reach up to the very native village of the deceased (see Map. 3.5). The transportation of coffins became the main activity of many boatmen before and during the war.132 The police estimated that there were more than thirty boats engaged in the transportation of coffins from the International Settlement in 1938. They were organized in three main groups. Ten natives of Suzhou owned twenty boats, one-half berthed near the Chekiang Road Bridge and the other half at Markham Road. Three natives of Jiangbei managed eighteen boats berthed at the Penang Jetty near Markham Road. They ran three different lines—Nantong–Rugao, Zhenjiang–Yangzhou, and Yancheng– Yinghua–Taizhou—and had to use three boats at the same time. At the time of the survey, six boats had left with 120 coffins and another twelve were still berthed with 60 coffins among them. Another group of seven natives of Jiangbei ran boats from Markham Road. The Shanghai Municipal Police suggested arranging the loading of coffins by destination, one boat at a time, each for one destination: (a) Wuxi–Changzhou, (b) Suzhou, (c) Tongzhou, (d) Zhenjiang–Yangchou, and (e) Funing, Xinghua, Taizhou, Yancheng.133 This was the beginning of the Penang Shipping Station, a facility that aimed to address both the concern of the Shanghai Municipal Council about the growing number of stored coffins in its territory and the various limitations the Japanese military imposed that seriously hampered the circulation of boats. The boatmen were at the mercy of arbitrary decisions by the Japanese military, which suspected them of using coffins for smuggling. The Penang Shipping Station was initially a simple shed next to the Penang garbage incinerator that the guilds or the funeral companies could use as temporary storage before shipping. The inspectors of the Public Health Department oversaw the flow of coffins to guarantee that they contained only dead bodies and facilitate the speedy removal of coffins from the city. The use of coffins for smuggling was not a fiction. In June 1941, health inspectors discovered six empty coffins used for private business to smuggle

1

2

3 km

map 1.2. Population density in 1935. Source: Virtual Shanghai

0

French Concession

International Settlement

413 - 21,781

(inhabitant/km2)

> 165,925 - 259,956

> 105,086 - 165,925

> 54,231 - 105,086

> 21,781 - 54,231

Density

Foreign settlement

Waterway

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goods from the Penang Shipping Station. In July, they found one coffin that contained 330 pounds of sulfur, a key component for explosives.134 There were few cases in the archives, which may not reflect the extent of the phenomenon. Yet the rigorousness of the foreign inspectors satisfied the Japanese, who never objected to the operation of the Penang Shipping Station.135 In July 1940, the Shanghai Municipal Council also set up a system of certificates with the approval of the Japanese military to enable the shipping companies to circulate more freely.136 Interestingly, the Chinese boatmen sought the support of the Shanghai Municipal Council, even when they operated from the Chinese side of the Soochow River.137 The Shanghai Municipal Government only attempted to regulate the conditions of coffin transportation, including forcing a quota of free transportation, but it left the companies to fight for themselves when dealing with the Japanese.138 Yet the Penang Station was a victim of its own success. The place could accommodate no more than 400 coffins at any one time, while the monthly number of coffins cleared for shipment amounted to some 1,200. Coffins spilled over the road outside the shed.139 There was a lot of internal discussion and even dispute between the various departments of the council on the relevance of the Penang Station. The Public Health Department claimed success due to the inspection performed in the storage shed to meet Japanese demands. The Shanghai Municipal Police argued that they were unable to get the boat passes in a timely manner from the Japanese. The Public Works Department wanted to renege on its loan of the piece of land used for the storage shed. All three departments were quite dissatisfied with what they portrayed as the lack of cooperation from the Chinese guilds.140 Eventually, the Penang Station remained in place.141 The conditions at the Penang Station, however, failed to improve. In August 1941, the Public Health Department asked the Shanghai Municipal Police to temporarily stop issuing procession permit.142 Six months later, however, the same situation prevailed: “the situation has become worse and the coffins in the repositories and municipal roads are so overcrowded that I have to recommend suspension of Police permits for coffins destined up country.”143 A group of guilds, including the Siming Gongsuo, sought to obtain the right to ship coffins from the Penang Station, which the Bureau of Public Health viewed as an attempt to establish a monopoly over coffin shipping and declined the offer. The bureau suggested opening another station to stimulate competition.144 After the takeover of the International Settlement by the Japanese army in December 1941, the Penang Station came under the direct control of the Japanese military. The chief medical officer, Captain Isobe, inspected the station in May 1942 and expressed his satisfaction, except for the presence

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of coffins on the roadside. There were several meetings thereafter to discuss how the Japanese military could facilitate transport upcountry and avoid the current accumulation of coffins.145 Yet military considerations always took precedence. In June 1942, for instance, the Japanese army requisitioned all the boats and the transportation of coffins inland came to a standstill. Traffic resumed only six months later.146 In December 1942, in view of the persisting difficulties at the Penang Station, a health inspector proposed setting up a trade union to oversee the six agencies in charge of coffin transportation. The scheme materialized in an undated Japanese document titled “Shanghai yungui gonghui sheli yuanshu” signed by six Chinese and the Japanese station head, Ikeda.147 There were complaints about the reorganization, but the main problem remained the storage shed, which the guilds were accused of using as a coffin repository instead of as a transit station.148 There were repeated attempts to regulate the flow of coffins, most often by stopping all permits, until only 1,000 coffins remained in the storage shed and the roadside had been cleared.149 Yet a continuous flow of coffins without permits, including coffins from the French Concession, sneaked into the Penang Station to take advantage of the shipping facilities.150 On 19 April 1943, Ikeda proposed setting up a new association, the Penang Road Coffin Transportation Agency, and to assign each agency to one storage shed. No agreement was reached and the agencies removed their sheds. Eventually, in July 1943, the Public Health Department sent a letter to four complainants that opposed the scheme that they could no longer use the Penang Station. There was no further trail of correspondence on this issue due to the disbanding of the Shanghai Municipal Council after July 1943.151 Yet the system remained in place.152 Although we do not know how the Nationalist municipality handled this issue, the place was again the sole shipping platform after 1949. In 1956, after the collectivization of funeral services, it employed thirty-one boatmen and carriers who operated thirty-six sampans.153 The pressure by the authorities to remove the unburied coffins from the city gave a strong impetus to the coffin shipping business. Moreover, the cost of storage in a repository and the rising inflation that eroded income must have induced people to resort to shipping. In April 1940, the municipal government decided to start pulling Zhabei from its war-torn condition. One of the measures the municipality imposed was the removal of all stored coffins from the guild repositories, with the threat of cremating the unclaimed coffins.154 All these factors played in the sharp surge in the creation of private transportation companies devoted to coffin shipping (yunjiusuo). Already in mid-1939 shipping companies were confident enough about sailing conditions to advertise their services in newspapers. An

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advertisement by the Chang’an Coffin Shipping Company used the argument that the guilds could no longer take coffins. The company proposed its services to “serve society” to ship coffins from the Chinese-administered districts.155 Five merchants from Anhui established a new company that shipped coffins only to destinations in this province.156 In June 1940, the Taishan Coffin Shipping Company ran a large advertisement in the press to offer its services to Ningbo residents. The company claimed to have chartered a large boat that guaranteed the safety of the coffins. It extolled the cost of burial lots in Shanghai and the threat of cremation by the authorities to induce people to ship their coffins.157 In June 1942, the shipping department of the Guohua Funeral Parlor even proposed its service to the Bureau of Public Health, although the bureau did not handle the removal of coffins directly.158 The shipping companies appeared in three successive waves. As discussed above, the first one happened in the later part of the war after the retrocession of the foreign settlements. The conditions looked more stable and there was genuine pressure by the municipal government to start removing the stored coffins. By the summer of 1944, the Bureau of Public Health identified twenty-one shipping companies.159 The second wave took place during the civil war period. Eight more companies were established between 1945 and 1947. Only one, Zhuqingxiang Yunjiusuo, was identified as dating from 1930. The companies catered mostly to the private coffin repositories and funeral parlors and the smaller guilds. A few more companies appeared in 1950–1951, when the new Communist regime implemented a much stricter policy on the removal of all unclaimed coffins. Most of the transportation companies, however, disappeared in 1955 under the double impact of a market crunch and political reform.

Cleaning Up the “City of the Dead” The rise of a necropolis in the central areas of Shanghai—even the most peripheral coffin repositories were located within the railway line to the West—was a genuine concern to the successive local authorities. While most accepted the concept of a coffin repository, they viewed it as a temporary abode pending burial or shipping to the native place. Even if coffins had remained for several years in the past, the outflow of coffins was regular and caused no anxiety to the Chinese local officials. Even the Western authorities, despite their dislike, had come to terms with this practice. During the war, the Shanghai Municipal Council abstained from preventing the development of coffin repositories in its territory. Eventually, however, the accumulation of tens of thousands of coffins became a subject

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of increasingly restrictive policies to deal with this unusual legacy and to return to the prewar situation. Nevertheless, due to persisting political and military instability, it took more than a decade to deal with this issue. What actually saved most of the guilds or commercial repositories from the drastic measures of the municipal administrations and enabled them to postpone the removal of coffins was political instability: there were three successive Chinese municipal administrations, two successive takeovers of the Shanghai Municipal Council (1941 and 1943), and a change of administration in the French Concession after 1943. Then again a new municipal administration took over the whole city in 1945 for a short four-year period. Whether private or run by guilds, the coffin repositories were aware that there was a good chance they could weather a temporary restriction or taxation and still be able to keep their coffins as long as they could draw or expect a profit for the private repositories or as long as they felt the general environment outside Shanghai was insecure for the guild repositories. The same concern for safety held true for the commercial coffin repositories, even if the decision to remove the coffins remained with the surviving family members. In the latter part of the war, the Chinese municipality made an earnest effort to encourage the removal of the stored coffins from their premises, yet with a limited success. There was a continued pressure by the Bureau of Public Health to force the hand of the guilds to remove or bury the unclaimed coffins, especially those where the premises had suffered from the war. In 1940, the Huzhou Guild tried to placate the Bureau of Public Health by arguing about the difficulty to locate the relatives and find transportation back to Huzhou. Eventually the guild gave in and buried all the remaining coffins in its Zhabei repository in the Puyi Cemetery in Dachang.160 The Yizhuang Gongsuo received similar instructions, but its more remote location allowed it to weather the pressure. In 1942, it was still resisting the evacuation if contact with the family proved impossible.161 In July 1941, the Hunan Guild announced in the press that 200 unclaimed coffins would soon be buried in the guild cemetery in Qingpu.162 The actual transfer and burial of the coffins took place in October, followed by a second shipment of 107 coffins in November. The guild established a register for those who would come later to retrieve the remains of their relatives.163 In February 1942, a health inspector reported that the Piaoshui Shuilu Gongsuo had a large number of overdue coffins in its 1,520-strong inventory.164 These examples are representative of the reluctance of the guilds to part with their coffins under the troubled conditions of the wartime period. The traffic of coffins increased in the latter part of the war, but it fell short of making a dent in the stock of coffins. In the twelve-month period

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between August 1943 and July 1944, only 1,635 coffins departed from the designated Anyuan Wharf, while another 3,756 coffins left by car or truck from the First District (former International Settlement) for Zhabei, Nanshi, or outside Shanghai.165 In 1944, the authorities tried to force the hand of the FBTA and its members to establish a crematorium at its own cost to process the unclaimed coffins. The Bureau of Economics rehearsed the official line of the municipal government about the need to save land and to improve public health. The FBTA was requested to invest 2.5 million yuan in the joint crematorium. The association did not oppose the proposal directly, but it suggested taking over the existing crematorium at the Jing’an Cemetery on an experimental basis. The FBTA was not ready to mobilize its members to invest in an operation that might remain idle, except for cremations by bureaucratic order.166 The FBTA could hardly envisage facilitating the plan of the municipality. The municipal government had hoped to transfer onto the funeral companies the cost of a facility it could not fund, but it was powerless to impose any disbursement by private companies. After the Japanese defeat, Shanghai came under a single unified municipal government that inherited the stock of coffins stored during the war. The new administration was determined to get rid of both this custom and the war legacy. On the one hand, it implemented more systematically a policy of prohibition of coffin repositories or burial grounds in populated areas. Existing facilities received an eviction notice from the Bureau of Public Health with instructions to remove their coffins or even their tombs. The large number of accumulated coffins, however, presented a challenge to all concerned parties. One way to solve the issue of unburied coffins was to have them buried in municipal or charity cemeteries. Yet due to limitations of space—charities already had to remove all the coffins hastily buried in Hongqiao while municipal cemeteries were nearly full—there was no obvious solution. Various guilds started purchasing land outside Shanghai to establish their own cemeteries. The removal of the stored coffins from the war period was also hampered by the ebb and flow of everyday death. As before, the guilds as well as the private repositories continued to receive the coffins of the newly deceased. This represented a significant number that strained the available resources. For the private repositories, the situation was much different since they did not assume the cost of shipping or burying the unclaimed coffins, but they had an interest in storing new coffins. In 1946, there were 9,026 outbound coffins for 5,357 new coffins in a group of thirty-one private repositories, but the 3,669 difference hardly made a dent in the historical stock.167 To force the guilds and commercial repositories to take action, the Bureau of Public Health published a municipal notification that set the

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deadline for the removal of stored coffins at the end of the year but within ten days for the funeral parlors. The commercial repositories had to evacuate their coffins by all means, but no coffin above one year should remain on their premises. The bureau prohibited the funeral parlors and coffin repositories to accept new coffins.168 The municipal edicts, however, made little impression. The demands were unrealistic: the last count pushed the total number of stored coffins to 150,000.169 At the end of the year, the Bureau of Public Health issued a press release that extended the deadline to the end of March 1947.170 To encourage the removal of the stored coffins, the bureau explicitly threatened the funeral parlors that it would enforce the cremation of the coffins that remained after the deadline.171 The commercial funeral parlors and repositories were caught by surprise by the decision. The FBTA called an emergency meeting of its members to discuss how to respond to the municipal edict.172 The initial reaction of the FBTA was one of forceful opposition to the arbitrary cremation of the unclaimed coffins. It claimed that arbitrary cremation would cause a lot of disputes. Although it admitted cremation was a modern way, it argued the Chinese had a tradition of burial dating back thousands of years and that people’s minds could not change so rapidly.173 To support its case, the FBTA wrote to the Municipal Senate (Shicanyihui). The association was prepared to accept cremation in only three cases: bodies found in the street, bodies without an identified owner, and people willing to be cremated.174 To increase the pressure on the authorities, the FBTA convened a press conference on 22 December 1946 at the Xindu Music Hall to defend its position.175 Mostly, however, this was about keeping their stock of coffins as long as possible and preempting an arbitrary measure by the municipal government. The April deadline went by and most of the stored coffins remained in place. As the Shenbao noted, the issue was the lack of burial lots in cemeteries or cremation facilities (see Chapter 4).176 The Bureau of Public Health extended the deadline by six months.177 Yet both the Bureau of Public Health and the Bureau of Social Affairs (BAS) questioned the motives of the funeral companies. The BAS expressed a strong criticism of a funeral industry that had no clear guidelines on prices and used the stored coffins as a certificate of debt against impoverished families.178 In its reply, the FBTA admitted that the families in arrears represented about 60 percent of the total number of stored coffins. On the issue of rates, it defended the necessity of a price range that reflected the variety of services and the quality of premises (see Chapter 8). Any change of price was communicated in writing to the families, who had a delay of two weeks to withdraw their coffin if they did not agree with the new rate.179 In September, the Bureau of Public Health and the FBTA came to an agreement to reduce the

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rates—20–50 percent discount—for various categories of the population: military, police and teachers, poor residents, and widows or orphans.180 The Bureau of Public Health postponed the deadline to October 1947, to no avail, and again published a notice in the press in November that contained a clear threat to cremate the coffins stored above one year. The Bureau of Public Health also restricted the establishment of coffin repositories to three areas—Dachang, Pudong, and Pusong. Existing companies were expected to move from the city center to these areas.181 The FBTA again took pretext of the alleged forced cremation of coffins by inspectors from the Bureau of Public Health in Yangjing to argue its case with the Municipal Senate.182 The association raised an interesting argument about the legality of arbitrary cremation without the consent of families and asked the municipal council to ban any cremation until a legal case was made. The FBTA proposed to enforce cremation only for the abandoned coffins and the decaying coffins in the city and in the suburbs.183 The Bureau of Public Health countered the accusations made by the FBTA that its inspectors had dealt only with abandoned coffins, with the support of the mayor.184 In December 1947, the Bureau of Public Health again ordered the removal of all coffins or the relocation of the funeral companies outside of the city.185 The commercial companies were not the sole targets of the authorities. The guilds and the trade associations had accumulated a large inventory of coffins. The pressure by the authorities led the guilds to seek solutions in various directions. The privileged solution was to evacuate the stored coffins to the native place, but the cost could represent a substantial drain on organizations that came out of the war with reduced resources and had to struggle to maintain their activities in the context of high inflation in the postwar period. Most had to come to terms with the obvious: a high number of coffins would stay with them because no one would come to retrieve them, not because of a lack of care by the families but simply because they did not have the resources to retrieve the coffin and organize its burial. In many cases, the most direct relatives had died or had left Shanghai. Yet the native-place associations were not prepared to relinquish their responsibilities, as they demonstrated in responding to the various measures and threats by the municipal authorities. The Siming Gongsuo was a particular case, but it also sums up in a magnified way the dilemma of coffin repositories. During the early part of the war, when it lost access to its premises in the Chinese municipality, the guild used its building in the French Concession to store coffins to the dismay of the French authorities. Yet the French made an exception with the Ningbo Guild, perhaps a manifestation of a long-buried syndrome. The Siming Gongsuo officially used its premises to receive the recently

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of low lying areas and pools. Ponds and creeks, bordered by tall grass have disappeared permanently from the concession [. . .] the work of draining and filling continues gradually year by year.”69 As this report indicates, it was a war fought over decades. In the neighboring settlement, the prevailing situation remained below this achievement due to a much larger expanse of underused territory in the Western and Eastern districts. Last, a decisive factor in the protection of population from infectious diseases was of course the role of public institutions. Public health was a major concern from the start, in view of both the natural and social conditions.70 Yet public health policies essentially tackled the well-being and protection of the foreign population. With the appointment of a health officer, a prelude to the establishment of modern public health bureaus—in 1871 in the International Settlement and 1910 in the French Concession— the foreign authorities started to keep track of infectious diseases in their territories and to implement gradual measures aimed at reducing health hazards.71 The Chinese incrementally came under the system of registration, especially for infectious diseases. Reporting became compulsory for hospitals and private physicians. Registration, however, could only make a record of an attack of epidemic. It could not address the causes or the measures to be taken for treatment. Public spending in health was not considered a priority until the newly established Nationalist authorities challenged the foreign settlements and compelled them to improve their offer. In the French Concession, the French authorities made little case of the Chinese population during the greater part of their administration, although from the 1930s they eventually made an attempt to catch up through various social policy measures, with the explicit aim to legitimize their continued presence. The inadequacy of the measures by the authorities of the concession was equally clear and visible in the gap between discourse and actual means. The discrepancy between the objective reality—the need to introduce measures of hygiene and public health or going against the habits of the Chinese population—and the authoritarian character of the regulations imposed by a foreign power without legitimacy undermined the capacity of intervention in this area by the French Municipal Council. Finally, in the fields of sanitary infrastructure and social assistance, rather little was achieved to service the Chinese residents, and even these initiatives were carried out in association with the institutions established by Catholic religious orders. The French authorities, however, did work out encompassing and fairly successful solutions in the fight against epidemics, especially after 1937.72 In the International Settlement, the Shanghai Municipal Council quite systematically maintained a heavy lid on public expenses for public health. The authorities chose to rely on the individual contributions made by

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original landowner pressed them to vacate and to restore the premises. In several cases, the funeral parlors resisted, either by offering to renew the contract or simply by staying beyond the end of the contract. There were several cases of legal action by landowners against funeral companies that refused to return the rented premises after the contract had expired. The China Funeral Home (Zhongguo Binyiguan) went to court for two years in successive appeals in an attempt to retain the premises which it had been renting for fourteen years.195 The White Palace Funeral Parlor (Baigong Binyiguan) and the Anle Funeral Parlor (Anle Binyiguan) faced the same dilemma at the end of 1945 and 1946, respectively, although the White Palace Parlor was still occupying its rented premises in October 1947.196 In both cases, the funeral parlors argued they could not leave because of their large inventory of coffins, while the landowners sought the backup of the municipal regulations prohibiting coffin repositories in the urban districts. Another major reason for the lack of action by the families was plainly economic. The stored coffins represented a “capital” on which the funeral companies received an interest in the form of “rent.” This was not the term used, of course, but the “coffin storage fee” (jijiufei) amounted to a form of rental. As long as a coffin remained on its premises, a funeral company received a steady income from the families who owned the coffin. Moreover, the funeral companies also charged for other services, such as renting out a hall for ceremonies when the coffin entered or left the premises or for a ritual celebration in the course of its stay. Each time the coffin was moved around, the funeral companies also charged a labor fee (kangfei). With the war, many families defaulted on their payment for months, sometimes for years. The excruciating inflation of the postwar period further eroded the revenue of most urbanites. Even if they had little hope to recover their fees, the funeral companies held onto their stock of coffins because it gave them a bargaining leverage on the families. They were correct in their analysis as most people would go to great lengths to ensure the proper burial of their relatives. The Bureau of Public Health probably underestimated this issue before 1949. Basically, since cremation was not feasible, the sole rational option was the creation of burial grounds. Yet the postwar Bureau of Public Health was caught in its own contradictions. Its own policy denied access to the municipal cemeteries to the coffins that had been stored for more than six months. This excluded the whole inventory of wartime-stored coffins. Exceptions were made only for people engaged in fighting against the Japanese, either because they had died in fighting or because their families had left Shanghai to fight in the rear. The Bureau of Public Health classified individuals according to a hierarchy of active and passive involvement in the war: those who had lost their life during fighting, those whose direct

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relatives fought in the rear between August 1937 and 8 December 1941, and those who were in the rear between 8 December 1941 and 16 August 1945. Basically, those who had remained in Shanghai after August 1937 were excluded from the scheme if they could not prove they fought in the rear. Those who stayed after the Japanese takeover of the International Settlement in December 1941 could not redeem themselves.197 At the same time, the Bureau of Public Health was not inclined toward the development of new private cemeteries. It restricted the opening of cemeteries to the Repository Zone (Bingshequ), where all the coffin repositories and cemeteries should be concentrated. Even if exceptions were made, the Bureau of Public Health rejected most of the applications that did not fit in this scheme. In December 1946, the Bureau of Public Health proposed a scheme to establish a municipal cemetery to help bury the wartime-stored coffins.198 As there were no follow-up documents on this proposal, we can assume that financial considerations worked against this proposal. It should also be noted that at the same time the municipality also faced the persisting practice of coffins left aboveground around the city. The Office of Funeral Management (Binzang Guanlisuo) of the Bureau of Public Health employed a large staff of 108 agents to administer the various aspects of death in the city.199 From 1947, the Bureau of Public Health conducted a campaign twice a year to collect and cremate unburied coffins. The first campaign brought in more than 5,000 coffins, mostly in the areas known to be used as burial grounds: Pudong, all along the railway from the North Station to Longhua, in the Chengshu District, and other places in the municipality.200 In February 1949, the Bureau of Public Health requested funding to collect and cremate an estimated 12,265 coffins. Each campaign required 600 workdays (forty workers for two weeks).201 There seemed to be no end to the flow of coffins that materialized everywhere. The coffin repositories also faced another challenge that sheds light both on the environment in which they had to operate and on the uncertainties of keeping a stored coffin for the families. The repositories represented a form of space protected by its very function. They accommodated dead bodies that inspired a mix of respect and fear among the population. Contact with a dead body was to be avoided at all costs. The coffins themselves were always carefully concealed during a funeral procession. Yet, in times of social disorder, these values failed to operate and coffin repositories became easy targets for people in need of a roof. This phenomenon occurred during the civil war and it involved two different populations. Coffin repositories attracted first the refugees that swarmed into the city when serious fighting erupted between the Nationalist and Communist armies.202 The FBTA recorded the first protest by its members about the

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occupation of coffin repositories by refugees in December 1947. It called upon the police and the Bureau of Public Health to expel the occupants from the Datong and Hudong repositories.203 In April 1948, the Yizhuang Gongsuo published a notice in the Xinwenbao advising families to retrieve their coffins after the invasion of its premises by refugees.204 The police made a visit of inspection but found nothing wrong with the refugees who were an orderly group.205 The guild renewed its request, accusing the refugees of moving the coffins outside where they were exposed to the vagaries of the weather. Yet the guild was powerless and eventually came to an understanding with the refugees by renting out a part of its land where they erected their own huts.206 In June 1948, another group of refugees removed the coffins of the Jiu’an Coffin Repository and took over the premises. The staff covered the coffins with bamboo matting, but the wind kept blowing them away.207 The municipal government was soon overwhelmed by the number of letters of complaints it received from the funeral companies. In July 1948, the mayor instructed the Bureau of Police and Social Affairs to investigate and find ways to provide relief to the refugees.208 The refugees, however, were not the sole curse the funeral companies endured during the civil war period. The military also made use of their premises to billet the regiments that passed through Shanghai. The managers and employees were hardly in a position to put up a defense against these invaders. In March 1948, refugees occupied the premises of the International Funeral Directors on Liyuan Road. The parlor had no sooner obtained their departure that the Northeast Youth Instruction Corps (Dongbei Qingnian Xundo Dadui) took over the main hall, making all business impossible. Then, again, on 3 April, Nationalist troops also occupied the premises.209 In March 1948, the FBTA protested against the occupation of two funeral parlors, Guotai and Leyuan, by traveling troops.210 Such letters had little effect as most of the time the occupation resulted from the initiative of individual groups that sought places to set up temporary quarters.211 By and large, the higher military authorities hardly had any control over their troops and no capacity to organize their lodging. Rather than sleep outdoor, the troops helped themselves. In May 1949, a party of four soldiers entered the premises of the Wan’an Coffin Repository and started to post signs (office, kitchen, etc.) on the various buildings and rooms. The following day, a large group of soldiers from the 75th Army arrived, ready to settle down. In-between, the staff of the funeral company had removed the signs and tried to block the entry of the soldiers. After some haggling and faced with the view of corpses, the soldiers eventually took up residence in only one part of the premises.212 On the same day, 100 men from the Fifth Medical Brigade occupied the Dazhong Funeral Parlor.213

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The municipal territory was clearly beleaguered with a massive inventory of unwanted, unclaimed, or abandoned coffins in a very fluid and unstable social and political context. In April 1948, the Bureau of Public Health announced that it would collect and cremate the unclaimed stored coffins starting on 1 May 1948. The Bureau of Public Health planned to cremate a first batch of 2,185 coffins.214 The FBTA took the threat seriously and again called an emergency meeting of its members. The funeral companies decided to renew their effort to make contact with the families. Yet, as they were aware this would not suffice, they finally opted to raise money to establish a charity cemetery.215 The funeral companies were not prepared to accept the cremation of the coffins entrusted to them.216 Yet the cemetery did not materialize, as we shall see below. The Bureau of Public Health did implement its threat, albeit partially. There is evidence that its inspectors surveyed the stored coffins carefully and imposed the mandatory cremation of the damaged coffins. In January 1948, the Jianghuai Guild ran an announcement that the Bureau of Public Health would cremate all the coffins that had been stored for more than two years.217 In May, the Chonghai Guild announced the planned cremation of eleven unclaimed coffins by the Bureau of Public Health.218 Yet the municipal government under the Nationalist regime fell short of its objectives. Once the war loomed in Central China, the guilds as well as the families returned to the pattern of risk aversion and refrained from shipping their coffins. The change of administration did not disrupt the concern of the Bureau of Public Health for the issue of stored coffins. As early as 12 July 1949, the new Bureau of Public Health notified the FBTA that its members had three months to evacuate the stored coffins and were strictly prohibited from accepting new ones.219 To facilitate the removal of coffins, the bureau offered considerably reduced rates for graves in the municipal cemeteries: 70 percent during the first month after its order, 50 percent during the second month, and 20 percent during the third month.220 The association published announcements in the Jiefang Ribao and the Xinwen Ribao calling upon the families to withdraw their coffins.221 On 27 September 1949, the bureau extended the delay to remove the coffins to the end of the year. Obviously, the previous deadline—the end of October—had not made an impact.222 There were still an estimated 100,000 stored coffins in Shanghai. The Bureau of Public Health pointed out that there was no other city in the world with such a situation. It estimated that about half of the coffins would be taken back by the families, while the other half would have to be buried in the city. Yet with a population at 6 million and a death rate at 20 per thousand, the bureau calculated that if 120,000 persons died annually and one-half of the adults were sent up-country, it would still leave another 30,000 bodies to be buried in the city. Given the space available

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in the private and public cemeteries, only 15 percent of the stored coffins could be disposed of. This left no other option than to extend public cemeteries.223 The lack of genuine progress led the health officials to convene a joint meeting of the FBTA and its members on 17 October 1949 to discuss a new regulation (banfa) on the removal of coffins.224 Under official pressure, the FBTA accepted that poor people could retrieve their coffins free of charge with a certificate from a baojia headman. Between the summer of 1949 and July 1950, 38,000 coffins left the city. Nevertheless there remained 71,159 dead bodies in the various repositories. An incomplete survey recorded 17,089 coffins that had been stored for more ten years, 20,693 for more than five years, 4,390 of unclear period, and many in decay.225 The figures above did not include the coffins stored in the suburbs in temples, along canals, or even in lilong. There were an estimated 300,000 scattered coffins in the rural areas, 100,000 of which close to inhabited areas. For the 1950 Qingming festival, the local authorities carried out a campaign of burial and cremation of all unclaimed coffins (10,033). The following year, they launched a new drive to clean or rebury some 121,078 tombs.226 In early 1950, the Bureau of Public Health eventually decided to deal for good with the problem of stored coffins. In February, it published a “supplementary regulation” (buchong banfa) about the evacuation of stored coffins, followed by the “Rule on the Cleaning Up of Stored Coffins in the Urban Districts” (Shanghai shi qingchu shiqu jigui buchong banfa) on 22 May 1950.227 The new texts proposed to phase out the coffins in three stages (May–December 1950, January–March 1951, April–June 1951), with a minimum reduction of 10 percent each month. The coffin repositories that planned to continue their service had to relocate in the “cemetery areas” (gongmuqu) defined by the municipality (Pudong, Dachang, Pusong) and to evacuate all their coffins before April 1951. The regulation applied to the guilds as well, including the obligation to relocate from the urban area. The Municipal People’s Government was clearly intent on not just removing the stored coffins but also facilitating the removal of the coffins by the families by making this business much less profitable for the commercial repositories. The threat of such drastic measures as forced cremation or burial at the expense of the repositories must have motivated the private establishments. Altogether, 58,687 coffins left the city in 1951.228 Yet it did not lead to a complete cleanup in the guild repositories. By the end of March 1951, the Bean and Rice Trade Corporation (Doumiye Gongsuo) still had 407 coffins on its premises. The once powerful Siming Gongsuo was caught in the same quandary, but it faced a much heavier burden with 16,000 coffins

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in its repositories. The housing tax and the land tax squeezed its financial resources, while it could not make use of the land purchased to establish cemeteries in Xinjing (pending approval) and Yinxiang (permission denied) near Ningbo.229 Two major factors explained the delay. The first one was purely financial. The guilds were asphyxiated deliberately by the authorities through heavy taxation, even if this was counterproductive. The second factor was the reluctance of the guilds to part with their coffins without guaranteeing a proper place for burial. They would cling almost desperately to the coffins to avoid destruction by cremation. Indeed, the problem was not yet solved at the end of the three stages of coffin removal. In November 1951, the Bureau of Public Health organized a meeting of all the organizations involved in funeral services. The representative of the bureau made clear he was not prepared to hear complaints about difficulties. The final removal had to be completed by 15 December. If there were real problems in meeting this objective, the concerned organizations should contact the bureau to organize the outright cremation of all the remaining coffins. The representative of the guilds indicated that, of forty-one organizations, fifteen had never kept coffins, seven had removed all their coffins, and nineteen still had 21,000 coffins (a sharp drop from the 40,000 still held at the end of 1950). Two guilds, Ningbo and ZheShao, had the largest inventory representing three-quarters of the total. All the other guilds had clear plans for the final processing of their stored coffins (see Table 3.3).230 In 1952, only 5,355 coffins were removed from the city. Through a combination of economic pressure that left them bankrupt and a determined approach to bring all funeral services under a unified and noncommercial organization, the Municipal People’s Government managed to obliterate the organizations that provided the main backbone of funeral services, especially to the sojourner communities. All through the war years, the guilds had clung to their coffins to give the families a chance to retrieve them. After 1949, they may have aspired to retain their previous role but soon found that the new regime would not accommodate their role in the funeral business. It was not prepared to accommodate them at all. From the beginning, the policies of the People’s Government were geared toward undermining the influence of the guilds by cutting off their resources through taxation. The guilds also lost their status as charity organizations. Although the authorities hoped to clear the city of its coffins in a matter of months, it took two and a half years to come to a final solution. Without resources, the guilds finally relinquished all responsibility and accepted what they had surely wanted to avoid at all cost, the cremation of the coffins entrusted to them.

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Chapter 3 table 3.3. Status of the stored coffins in guild repositories in 1951

Name

Coffins

Siming Gongsuo Nanchang

8,000

Zhe-Shao Gongsuo Fensuo Yongxitang Yangzhou Gongsuo Siming Gongsuo Beichang Jianghuai Gongsuo Jiangning Liu Xian Gongsuo Chaohui Shanzhuang Siming Gongsuo Dongchang Xijin Gongsuo Anhui Huiguan Taizhou Gongsuo Yanping Shanzhuang Zhejin Gongsuo Jishantang

4,498

Awaiting approval by the Bureau of Public Health to bury Announcements in the press to raise money for burial Lack of resources; expect help to complete removal All buried Requested the Bureau of Public Health to cremate Waiting for family, but will be cremated after 15 December if not retrieved To be buried All buried  

2,059 1,300 1,050 624

Processing

402 340

To be retrieved by family, if not buried by gongsuo All will be cremated To be sent to a Buddhist cemetery for burial Issue still under discussion Waiting for family, but will be cremated after 15 December if not retrieved One part buried, one part to request help from the Bureau of Public Health Waiting for family, but will be cremated after 15 December if not retrieved To be buried in the next few days To be buried in land previously purchased  

319 300 257 210 201 162

Doumiye Gongsuo

136

Huining Huiguan Dinghai Shanchang Gongsuo Zhabei Yanxu Shanzhuang

111 78

 

Pingjiang Gongsuo

36

No money, requested the Bureau of Public Health to cremate Waiting for family, but will be cremated after 15 December if not retrieved To be buried  

Jinting Huiguan

76

Shandong Huiguan Total

24 20,183

Source: Report, WSJ, n.d. [1952], B242-1-381-1, SMA.

Conclusion From the late Qing to the prewar Republican period, the actors involved in the management of death changed very little. Funeral companies simply did not exist, except for the small funeral workshops that tended to the needs of the well-off groups of the population to organize funeral processions and ceremonies. Money was involved, of course, but the dead bodies remained mostly within the realm of the family or, for those with less money, under the care of the benevolent associations. The main actors were the native-place associations that catered to the various communities of sojourners. These factors explain why the market for funeral services was limited, even if a few commercial companies appeared from the mid-1920s onward. They hardly made a dent in the overall “economy of death” in the city. The war with Japan marked a crucial moment because

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the on-going conflict revealed the high degree of dependency of the existing system of disposing of the dead on the uninterrupted movement of coffins from Shanghai to the native place of sojourners. Moreover, what started as an emergency situation in 1937 actually lasted throughout the war period and even through the Chinese Civil War. The Chinese families as well as their communal organizations were very reluctant to risk shipping a coffin under unstable and unpredictable conditions. As a result, commercial funeral companies quickly seized the opportunity to establish a new infrastructure to process dead bodies (funeral parlors) and to store coffins (repositories). Although there was a large overlap between the two types of companies, in full violation of all the successive regulations, funeral parlors did provide a service that neither the repositories nor the native-place associations provided, namely the preparation of the body from the time of death to burial or storing. The war permitted the first serious social breakthrough of the commercial funeral companies. This had long-term consequences because a growing number of people eventually found it natural to turn to these companies to help with the arrangements a death called for. The native-place associations remained powerful actors, but they faded in the background, with their role increasingly restricted by successive regulations, until the Communist regime excluded them entirely from any involvement in the management of death. The war created an exceptional situation. The accumulation of stored coffins in the city led to the emergence of a vast necropolis aboveground in Shanghai. Cities have dealt in many ways with the disposal of the dead. For centuries, church graveyards received the remains of millions of urban residents in European cities, something that did not happen in China. Individual tombs and collective graveyards were located outside the city walls, in the countryside. Paradoxically, war created an aberrant pattern whereby dead bodies remained in the urban space, by and large in densely populated neighborhoods, although they were kept in coffins that according to all reports presented no risk to public health. The sheer number of coffins stored in the city made it a challenge to organize their evacuation, especially with organizations, guilds, and companies alike that opposed any form of radical disposal such as cremation. After the war, the growing flow of migrants, mostly refugees, also increased the number of dead bodies to process hic et nunc. The municipal authorities used a large spectrum of measures to force the coffin repositories to remove their inventory from the city. They taxed, regulated, and banned. They threatened with arbitrary cremation. Nothing worked. The commercial repositories were eager to defend their “capital,” even if it was an illusion. Eventually, under a unified and far more intrusive regime, Shanghai was cleaned of its necropolis for good.

A Final Resting Place: From Burial Grounds to Modern Cemeteries  

4

Across cultures, a wide range of practices emerged in time and space to deal with the final resting place of the dead. In China, earth burial became the dominant mode from a very early period and remained the rule until modern governments sought to introduce cremation as an alternative, starting first with the dispossessed, then as a compulsory practice in cities under the Communist regime. Yet the Han majority of the population tended to disregard the norm imposed by the government and, when given a chance, would readily come back to earth burial. The revival of cemeteries around Chinese cities, even if strictly controlled and beyond the financial means of most people, attests to the persisting attachment of Chinese society to burial. In the course of the last century, before cremation became the rule in cities, the Chinese developed a whole range of burial practices that were indeed at odds with social norms and eventually collided with the concern of the successive authorities for propriety and public health. The concentration of population in a closed space such as Shanghai— the city was fully encircled with a wall until 1912—made it impossible to provide for burial grounds within the city, even if a few privileged families erected family tombs in the walled area.1 China has no history of burial grounds associated with places of religious worship. In Europe, churches became places for burial, either underground under the church itself—the catacombs—or outside in the cemeteries that surrounded or bordered the church.2 The practice of burying the dead among the living was not challenged until the growth of population made it increasingly difficult to accommodate all the dead and created injurious conditions that worried governments. France was among the first countries to regulate cemeteries by prohibiting in-church burials in 1776 and imposing the opening of cemeteries at a distance from inhabited areas.3 In Great Britain, although

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cemeteries had overfilled since the eighteenth century, procrastination prevailed until 1848 with the Public Health Act. Previous legislation, however, had facilitated the creation of private cemeteries outside the cities.4 A similar process did not take place in China, as from the beginning the dead were not buried within the city walls as in England or Italy, especially in large towns.5 The Chinese authorities did not regulate the issue of burial grounds until the 1920s, which does not mean there was no control or other forms of regulation.

Burial Customs in the Shanghai Area The dominant mode for burial in China was the individual grave (simu) in a suitably located place selected according to geomantic criteria (feng shui). There was no prescription or regulation to lay the dead to rest in specific burial grounds.6 The individual grave was of course the norm for those who owned or rented land. This was manageable in the countryside where land was available, even for the less privileged groups of the rural population. If they did not own land, people could also rent a piece of land to erect a grave.7 Where land was much in demand for agriculture, however, people used land that offered lesser prospect for cultivation to bury their dead. Villages thus had burial grounds in their vicinity. Because proper burial was a key concern, the more prosperous families often owned a plot of land reserved for burial. The members pooled their resources to pay for funerals and to maintain the graves. Large lineages usually owned communal land that served to fund their temple as well as the place devoted to graves.8 In the 1920s, individual graves became the target of increasing criticism because the modernizing elite came to perceive them as a detrimental encroachment on productive land.9 Under the Nationalist regime after 1927 and more so under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), this even became an official motto to promote “modern” ways of disposing of the dead, such as in cemeteries and cremation. Cemeteries as such did not exist, even if throughout the late imperial period, starting with the Song dynasty, the state promoted earth burial as part of its drive against cremation (see Chapter 9) and encouraged the local elites and officials to establish free graveyards for the common people. The impact of this drive, however, was limited and well-off families would establish an individual grave rather than bury their dead with people of inferior status in a public graveyard.10 These free graveyards were the predecessors of the charity graveyards of the modern period that bore the same stigma.

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Even if the local authorities intervened in the burial practices of the population, their action fell short of a proactive involvement to address the need of the people or to introduce reforms before the 1920s. In large cities, the challenge to find a place for burial was of course higher since cities harbored large populations. Customs required that one should be buried in one’s native place, whatever the distance from the city.11 Yet this was the privilege of the more affluent groups or a journey made possible by the native-place associations to a wider, though limited, group of urbanites. These services were beyond the means of the majority of the urban population in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To cope with the inevitable deaths among the population, benevolent organizations established charity cemeteries (yizhong) in the periphery of the walled city. These were the first “public cemeteries” in Shanghai. They were clearly associated with the burial of the poorer classes, mostly a ground where burial mounds sat next to one another, in plain sight, without any form of beautification and maintenance. They represented the antithesis of a proper and dignified burial. The management of death remained in private hands—guilds, benevolent associations—until the advent of the Nationalist government in 1927. The modernizing elites gave a new impetus to radical reforms in many directions, including private life and individual beliefs. The Nationalistimplemented policies attacked directly what were considered irrelevant and backward superstitions while at the same time attempted to introduce new concepts, new practices, and new institutions to create a new civic culture.12 Yet it was easier to attack and smash down a temple than to change the way people thought and the values to which they adhered. In the field of funerals and burials, the Nationalist government decided on a course to rationalize and sanitize death in cities. In the name of protecting public health and saving land, it promoted the establishment of cemeteries and the use of cremation. Although the opening of public cemeteries may appear as quite plain, it was a major transformation in burial practices in Chinese cities. To become acceptable, cemeteries had to overcome the stain attached to charity cemeteries, for example, mass graves in Europe.

Shanghai’s Death Belt The burial practices in Shanghai involved primarily the countryside around the city wall and beyond. There were three kinds of burial grounds: individual tombs, family cemeteries, and charity cemeteries. It is necessary to consider not just the city itself but the whole area around Shanghai to

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understand the dynamics of these various forms of burial. After the midnineteenth century, when the city expanded in all directions, to the north and west with the foreign settlements and to the south with the urban expansion of the original walled city, the urban sprawl slowly engulfed areas heretofore used for agriculture but also to bury the dead. Numerous villages peppered the rural landscape, many of them with local and family burial grounds but also with lots of scattered individual tombs. Close to the city wall, various organizations, among them the major guilds, also maintained cemeteries and coffin repositories. The various forms of burial grounds literally produced a death belt around the city with well-defined contours and a fuzzier halo as one moved away into the countryside. Although earth burial was the norm, religious and social considerations strongly influenced actual burial practices, in particular beliefs in feng shui, which entailed choosing a propitious site and time for burial. These beliefs produced a very particular funeral landscape around Shanghai. Whereas Westerners buried their dead shortly after death, in the countryside in the Jiangnan area where such beliefs predominated in popular customs, actual burial depended on the decisions of the feng shui specialists and Daoist priests. In-between, coffins were kept aboveground, either in temples that provided a storage place but far more commonly by placing the coffin just anywhere in a field or in a site that looked like a cemetery, where coffins had been buried previously, yet without any inscription. The practice was known as tingguan bu zang, or “aboveground coffins.” Local topography also explained why the coffins were not buried. In the Shanghai region, the soil was filled with water. As soon as one dug the earth, water was bound to surface. It was inconceivable to bury one’s dead in such inauspicious conditions.13 Although the practice was not limited to the Jiangnan area—similar burial grounds could be found in North China—coffins were placed on the ground and covered with earth that formed a mound above the coffins. When British troops came to Shanghai for the first time, one part of the contingent walked through the countryside from Wusong to Shanghai. Granville Loch, one of the officers, reported that “graves were in every field—mounds of earth, some hollowed into vaults, others with the coffin resting on the top, and covered with matting.”14 A Western resident reported in 1851: “The appearance of Shanghae and its vicinity to a stranger arriving here [. . .] is very gloomy, arising from the numerous cemeteries and burial places of the Chinese, truly said to be scattered over the face of the earth.”15 Most often coffins were left aboveground, with only straw or bamboo matting as a protection against the elements (see Figure 4.1). The wind often removed these covers, leaving the coffin exposed to inevitable damage. Were such places actual cemeteries where coffins could await the proper

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figure 4.1. Coffin left aboveground in a field. Source: S.J. Joseph de Reviers de Mauny, Office Pontifical Missionnaire, Lyon. Reprinted with permission

date for “burial”? Or is this a bias in our visual record? Did this reflect belief in feng shui rules or more prosaically a cheap but acceptable way of disposing of the dead bodies? Quite clearly, coffins were both of highquality grade and cheap, crude wooden planks. This widespread practice throughout the Jiangnan area resulted in coffins left for years, sometimes decades, without being buried. They were abandoned or forgotten by relatives who may have moved or died themselves.16 Eventually the coffins decayed, exposing their content, with the added risk of polluting the water nearby. From the time newspapers appeared in Shanghai, notably the Shenbao, coffins aboveground became a recurrent topic of discussion as well as the object of measures by the local authorities. The Shenbao itself devoted no less than ten editorials to the subject.17 In 1877, it suggested establishing a large cemetery to leave no excuse to those who left coffins unburied.18 The Chinese administration was not indifferent to a practice its officials loathed, more on moral grounds than due to a concern for public health, even if the latter became increasingly central in their condemnation of the phenomenon. Repeatedly, they issued bans, to no avail, and endeavored to rid the countryside of the aboveground coffins. One can trace through the press the numerous edicts and proclamations by the provincial,

30

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due in part to the cleansing of the fields and arroyos that crossed the city and the various measures adopted in the foreign settlements to sanitize their territory.86 Malaria was probably one of the main sources of such fevers.87 Diarrhea and dysentery were much more common forms of disease in Shanghai, yet again with a much lesser lethal impact on the population.88 Among the 2,107 patients treated at the Missions Hospital between 1868 and 1872, fever and dysentery represented 266 cases. Typhoid fever (69) and typhus (14) were also present. Yet only dysentery and typhoid fever took a significant number of lives. At the out-patient dispensary established by the same hospital, fevers represented nearly 4,700 cases, while diarrhea and dysentery together affected 3,800 patients.89 Hospital records all point to a prevalence of these infamous fevers among patients.90 Among the endemic diseases that affected the population, typhoid fever had a significant impact, especially among the Chinese population. In the early 1920s, a combination of factors—better control of drinking water, vaccination, flea-eradicating campaigns—contributed to a decrease of the incidence of the disease among the European population, but the same reverse combination meant the continued prevalence of typhoid fever among the Chinese population.91 In 1941, for instance, close to 1,000 Chinese died of this affection for 12 foreigners.92 The disease remained endemic due to the continued practice of spreading human manure in the fields as well as due to interhuman infection.93 In the French Concession, vaccination was introduced only during the war. In 1938 and 1939, 18,916 and 13,831 people were inoculated, but this figure dropped to an average of 5,500 in the following two years.94 In the postwar period, the municipality expanded its vaccination programs. The war years brought increased pressure on the authorities due to the larger population, which remained far above its precedent level until 1942. In view of the potential threat from epidemics, in April 1938 the authorities decided to coordinate their efforts in battling infectious diseases. The French documents repeatedly called for “getting in touch” with the Public Health Department of the Shanghai Municipal Council or with the council itself. Indeed, some meetings took place with promises of collaboration. Yet there was little thereafter that confirmed close cooperation between the two administrations. For the most part, this was about exchanging information such as vital statistics and a few measures to prevent diseases. Having read through the two sets of archives, one definitely fails to see a genuine sense of coordinated action between the two foreign settlements. Each designed and enforced its own policies and practical measures in its own territory. The areas beyond the settlements were seen by and large as places from where disturbances might erupt and spill into the settlements.

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­

regulation on coffins aboveground that would impose on families the obligation to bury the coffins.27 In 1885, the Songjiang Prefecture attempted to enforce a more general system of control with a fourteen-article regulation aimed at protecting the existing graves and coffins. The regulation ordered the various dibao and benevolent organizations to conduct a general survey of all the graves and to establish a register in two copies with the location and the name of the grave. If there was no stone, one should be placed by the benevolent association. If it was an unknown coffin, a number and date should be carved in the wood. Periodically, the dibao and the associations were expected to survey their area to make sure the graves and coffins were in good condition, to identify the new ones, and to bury those that revealed their content. In the regulation, there was nothing that indicated a policy to restrict the practice. The emphasis was on the protection of the graves from robbery and destruction and of the aboveground coffins from cremation. The prefecture would provide funding to cover the expenses resulting from the survey and the purchase of stones to mark the unidentified graves.28 Although the emphasis in the early texts was on morality and filial duties—this was the main line of argument in official edicts—references to the potential impact on health and the diffusion of disease, especially during the hot season, became a regular item in the discussion of the above ground coffins.29 In November 1886, Prefect Li Bozhi made an explicit reference to the potential for infection in his order to curb the practice of leaving coffins aboveground. The instructions to the dibao became more stringent as they had to bury all coffins, irrespective of the evidence of being the object of regular rituals.30 In August 1890, the Shenbao’s editorial about aboveground coffins for the first time used the argument of preventing the spread of disease.31 Shanghai was exposed to epidemics that, for the most part, came from outside, but local sources of infection were also a major factor. Until the end of the nineteenth century, there was a high sensitivity to these issues, especially in the foreign settlements, where the rules for burials were especially strict. A dead body had to be interred within twenty-four hours. The Shenbao argued in favor of strict measures for burials to stifle potential sources of infection as well as to contain the negative influence of the bodies left aboveground.32 Even in 1902, an explicit link was established between “bad smells” and the epidemic that developed in the city. The Shenbao renewed its call to the authorities to have all the unburied coffins removed and interred.33 From then onward, the medical discourse took over moral considerations on passing judgment on the practice of coffins aboveground.34 The proto-municipal organizations that started managing the various districts of Shanghai under Chinese administration

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(Zhabei, Nanshi, Pudong) all adopted similar measures that banned coffins aboveground in urban areas as well as in the countryside.35 In 1912, the Shanghai xian magistrate instructed the benevolent associations and the families to remove all the unburied coffins.36 There was no lack of discussion and various admonitions by literati to ban aboveground coffins and to change practices to early interment.37 Coffins left aboveground could suffer from other damages than that of the weather. Filial family members cleaned the coffin twice a year in spring and autumn and burned incense and other paper matters. On various occasions, the paper left burning caused the grass to catch fire and produced widespread damage to nearby coffins or houses.38 The unburied coffins were also easy targets for coffin robbers, as many cases reported in the press showed.39 In one case, a bull turned over an aboveground coffin in a field. The owner of the coffin had a violent row with the family that owned the bull. The article concluded ironically on the fate of aboveground coffins abused by cattle.40 In Fujian, a flood took away the unburied coffins that a witness saw floating on the river.41 There were similar cases around Jiaxing near Shanghai.42 Nevertheless, despite the obvious risks, the practice never disappeared. Twice a year, the authorities throughout Jiangnan called upon the benevolent associations or organized a burial office to take care of the unburied coffins. The work was done by groups of coolies that sometimes proceeded in haste and took little care of the remains. In one case, the coolies opened up the coffins with an axe and lumped together five or six remains in one coffin. Altogether some 2,300 coffins were destroyed.43 The Shenbao may have decided to point out the incident to warn its readers about the potentially disastrous consequences of leaving unburied coffins unattended aboveground.44 Throughout the Republican period, unburied coffins were a common view in the villages around the city. In 1929, the Ministry of Health prohibited the private storage of coffins, but the regulation remained a dead letter.45 On two occasions the Bureau of Public Health surveyed the municipal districts and came up with a total of 100,000 unburied coffins.46 The Jesuit priest Joseph de Reviers left a rare photographic record of aboveground coffins in 1932 near Qibao and Qingpu, 6 and 11 miles west of Shanghai, respectively. Sixty years of official admonition and regulations had failed to change an enduring custom. The expression ting guan bu zang was rarely used in the press or official documents after the early 1910s. This did not reflect the disappearance of aboveground coffins. There was simply both a change of vocabulary and a lesser concern for a phenomenon that became more remote in the daily life of Shanghai residents. What the latter had to cope with were the exposed corpses, but these were unexpected deaths, not a deliberate choice to leave

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a dead body above the ground (see Chapter 6). The term that dominated in the twentieth century, fucuo, was not new, but it became the standard expression for the same practice. It was a more neutral term for a coffin left aboveground before burial sometimes out of necessity as in deaths resulting from a conflict but more often out of economic necessity. The successive modern municipal administrations had to deal with this persisting practice in the same way as their imperial predecessors. They relied on the local dibao to survey their patch regularly and have the coffins buried by benevolent associations. In 1928, the Bureau of Social Affairs ordered the burial of all aboveground coffins.47 Yet the task was almost limitless and beyond the resources of the municipal administration, especially as tensions with Japan mounted and funding went into police and defense preparation. In April 1936, Wang Yiting, a major figure of the commercial establishment and a well-known Buddhist philanthropist, launched an ambitious initiative to organize a complete cleaning of the Shanghai area as far as Jiaxing and Wujiang.48 Wang used his position as chair of the Federation of Benevolent Associations to mobilize resources to establish a “free cemetery” where the aboveground coffins would be buried. There were an estimated 60,000–70,000 unburied coffins in the Jiaxing-Wujiang area for which new resources would have to be found. Further information about the project could not be found, but what matters here is the measure of the phenomenon the SPBC produced, which placed the number of unburied coffins in the large area around Shanghai at approximately 150,000.49 Under the difficult conditions of the war, the practice of leaving coffins aboveground surged again close to the limits of the urban districts. With the reestablishment of a unified municipal administration in 1945, the Bureau of Public Health took up again the task of collecting the exposed coffins, but burial was no longer an option. These coffins were systematically cremated.

Charity Cemeteries: The Funeral Space of the Common People By custom, a dead body could not be left unattended. There was a strong belief in Chinese society that the dead should be properly taken care of and buried for fear that otherwise the angry ghosts of bad deaths and abandoned bodies would come back to haunt the living.50 In Shanghai, an 1806 edict by the county magistrate mandated the dibao to intervene as soon as a dead body turned up, with the help of the Tongrentang, to have the body removed and buried except when there was suspicion of foul play.51 The fear of “wandering ghosts” remained a solid concern in Shanghai. Three

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times a year a special festival was organized to call upon all the lost spirits under the aegis of the City God (see Chapter 6).52 Beyond unexpected deaths, however, disposing of dead bodies was a major activity of the benevolent associations. They established graveyards around towns and cities to bury the remains of all those who could not afford a burial place of their own or, later, a burial lot in a private or municipal cemetery. These graveyards were not dissimilar to the mass graves in premodern European cities, even if in China each body was buried separately. Yet, in terms of status, charity graveyards represented the least attractive and most debased form of burial. The negative image of graveyards, where the poor, the homeless, the exposed bodies, the unknown bodies were buried, weighed significantly in the slow development of modern cemeteries in China. Charity cemeteries were for the most part small-scale facilities that left little documentary trail. The imperial administration took no record of the graveyards. It was an unregulated activity in the hands of benevolent associations and guilds. They usually had no name, except by reference to the name of the benevolent association that managed it. On the Chinese maps of Shanghai, they appear at best as “charity graveyards” (yizhong). Most of the time, however, they simply do not appear. On Western maps, any graveyard is shown as “Chinese cemetery” or “cemetery,” with no distinction between charity, family, or guild graveyards. Most of the time, the sources mention the burial of bodies in the charity graveyard of a given association. Sometimes, by chance, the approximate location is given, usually a place name with no further indication. Since many place names were duplicated in the countryside around Shanghai, locating a graveyard is often impossible. The best approximation to a history of the charity graveyards is a relatively good record in one local gazetteer of the Republican period (1918). There is no doubt that many places went unrecorded. There were numerous benevolent associations in Shanghai, some quite small, that owned a small plot of land they used as a graveyard.53 The gazetteer of the Song jiang Prefecture in 1884 recorded thirteen charity graveyards for Shanghai, owned mostly by well-established associations such as the Tongren Fuyuantang, Guoyutang, Tongrentang, Tongshantang, and Cunrentang. Guoyutang owned the largest graveyard, 690 mu, probably split among several locations.54 Although this was an incomplete record, these charity graveyards covered a total area of 1,087 mu. The 1918 Shanghai Gazetteer recorded a much larger number of graveyards (112).55 Yet its list included graveyards established as early as the mid-seventeenth century. It also included guild cemeteries, discussed in Chapter 2. Altogether, there were seventy-four charity graveyards, with fifty-two still in operation. Anonymous graveyards represented about one-half, although six were

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designated by the surname of their founder. The other graveyards were the initiative of benevolent associations. Many of the anonymous graveyards (23) were closed and there was no information on their time of operation. Yet the gazetteer mentioned ten graveyards established between 1646 and 1799 that were still open. The anonymous graveyards were all very small and represented about 100 mu. There were also eight township graveyards (39 mu), three of them by a benevolent association, established between 1851 and 1876. The benevolent associations owned the largest share of graveyards. The thirty-five listed locations represented 149 acres (903 mu), but several benevolent associations actually owned several plots. The Tongren Fuyuantang had thirteen locations totaling 58 acres (353 mu), about 19 percent of all charity burial grounds. It was definitely the largest single funeral landowner in Shanghai. The Tongrentang came next with a unique location (36 acres, 222 mu), followed by the Guoyutang (23–140 mu). These organizations had for decades been major actors in dispensing aid to needy families. Their role in providing funeral services, from distributing free wood planks or coffins to collecting bodies and organizing burials, was well established. Besides taking care of the dead, these organizations were involved in a dazzling range of activities, those that modern municipalities and social services would later provide: constructing and repairing roads, bridges, and so on; dispensing free drugs and running free clinics or hospitals; establishing and managing orphanages and homes for old people and widows; creating and supporting charity schools; organizing life-saving agencies such as firefighting or river rescue; distributing clothing, blankets, coal, and food; and running soup kitchens. The locations of the charity cemeteries were given in the most simple terms in the gazetteer, with the mention of the bao and tu (administrative divisions) where they were established. They were scattered all around Shanghai, several of them close to the city wall before its destruction. Map 4.1 shows that distance was a concern when the cemeteries were established, despite the facilities the waterways provided. It also confirms the Chinese practice of exclusion of burials in the city proper. Over time, the distance from the city itself increased, in part because the city itself expanded beyond its wall and in part because of the development of the foreign settlements. In fact, the urban sprawl reached the charity graveyards that some benevolent associations thought were at a very safe distance from the urban districts. Thirteen graveyards were located in the area west of the last extension of the French Concession in 1900. Eight were found south of Zhaojia Creek. A few more were in more remote areas to the west or the northeast, but all of them eventually came under foreign administration. Pudong hosted seven of the located sixty-nine charity graveyards.

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27-12 North 25-1

27-11 27-12 S outh 27-13

27-10

25-2 25-3

27-9

27-8

27-3 25-4 27-7

Number of charity cemeteries per bao-tu

25-6 25-5

8 4 2 1

25-7

25-9

27-2

25-8

25-10

27-6

27-5

25-11 25-16

25-13

25-12 25-15 27-4

25-14

0

Limit and number of bao-tu Street Railway

24-12

27-1

27-1

Waterway

1

2 km

International Settlement French Concession

map 4.1. Distribution of charity cemeteries in and around Shanghai in 1918. Source: Virtual Shanghai

Pudong was a favorite place to establish charity graveyards due to the facility the Huangpu River and local waterways offered for the transportation of coffins. The guild cemeteries were for the most part distributed along the same pattern (cf. Chapter 2). The encounter of charity graveyards with urbanization caused friction but rarely serious tension. In the foreign settlements, the issue was more sensitive in the French Concession, although it became an issue only after the last extension in 1900. In general, the benevolent associations took action when they realized that urban development made it difficult to maintain a charity graveyard in the middle of houses and factories. In the International Settlement, the Shanghai Municipal Council was fairly accommodating with the existing graveyards as long as they did not pose a challenge to public health. In 1926, however, the council prohibited the further use of a graveyard owned by the Tongren Fuyuantang along Sinza Road, especially because the coffins therein were hardly buried. The initial complaint had come from local residents who suffered from bad smells during the summer.56 In the French Concession, serious conflicts had

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erupted in handling the issue of the Ningbo Graveyard. Eventually, the guild removed all the remains to a new location, though not without a fight.57 Yet in most cases, when graveyards got in the way of roadwork or construction or simply due to a private transaction, negotiations prevailed. Yet it was not always exempt from tensions. In March 1873, the Tongrentang decided to rent out a graveyard located along the Rue du Consulat, near the police station. It entrusted the Tongren Fuyuantang with the removal of the remains to its Luojiawan graveyard. The affair appeared in an article that criticized the association for renting out the land for money it did not need.58 In 1922, the French Municipal Council required the Tongrentang to vacate another 6.6-acre (40-mu) graveyard and to relinquish the land for the construction of the Franco-Chinese Municipal School. The opposition to the removal of the graves did not come from the benevolent association itself, but from community leaders who considered the Tongrentang did not have the right to dispose of the land. The polemical debate that erupted in the meetings spilled over in the press. The graveyard had been established in 1797 in rural land, but 130 years later even the Chinese authorities admitted it was out of place in the urban environment. This dispute emphasizes how sensitive the issue of displacing mortal remains was for some Chinese who contended that economic reasons did not justify troubling the buried bodies. The remains of the 328 buried bodies, mostly men, were eventually removed with great care, down to their hair.59 The issue of removing graves was not limited to the foreign concessions. In September 1907, merchants and literati wrote jointly to the Shanghai City Council to open a new road to connect the West Gate Road and the Xujiahui Road. The area had become very congested and the existing road was crowded with carts and people, while the French-built tramway was bound to create even more traffic. The road would cross a 5-acre (30-mu) graveyard the Tongren Fuyuantang owned. The association had exposed itself to criticism for placing coffins, some hardly buried, which in the view of the city council was a matter of public health. The charity approved the removal, but its chairman reminded the council of three precedents of conflicts about graveyards and questioned why Chinese graveyards were displaced from residential areas, whereas the French cemetery (Baxian qiao) was never challenged. The Shanghai daotai himself recommended a middle course as substantial opposition subsided.60 In November 1914, the Shanghai City Council again planned to condemn a charity graveyard for children to open a new road, but it failed to obtain the transfer of the land. In 1920, the issue was still under discussion.61 The Shanghai xian magistrate was more successful in obtaining the removal of another Tongrentang cemetery to make way for the new local court of justice.62

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Charities also took upon themselves the decision to sell cemetery land when they realized both the impracticality of a burial ground in an urbanized area and the opportunity to invest in rental housing that would accrue to their income. In 1912, such a decision generated a heated debate within the Tongren Fuyuantang as several members and the Ningbo Guild opposed the sale.63 Nevertheless, urban expansion was an unending process that challenged the preservation of charity graveyards in the city and forced the benevolent associations to relocate and to raise funds to purchase new cemetery land.64 In December 1932, the Guoyutang realized it had to relocate a cemetery it owned in Rihuigang, previously a rural area south of Zhaojia Creek that had turned into a thriving residential and industrial area. The charity published notices in the Shenbao and the Xinwenbao to inform the families they had a chance to rebury the remains themselves—this confirms graves were individualized and named—and that otherwise the remains would be moved to the new graveyard of the Guoyutang in Tangwan in Qingpu.65 After 1927, but increasingly so after 1945, the Chinese municipal government put a lot of pressure on the graveyards located in urban areas and often ruled on their removal. A charity graveyard was a simple burial ground with a very plain appearance. Most of the time, it was just an open space made up of small tumuli, the most common form of graves in the Jiangnan region. Burial often meant very shallow interment and covering the coffin with a mound of earth. In fact, a charity graveyard was often no different from the many small graveyards to be found around villages. I have not found any image of a Shanghai or even Jiangnan charity graveyard, only one from the Fuzhou area (see Figure 4.2). From reading the press, it appears that graves received a small tombstone, which may have distinguished them from the more anonymous rural graveyards. Yet, because the charity graveyards were places where coffins arrived from different sources, burials did not always take place immediately. Was it an issue of flow and a rational choice to store coffins and bury them by batch, lax administration, or sheer neglect? There must have been a wide range of practices among charity graveyards. We can only assess this issue through the cases that caused trouble. It was usually related to practices at odds with official requirements and the role of the benevolent associations as de facto official undertakers for the abandoned aboveground coffins. Press reports tend to confirm that leaving coffins aboveground was a common practice in the charity graveyards.66 In August 1890, the Shanghai xian magistrate ordered the dibao in Hongkou to make sure the aboveground coffins that the Xiahai Temple had accumulated in its charity cemetery were buried.67 In the same year, the Shenbao lamented about the sorry look of charity cemeteries, which discouraged

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figure 4.2. View of a charity cemetery near Fuzhou. Source: Lucy Bird, Chinese Pictures: Notes on Photographs Made in China, 1900, 60; no copyright

people from making use of them. The newspaper suggested that local authorities organize proper cemeteries similar to those in Western countries so people with limited means would have access to a decent place for burial.68 This did not fundamentally change the practice of aboveground coffins in charity cemeteries.69 All around Shanghai, the local governments continued to proceed with regular sweeps of unburied coffins, especially before the hot season.70 One cannot generalize from a few cases, but obviously the repetition of incidents tends to point to a certain pattern. Charity cemeteries were exposed to abuse from outside. Sometimes, when they came to be surrounded by houses or factories, the benevolent associations would erect a fence to isolate the place and protect it from intrusion by people or animals. This did not prevent trouble. In 1882, a construction company stored all the discarded materials of its housing project in a Tongren Fuyuantang graveyard.71 A more appalling case illustrates the fate of dead bodies in charity graveyards. In 1878, the Tongrentang discovered that pigs had penetrated its graveyard and turned up the coffins to eat the human remains. Other animals—cows, sheep—had also trampled the whole area. 72 A reader wrote to the Shenbao about a case in 1889 where dogs fed on corpses placed in damaged coffins left aboveground.73 Theft was definitely also a curse.74 In 1926, thieves entered graveyards of the SPBC and Tongren

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Fuyuantang and stole the clothing and other objects placed in the coffins. They left the bodies scattered around on the ground.75 That theft happened in charity graveyard is interesting because it confirms that charity graveyards received not just the bodies of the poor but also those of common people whose modest belongings were worth stealing. Charity graveyards had a long history in China, both because the concentration of population in cities made it necessary to find a way to dispose of dead bodies and because there was a strong belief in Chinese society that no dead body should be left unattended. As long as it was not buried, the soul of a dead person would find no rest and would haunt the living. In cities, large numbers of people died of natural causes whose meager resources necessitated the intervention of benevolent associations. Yet there were also the unexpected deaths, by accident or disease, of residents or travelers.76 People fell into water, a common occurrence in Shanghai with two main rivers and several creeks.77 Besides accidents, there also were suicides and murders. Suspicious cases were always brought to the attention of the xian magistrate or the police by the local dibao.78 The lack of identity documents made it impossible to identify the victims. After the emergence of newspapers, the authorities would publish a brief description of the belongings and approximate age of the victim and call any relative or acquaintance to come forward. The bodies were kept in a coffin above ground for some time and then a benevolent association took them to a graveyard for burial.79

Private Cemeteries as Commercial Enterprises While the majority of private cemeteries were charity cemeteries, at the turn of the century there emerged a few commercial cemeteries to accommodate the needs of people who had not chosen to be buried in their native place, who could not afford the expense, or, more simply, had chosen to be buried where they had spent most of their existence. Although Shanghai remained by and large a city of immigrants, there were a substantial number of residents who were born in the rural districts or counties around the city. Burial in a well-tended private cemetery was more appealing than many of the rural cemeteries. The very notion of a cemetery was slow to come into being. Most of the discussion on aboveground coffins failed to touch upon the issue of cemeteries. What mattered was that coffins should be put underground, but no provisions were made to organize it or to initiate a specific policy. In 1886, the Shenbao came close to this notion in an editorial that, aside from criticizing the aboveground coffins, advocated the institution of “clan graves” (tongzong fenmu) that would guarantee

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600 500 400 300 200 100 0 W1

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figure 1.1. 1937 cholera epidemic in the foreign settlements (Chinese population). Source: “Evolution hebdomadaire du choléra,” 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes

In May 1938, while a large part of the refugee population was still in the settlements, the approaching summer season brought renewed worries about cholera. In the French Concession, the Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance ordered more than five times the regular quantity of vaccine from the Pasteur Institute.117 When the first cases appeared in the foreign settlements, the authorities were not caught in the situation of emergency. Yet the precautionary measures did not prevent an extensive wave of cholera. Cholera broke out early on 18 May when the first case, a refugee in a camp on Hungjao Road in the Western District of the International Settlement, was brought into the Isolation Hospital on Sinza Road. This marked the beginning of a massive campaign aimed at limiting the spread of the disease. Yet less than three weeks later, 291 new cases had been reported.118 In the French Concession, the Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance decided to inoculate the whole population west of the rail track where the disease had appeared. All the wells received a solid amount of bleach.119 Altogether, there were close to 3,000 cases and 337 deaths in the French Concession and 1,711 cases in the International Settlement.120 On 7 June, the Japanese authorities declared Shanghai a cholera-infected area and decided to restrict access to Japanese harbors for all the vessels departing from the city.121 Access to Hongkew and the Japanese-controlled

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and manager of the entertainment palace known as New World. Aside from running New World, Wang Guozhen brought together a group of investors to establish the first modern Chinese commercial cemetery in the city. The group acquired 55 mu of land where it designed and realized a beautifully arranged cemetery. In 1924, the place still had 3,000 available burial lots and it advertised regularly in the Shenbao.87 It was definitely a commercial venture. The International Cemetery seems to have set an example that inspired further initiatives by both private entrepreneurs and guilds. In 1924, the Guang-Zhao Guild extolled its new cemetery as being designed “according to the method of the International Cemetery.”88 In the same year, the Ningbo Guild announced its intention to establish a cemetery in Ningbo patterned after the International Cemetery.89 In January 1926, an individual entrepreneur, Wang Shengsan, advertised his plan to open the China Cemetery (Zhongguo Gongmu) modeled after the International Cemetery. The project was part of an initiative to start a school to care for the future of the living and a cemetery to address the needs of the dead.90 The same year the Pudong Gongsuo also advertised its cemetery as patterned after the International Cemetery.91 The Jiangxi Guild did likewise, although it took more than four more years to achieve the project.92 The establishment of the International Cemetery triggered a development that probably had far more impact than the official proclamations and initiatives through which the Nationalist government or the Shanghai Municipal Government sought to promote cemeteries (see below). Private cemeteries developed into full-blown commercial enterprises, not unlike the process in England a century earlier.93 In September 1924, an unnamed individual announced an intention to open a private cemetery in Dachang, north of Shanghai, that would provide permanent burial lots and organize ritual ceremonies to honor the dead twice a year.94 In June 1926, a group of investors created the Yongmao Real Estate Company to establish the Shanghai Cemetery.95 The cemetery was completed one year later and started to run advertisements to sell its burial lots. The managers of the cemetery invested a lot in advertising as they launched a two-year-long campaign with daily advertisements. It was one of the most significant presences of cemeteries in the advertising section of the Shenbao and, probably, in other newspapers.96 One month later, the China Cemetery ran an advertisement to attract investors to raise money. It announced its plan for a large 16.5-acre (100-mu) cemetery.97 The following year, the cemetery was completed and ran a onemonth advertising campaign in the Shenbao.98 In 1928, it ran a second three-month-long advertising campaign to promote its large burial lots and advantageous rates (55 yuan).99 The idea that land could be sold to use as

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a cemetery even generated offers for land sales. In September 1926, an announcement proposed land in Jiangwan suitable for “factories, cemeteries, and gardening.”100 In October 1927, the Wannian Cemetery joined the chorus of those that competed for the attention of potential customers in search of burial lots. The initiator of the cemetery, Huang Chujiu, had initially bought a very large track of land near Caohejing to build houses. The housing project occupied less land than planned and left much vacant land. Eventually, Huang decided to turn the remaining vacant land into a cemetery.101 Quite interestingly, Huang Chujiu was the co-founder of the Small World entertainment palace, which Wang Guozhen, the widow of his former business partner, succeeded to take over. Wang had established the successful International Cemetery in 1919. Huang followed suit, although his advertisement made no reference to the “Wanguo model.” From then onward, private companies opened cemeteries in close succession. In August 1929, the Yong’an Cemetery announced its opening on Great Western Road on 38 acres (100 mu) of land, followed in November by the Hudong First Cemetery.102 In November 1930, the Chang’an Cemetery started running advertisements in the press, followed by the Pu’an Cemetery in November 1932 and the Ji’an Cemetery in March 1936.103 The competition slowed down but did not stop the movement. In 1940 the Miaohang Cemetery opened near the small Miaohang town on 19.3 acres (52 mu) of land,104 In April 1940, Zhou Ganru, a native from Anhui, applied for the right to open a Dalu Cemetery near Zhenru.105 Yet there was no further trace of the project in the application and the Dalu Cemetery did not appear in any records. What this trend shows is that something was changing in the funeral practices of the Shanghai residents. Before the state intruded with determination after 1927 to change social mores, a movement had started that made modern cemeteries an increasingly acceptable place to bury the dead. The emergence of several major cemeteries within a few years between 1925 and 1927 confirmed that the path opened by the International Cemetery offered a promising commercial opportunity at the same time as it also contributed to alter the perception of the population. The recurrent articles that debated the advantages of cemeteries but even more the proliferation of advertisements for cemeteries must have gradually impregnated the mind of the people. Although there remained a genuine longing for burial in the native place, the realities of economics made it more and more acceptable to be buried where one had lived. A grave was a permanent place, whereas, as one author argued, a coffin in a guild repository was exposed to the danger of fire, especially after urbanization caught up with the repositories.106 The advertisements emphasized their exquisite

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layout and landscaping, the commodity of transportation, and of course their competitive rates.107 The scenic landscaping of the new cemeteries stood in stark contrast to the unattended charity cemeteries in the same way as the picturesque private cemeteries in England were a reaction to the appalling state of the urban churchyards.108 The development of cemeteries in turn gave birth to new commercial ventures that specialized in providing equipment and decorations for cemeteries.109 It was a clear indication that both funeral practices and funeral companies had entered a new era. Other private groups established cemeteries, such as professional or religious groups. In 1936, a group of Buddhist followers proposed to establish a Buddhist cemetery. They argued that although there were eight public cemeteries in Shanghai, there was no purely Buddhist resting place. The group of Buddhists acquired 38 acres (100 mu) of land in Dachang and petitioned the Baoshan County government for the right to establish the First Buddhist Public Cemetery.110 Actual work started in March 1936 and lasted a full year. Besides burial lots, the cemetery also offered the possibility to cremate bodies.111 In February 1937, the Lijiao Gongsuo—a Daoist redemptive society that centered on the worship of Guanyin—announced that thanks to donations it was able to establish a cemetery in Dachang.112 The Shanghai Federation of Actors had its own Liyuan Cemetery located in the countryside, west of Shanghai, then at Zhenru.113 In June 1936, the Mutual Aid Association of Rickshaw Pullers planned to buy 2.3 acres (6 mu) in the north of Zhabei to establish a cemetery.114 Even in the rural districts, local elites took the lead to establish cemeteries for the local people with the argument that cemeteries were now a modern necessity.115 Whereas the development of cemeteries could be seen as a positive development, it also caused some problems when cemeteries were concentrated in certain areas. It was a natural tendency since transportation was a major consideration in the choice of a location. In May 1937, the Shanghai County magistrate issued a decree to restrict the establishment of charity cemeteries along Humin Road. There were already five such cemeteries and several commercial cemeteries along the busy road. The magistrate forbade any extension or any new cemetery along the road. 116 The pressure on land, the measures by the Chinese municipality to restrict the storage of coffins in the city, and the presence of the Japanese army around Shanghai stimulated a new phenomenon during the war. Private entrepreneurs opened private cemeteries, not in Shanghai or its vicinity, but around Suzhou, taking advantage of its reputation as a major historical site and the existence of a beautiful landscape mixing lakes and hills. The first to advertise in the Shanghai newspaper was the Xiaogu Cemetery, located in the Lingyan Hills (Lingyan Shan).117 A few months later, the Wulong Cemetery, also located in Suzhou, ran an advertising campaign.118 There

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was no end to this development. By 1949, there were five cemeteries in Suzhou that explicitly targeted customers in Shanghai. Three more opened before 1953.119 Although the Shanghai Municipal Government advocated the establishment of cemeteries, it adopted its first regulation on private cemeteries only in 1930.120 The first text was a ban on private cemeteries to concurrently run a coffin repository.121 This was meant to prevent the practice of leaving coffins aboveground, as happened frequently if there was no building to store the coffins. Existing repositories came under this prohibition.122 Yet several companies disregarded the rule or found a way to circumvent it. Some even advertised together under the same name.123 The second text was patterned after the national regulation on municipal cemeteries. The regulation imposed a limit on the size (2 by 2 meters) and the price of graves (100 yuan). Yet the municipality could not really control the price of burial lots as it depended very much on the demand from the population. The municipality also imposed the creation of a fund to guarantee the maintenance of the cemetery during and after its period of operation. This regulation served as a model for the regulations by the successive municipal administrations. This was true of all the regulations about funeral companies and the management of death.124 The postwar period was a booming period for private cemeteries. After 1943, the Chinese population had full access to the public cemeteries managed previously by the foreign settlements, but there was not enough burial space to meet the pressure of the mortality rate in the city, especially as the wartime-stored coffins created an additional competition (see Map 4.2). The Bureau of Public Health received a significant number of applications to open new cemeteries, which it processed jointly with the Bureau of Land and the Bureau of Public Works. Cemeteries had to fit in the master plan for urban planning of the municipality.125 In December 1946, the application of the Xiyuan Cemetery was rejected due to its proposed location near the Hongqiao Airport.126 The application by the Taiping Cemetery met the same fate.127 The same objection by the Bureau of Public Works foiled the project of the Xianle Cemetery in Pusong.128 Even proposals submitted by nonprofit associations such as the guilds were turned down if the planned cemetery was found outside the repository zone. The Hebei Guild planned to establish a Huabei cemetery in Jiangwan, close to two existing but much older cemeteries (Jiating, Guang-Zhao, and First Municipal). Although the area was somehow quite colonized by burial grounds, the Bureau of Public Health rejected the application.129 Some applications were approved, even if they were located outside the designated zone, perhaps when the Bureau of Public Health considered the area far enough from the urban districts. In May 1947, it approved

Bao’an

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Yanghang

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Jiating Jiangwan

Lianyi Fojiao

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Lianhe Shanzhuang

Zili Puji

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Yong’an Wanguo Songgong Yongle Ji’an Daoyi

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map 4.2. Distribution of private cemeteries around Shanghai in 1948. Source: Virtual Shanghai

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the application of a small Protestant group to establish a cemetery in Nan xiang, to the far west of Shanghai.130 There were more applications in 1947, for example, the project of a Changshou cemetery in Dachang or another private cemetery in Yinxiang, both of them denied.131 The archives I consulted stopped in spring 1948, but there are good reasons to believe that more applications came in. There are many discrepancies between the various applications and the lists of actual cemeteries between 1945 and 1950 when the People’s Government registered all the active cemeteries. Despite its genuine effort at controlling the opening of private cemeteries, the Bureau of Public Health could uncover illegal cemeteries only through police investigation, complaints by neighboring communities, or perhaps advertisements in the press.132 Even if the municipal administration remained operational until early 1949, there was a brief period when the political transition and reorganization of the municipal services made it possible for enterprising individuals to start private cemeteries with little control. It took until early 1950 for the new Bureau of Public Health to issue a regulation on private cemeteries and restart the process of registration and supervision. The opening of cemeteries in the rural districts of Shanghai was not without causing concern among the local population. In September 1947, one of the members of the Zhenru District Resident Assembly (Qumin Daibiao Daohui) relayed the protest of a group of sixty residents against the cemetery under construction by the Garment Trade Association (Chengyi Tongye Gonghui). It was a small cemetery that hardly measured 1.6 acres (7 mu). The residents accused the trade association of infringing on the regulation on public health and demanded the prohibition of the cemetery. In internal correspondence, the Bureau of Public Health saw no objection to the cemetery in view of its location in a sparsely populated area and its small size, even if it was not in the designated zone, but the Bureau of Public Works vetoed the project for being located in an area planned as residential.133 Obviously, the Garment Trade Association had started its project as soon as land was acquired, assuming that the municipal authorities would give their consent if the cemetery was located in a remote rural area. The formal application was submitted after the protest by local residents, which confirms the limited notice both public and private actors took of the municipal regulations. A cemetery could indeed represent a profitable commercial venture. The investment was not considerable, while the return on the sale of graves produced a significant income. In the postwar period, a cemetery would fill up in just a few years, making for a quick return on capital. In March 1947, Shen Shaoyuan applied to establish the Taiping Cemetery in Dachang. The cemetery would offer 9,886 burial lots. Shen declared a

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capital of 20,000, but he did not indicate how much he would invest in the acquisition of land and the construction of the cemetery. He planned to sell the burial lots at two rates, 200,000 and 100,000 yuan, which would potentially generate a total income of about 1.422 billion yuan.134 The Xianle Cemetery declared a capital of 500 million yuan and a large track of 38 acres (103 mu). It planned for 4,501 burial lots, of which 4,276 were sold. We do not know the distribution among the three proposed rates, but in the hypothesis of a 20/30/50 percent distribution, the cemetery could foresee a revenue of 1.24 billion yuan.135 Even with the cost of land, buildings, and staff, there was a solid profit to be made. In late 1949, the Bureau of Public Health estimated land sold at 300,000 yuan per mu in Jiangwan. Two years earlier, in Dachang or the more remote Nanxiang, land value must have been at best equal but probably less. Even at the 1949 price, the Xianle Cemetery would spend only 20.6 million on land.

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Until the twentieth century, the Chinese authorities in Shanghai were not involved in providing burial grounds for the local residents. They left the initiative to charities, sometimes requesting that local elites establish burials grounds. The Nationalist government established in 1928 took it upon itself to introduce policies aimed at bringing China at par with the Western nations and modernizing Chinese society and its mores. The Nationalist government became involved in the management of death at two levels. The first was the issue of public funerals, especially funerals of public figures and national funerals. The second initiative was directly related to the everyday life of ordinary citizens. In October 1928, the Nationalist government adopted a rule on cemeteries (gongmu tiaoli).136 It is interesting to note that the management of death ranked so high in the legislative agenda of the new regime. Yet, as many previous advocates had argued, there was not just a need to change social practices but also a genuine concern about the amount of land sacrificed to graves in the countryside. The law made it compulsory for local governments in cities and towns to establish public cemeteries (Art. 1). At the same time, public cemeteries— municipal ones in Shanghai—would offer a decent place of burial, affordable to ordinary citizens who might otherwise be exposed to the indignity of burial in a charity cemetery. Thus the rule on cemeteries was much more than an expedient to provide affordable burial lots to address issues of public health—it was hoped, though with unwarranted illusions, that this would discourage the practice of surface burial—it was meant to establish places where status-conscious citizens could bury their dead.

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The regulation imposed basic rules for establishing public cemeteries— they applied to private cemeteries as well (Art. 2)—including selecting a place at a suitable distance from factories, schools, residences, drinking wells and waterways, and railroads. The distance was not determined and left to the judgment of the local governments depending on the topography of the locality (Art. 3). Cemeteries should be established in areas with dry soil, something that implied heavy work for the Shanghai municipality. For the sake of saving land, the rule defined the maximum distance between graves, even if it left some leeway to the local governments (Art. 7). The social perspective of the rule on cemeteries can be seen in the legal obligation to divide cemeteries into two sections, one free of charge and one fee based. Yet the rule determined that the latter should not exceed one-third of the total area (Art. 8).137 The Nationalist government issued instructions to all provinces and municipalities to establish cemeteries.138 This was not just about providing new funeral facilities. It was also about changing China’s funeral practices and customs. Most local governments under the control of the National government adopted regulations modeled after the national rule. In the Jiangnan area, a conference of five provinces debated the issue of cemeteries and cremation. The purpose was not just to challenge existing superstitions or to promote public health but also to reorganize land use. The basic rationale was that a head-on confrontation with current funeral practices was not advisable. It was better to lead by example and to establish cemeteries and crematories to show people there was no harm to their existence and beliefs.139 Nanjing, the new capital of China, took the lead in taming funeral practices in the city and implementing the policy of establishing municipal cemeteries. All the guilds were also instructed to open cemeteries.140 In Shanghai the Bureau of Social Affairs published a long text in the press in 1929, on the eve of the Qingming festival, to deconstruct the existing funeral practices and to demonstrate that the current beliefs were at odds with the original rituals of the past. The bureau presented a lengthy analysis of funeral rituals in ancient times and the original meaning of the two annual sweepings of the graves at Qingming in spring and Shuang jiang in autumn. The gist of the argument was to show that in the past graves were exposed to all kinds of potential damages by animals, weather, and so on, and required the semiannual checkout, even if in reality not many people could have performed this duty on a regular basis. The article reduced the sweeping of graves to a set of practical operations meant to maintain the grave to the exclusion of any form of ritual. The practice of burning incense and paper money was a latter addition. It only served to enrich the funeral shops that thrived on this business. The argument about

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the protection of graves naturally led the Bureau of Social Affairs to extol the advantages of cemeteries that offered the best guarantee of a peaceful and adequate resting place for the dead. Modern countries had all adopted the system of public cemeteries.141 In October 1928, the Shanghai Municipal Government instructed its Bureau of Public Health and Bureau of Public Works to establish municipal cemeteries.142 The Bureau of Land started making plans for four municipal cemeteries with a total area of 218 acres (590 mu) to be located in Jiangwan, Pusong, Caojing, and Gaohang (Pudong). Yet a full year elapsed after the mayoral instruction before any concrete action took place. 143 Eventually, the Bureau of Land suggested starting with one or two locations rather than four cemeteries at the same time. No public announcement should be made to prevent speculation on the price of land.144 The project of a municipal cemetery progressed as a low priority. Meanwhile the Bureau of Public Health finalized its regulation on municipal cemeteries, a text that followed most of the national guideline, except in the share of fee-based lots. The ratio was exactly the inverse of the ratio defined in the national rule. Two-thirds of the total area was devoted to fee-based lots instead of one-third.145 Obviously, there was an issue with funding municipal cemeteries. The Shanghai Municipal Government lacked the financial means to establish not just the four planned cemeteries but even the first one. The Bureau of Public Health proposed starting with what was most urgently needed in the most economic terms.146 The cemetery would be done in two phases, with an investment of 70,000 yuan for the first phase (not including land purchase).147 This would provide space for 4,214 fee-based lots and 1,569 free-of-charge lots.148 The Shanghai Municipal Government approved the first installment of funding and work started in June 1931.149 Soon, it was discovered that the area was peppered with individual rural graves for the removal of which the Bureau of Land requested additional funding.150 The layout work was far from inconsequent due to the nature of the land with waterways all around and a subsoil full of water. The land was to be flattened and elevated by 2.5–3.5 feet to make sure the coffins would be buried in dry land. There was also the issue of building roads and bridges to ensure access to the cemetery from the city. In October 1931, the main buildings were in place and the main access routes had been created.151 The conflict that erupted in Shanghai between the Japanese army and the Chinese 19th Army in January 1932 dealt a heavy blow to the development of the cemetery. The fighting did not affect the cemetery directly, but with the loss of tax resources during and after the war, municipal revenue took a deep plunge. The company in charge of the work complained about

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the absence of payment by the municipality.152 After the signing of a ceasefire, the Bureau of Public Health asked the mayor to release the second half of the planned budget to resume work on the much needed cemetery. The mayor gave his assent, but the requested funds failed to materialize.153 The municipality was nearly broke and the Bureau of Finance had the cemetery pegged as a low priority. The three concerned bureaus suggested a new solution: to borrow money from the municipal bank to pay for the outstanding debts and complete the work and to reimburse the loan with the sale of the graves.154 In the public media, however, the Shanghai Municipal Government upheld its plan to establish four municipal cemeteries.155 A new turn of events, however, further challenged the completion of the cemetery. The Ministry of Railway wrote to inform the municipality that it would build a new train station in Jiangwan to substitute for the North Station in Zhabei. The station had been destroyed during the fighting and this gave the opportunity to build a new one outside of the densely populated urban area.156 The largest part of the First Municipal Cemetery was located in the area the ministry planned to acquire for the construction of the train station.157 The Bureau of Public Works was appalled at the perspective of losing all the investment made at a time when municipal finances were at a low ebb and would not permit another project to be launched from scratch.158 A general meeting took place in February 1933 that basically gave up on the cemetery and opted for looking for another location and new resources to build a cemetery.159 A counterproposal by the municipal bureaus, however, led to the temporary suspension of the announcement about land acquisition and the reconsideration of the project by the ministry.160 Eventually, the ministry gave up altogether and postponed the construction of the train station indefinitely. The mayor finally gave his assent to resuming work with a loan from the municipal bank to fund the project.161 Actual work started in December 1934, although individual graves were still in place. Obviously, the local peasants were not in a hurry to remove the tombs of their forebears.162 Moreover, due to the long process of construction, the buildings completed in October 1932 were already in need of repair. This was mostly about repainting them, but it highlighted the compounding issues of delayed construction.163 Eventually, the Bureau of Public Health informed the mayor in April 1935 that the First Municipal Cemetery was completed and that it would open for burials in July.164 The municipal bureaus chose to entrust a credit company (Xingye Xintuoshe) with the sales of the graves, starting on 15 August 1935, at 60 yuan per grave.165 The official inauguration took place on 15 September 1935, seven years after the initial instruction by the mayor and four years after the beginning of actual work. The First Municipal Cemetery provided for some 3,000 graves at a time when the mortality

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rate produced about 45,000 deaths a year. The municipal cemetery could simply not meet the needs of the population. In November 1932, Chen Yafu, the Pusong district municipal representative (shizheng weiyuan) proposed a plan to establish a large cemetery in Pusong. The rationale was to solve the issue of the numerous unkempt charity cemeteries scattered in the area. Chen suggested using one existing charity cemetery, extend it, and rebury therein all the remains from the various charity cemeteries. In economic terms, he planned to fund most of the expenses by selling the land of three smaller charity cemeteries. The Bureau of Public Health expressed its interest in the project, recalling the original plan of having a second municipal cemetery in Pusong. The bureau convened a meeting in December 1932 and endorsed the plan.166 The trail of documents stopped here.167 It is reasonable to assume that in 1932, with the First Municipal Cemetery not even completed and in danger of being forced to make way for a train station, the Shanghai Municipal Government lacked the resources to invest in the proposed plan.168 The municipality was not able to extend its funeral domain, except for a small cemetery for the police. In February 1928, the Bureau of Public Safety had instructed its stations to identify a suitable location.169 Yet, despite the approval of the municipal government, nothing concrete happened. Weng Hong’an resumed the plan for a police cemetery in March 1933.170 After two years of effort, work started on a plot of land in Jiangwan that Weng Hong’an inaugurated in November 1935.171 The next extension of municipal cemeteries happened by accident in 1934 when the Shanghai Municipal Government had the opportunity to take over a private cemetery, the International Cemetery (Wanguo Gongmu), which the investors no longer wanted to manage. The cemetery, started in 1919, had sold out all the burial lots by 1934 and its once “model” facilities were already deteriorating. As there were no legal provisions about cemeteries when the cemetery opened, the private owners had conceived the cemetery as a one-time operation and overlooked the fact that a cemetery was meant to last for a long time. In particular, they did not establish a reserve fund to pay for the maintenance of the cemetery. People started to complain to the Shanghai Municipal Government, which caused the Bureau of Public Health to investigate the issue.172 Eventually, to prevent further deterioration and a negative impact on “city appearance” (shirong), the municipality proposed to take it over.173 The original owners were more than willing to part with the cemetery as they faced much trouble with the unhappy families. The cemetery was close to the central districts and considered an up-scale cemetery (see below). The municipal authorities acquired the cemetery for free, but it had to bear the cost of its maintenance. In view of the tensed financial situation,

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the mayor instructed its bureaus to evaluate the cost and to explore the possibility of an extension to balance its expenses.174 Initially, the bureaus were pessimistic about an extension in an area already quite urbanized where land sold at a high price. Moreover, municipal regulations officially banned cemeteries from the urban districts.175 In October 1934, a joint meeting of the bureaus involved produced a plan that would both enlarge the cemetery and pay for its long-term maintenance. The extension would be made by filling in the creek that ran all around the cemetery, which would create new burial lots at premium price. Moreover, after the takeover the municipality would charge 2 yuan per grave for a new registration. These two mechanisms would produce enough income to establish a reserve fund of 100,000 yuan to be supplemented by voluntary donations.176 The scheme was implemented as planned, with the extension completed in 1935.177 The municipality kept its word to maintain the cemetery in good order.178 By the end of the Nanjing decade, when the central government was fairly confident that cemeteries had become the norm in cities and lesser urban centers, it came back to its original plan to stop the practice of establishing graves in the countryside. A new regulation (Tichang gongmu banfa) to that effect came into force on January 1936. The Shanghai Municipal Government implemented the ban according to the new national regulation. Locally, the only relevant item was the fine imposed on offenders—1–5 yuan per year—as the other measures focused on imposing to all cities, towns, and villages the creation of a public cemetery.179 Since the 1928 regulation made the creation of public cemeteries compulsory, one is led to interpret the March 1935 text as evidence that it was not the rule everywhere. Yet for the first time the government made it illegal to establish graves anywhere and formally withdrew from the people a long-established right to choose one’s final resting place. In large cities like Shanghai, the burial of the dead in a cemetery had become the norm. In other words, the issue was about convincing the elites and emerging middle classes of the normality of cemeteries. In February 1937, Jiang Jieshi himself contributed to the promotion of cemeteries and even suggested that the notion should be introduced into school textbooks.180 The fate of Shanghai municipal cemeteries underwent another drastic change during the Japanese occupation. Due to their location at the periphery of the city, cemeteries came to be included in areas placed under Japanese military control, severely curtailing access. Moreover, cemeteries represented large tracks of flat land that the military used for storage (vacant land) or even erased entirely to establish military installations. As a result, various cemeteries became idle and unkempt for several years. After the end of fighting in 1937, the Japanese army occupied the International

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Cemetery. It was used for the storage of military equipment.181 The Japanese did not attempt to use it for other purposes, as this was a place where many Chinese dignitaries were buried. Eventually, burials resumed in October 1939. In 1942, the Chen Gongbo administration insisted on the restitution of the International Cemetery.182 The Committee for the Management of Enemy Properties (Putong Dichan Guanli Weiyuanhui) relented but eventually accepted to return the cemetery to the Shanghai municipality.183 On 29 December 1942, Chen Gongbo organized a ceremony, attended by the chief of the Kempeitai and the head of Special Services, to celebrate with great fanfare the restitution of the cemetery.184

War and the Forced Eviction of Cemeteries War affected cemeteries in many ways. The first consequence, even if temporary, was the closure of access routes to the cemeteries. The most dramatic impact, however, was the forced removal of cemeteries. The Shanghai Cemetery was such a case as it disappeared altogether less than seventeen years after its opening, a short life cycle for a cemetery. The Japanese Army had concentrated both troops and equipment in the Jiangwan area, which was declared a military zone. In 1943, the Japanese Navy decided to build a new aerodrome for its air force. Until then, the Japanese had used the Japanese golf course along the Huangpu River. It may have been related to the increasing pressure by the American forces or to the need to have a proper airport in the area it controlled best, but quite unexpectedly the Japanese military headquarters decided to turn the whole area where the Shanghai Cemetery was located into an aerodrome. They left no choice to the Shanghai Municipal Government and imposed the removal of all graves to make room for the planned airfield. The Japanese required the cemetery to be vacated by the end of June. They also purchased 40 acres (130 mu) to establish a new cemetery to regroup all the individual tombs scattered in the fields condemned for the construction of the airport. Altogether, they removed about 10,000 tombs from the area.185 The municipal government faced three issues. The first one was to find an alternative location to rebury the excavated remains from the Shanghai Cemetery, one of the largest private cemeteries in the city (92 acres, 248 mu).186 The municipality did not own a piece of land large enough close to the Shanghai Cemetery. Eventually, the Bureau of Land proposed two private cemeteries, the Miaohang Cemetery, which would receive the bulk of all the remains, and the Hengchan Cemetery.187 The Miaohang Cemetery was entrusted with the actual removal of the remains. The second issue was the logistical aspects of the removal. The Shanghai Municipal

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Government published notifications in the press to invite the families to come and collect the remains and to have them reburied in Miaohang.188 Its press announcements pointed out that this was the sole opportunity to remove the remains before forced eviction. The municipality opened a temporary office in Hongkou to assist the families. The bulk of the cost was borne by the powerless families. If they wanted their defunct member to be buried properly, they had to contribute money for the second time. The municipal government made it plain the coffins “without owner” would be buried together in one place.189 Because of Japanese pressure, excavation started almost as soon as the notification was issued. The Bureau of Public Health hired ten coolies to dismantle the buildings—this was completed in early May—then to start excavating the coffins. Coffins accumulated on open ground pending their removal. This generated the third source of trouble for the municipal government. On the one hand, the people who lived in the vicinity protested against the appalling display of broken coffins. On the other hand, but above all, the citizens whose relatives were buried in the cemetery protested against the precipitation of the authorities, which left them totally unprepared to take care of the excavated coffins.190 A group of citizens wrote to the Shanghai Municipal Government to protest against the beginning of excavation and requested the authorities to defer.191 The protest movement continued. A group of eighty-one citizens argued that the removal imposed a supplementary expense on families already under strained circumstances. The protesters contended they had no say in the choice of the cemetery (Miaohang) and criticized the layout of the site for reburial. They also pointed out that 2,000 of the 6,000 buried coffins would remain “orphan” since the concerned families had left Shanghai. Finally, they opposed the idea of a mass burial for the “orphan” coffins and proposed to establish a private company that would use the registers of the cemetery to identify all the orphan remains and take care of their reburial in Miaohang.192 The Shanghai citizens did not let go. The archives hold several letters of protest, one signed by 106 citizens, as well as another letter sent to the Central Executive Committee of the Guomindang in Nanjing.193 Eventually, the municipal government agreed to postpone the deadline for the removal of the graves to the end of July but reasserted that all coffins had to be removed before 1 August. The group of citizens behind the protest suggested placating the Japanese with the argument of a common “East Asian culture” and “shared values on the respect for the dead.”194 At the end of June, a group of citizens organized an association of the families for the transfer of the Shanghai Cemetery (Shanghai Gongmu Zanghu Qianzang Shanhouhui) to take care of the removal of the excavated remains.195 It opened an office in Pudong in the building of the Pudong Native-Place

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Association. The association published announcements in the Shenbao that the destination cemetery was the First Municipal Cemetery. The Bureau of Public Health countered immediately with a rectification asserting that the First Municipal Cemetery was also located in the military zone and could not be used.196 The bureau was also aware that the removal of mortal remains was a sensitive issue. Many people were reluctant to accept the Miaohang Cemetery due to beliefs in appropriate location for burial.197 The removal of all the graves took much more time than planned, despite admonishments by the mayor.198 Was it because of the passive resistance of the citizens who dragged their feet? Was it because of the sheer number and the logistical difficulties? Was it the fear to create a major disturbance if drastic measures were imposed to citizens who were extremely concerned by the issue of the mortal remains of their forebears? Was it simply because the municipal government had underestimated the cost and time that were necessary? While there is no figure of the number of graves transferred by the families, the staff of the Miaohang Cemetery removed 1,318 orphan remains at a rate of 50 per day. Eventually, these orphan remains were buried individually with their original stone or a tablet when none existed. Their removal was completed by October. The cost for the municipality was not inconsequential with a total budget of 920,000 yuan, but the Japanese Navy reimbursed the Chinese authorities.199 The cost per unit (700 yuan) was probably the same for the families for whom there was no reimbursement, which in 1943 represented 4.5 dan of rice, enough to feed a family for about eight months. The removal of the coffins by the families went beyond the end of the year. The Bureau of Public Health reported that the work was completed at the end of February 1944.200 Even if they were not confiscated or displaced, cemeteries fared badly during the war. On the one hand, they suffered damage from fighting and fires as well as a lack of maintenance and surveillance. On the other hand, families were deprived of regular access. In April 1939, a group of Cantonese organized a private service to take care of cleaning the tombs in the neglected cemeteries for the Qingming festival.201 The Chang’an Cemetery endeavored to make up for the ritual sweeping of the graves and organized a collective ceremony in the French Concession under a large tent in return for direct access to the cemetery.202 The Japanese Army took advantage of its dominance to occupy cemeteries, but in one instance it fired back, literally. In April 1939, at the time of the Qingming festival, a group of twenty-four dare-to-die Chinese fighters took up position in houses around the Jing’an Cemetery where 3,000 Japanese had gathered. They machinegunned the place and killed 500 Japanese.203 Gradually, however, the private cemeteries regained the control of their land, as can be seen through their advertising campaigns in the press in 1939 and 1940.204

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Municipal Cemeteries in the Postwar Period The issue of cemeteries became more pressing at the end of the civil war period. The city had received a large influx of population, most of them people with few resources, with the result that the number of deaths increased, even if the mortality rate remained stable or even decreased (see Chapter 1). The Bureau of Public Health also had to deal with the processing of the coffins stored since the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. Of the estimated 100,000 coffins, it was assumed about one-half would have to be buried in the local cemeteries. Moreover, with a population of six million inhabitants and a death rate estimated at 20 per thousand, about 120,000 dead bodies would have to be taken care of annually. The bureau observed that one-half were infants or small children whose bodies were cremated, but about one-half of the adults—30,000 bodies—would have to find a resting place in the local cemeteries. The municipal cemeteries could hardly provide a solution. In November 1945, the Bureau of Public Health reported on the sorry state of the First Municipal Cemetery, where all the buildings had been destroyed during the Japanese occupation. Different people had stolen and sold what remained of the wood, the gates, and the stones. Peasants used the vacant land and lawns to cultivate grain and vegetables. The First Municipal Cemetery no longer looked like a cemetery and the families were appalled by the extent of the damage upon their return to Shanghai. The mayor instructed the Bureau of Public Health to take over the cemetery and even to seize the harvest as compensation for the damage done.205 The International Cemetery had not been affected by fighting, but the Japanese Army had occupied the area for most of the war and left the cemetery in bad shape.206 The Shanghai Municipal Government decided to restore it to its prewar condition. There was also the legacy of the forced removal of the graves from the Shanghai Cemetery. In April 1946, the board of administration of the former Shanghai Cemetery filed an application with the municipal government about its forced expropriation without compensation and the status of the displaced graves. The board expected compensation in money or in land since there was no hope to get back the original land. The area had been turned into an airport occupied now by the headquarters of the Air Force Third Region. The claimants objected to the forced removal of 800 graves to the Miaohang Cemetery in which the families had no say. They requested a piece of land from the municipality to rebury the 800 graves.207 One can sense here that beyond the issue of material compensation there was a serious concern about the appropriate location for burial.208 In November, a citizen recalled the loss of the Shanghai Cemetery, the suffering of the families, and the lack of compensation and asked the municipality to

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return the land to its former use.209 The Bureau of Public Health contended that it was impossible to get the land back. The municipality could not be held responsible for the losses incurred during the war.210 There was a continuous flow of letters, proposals, and counterproposals by the Bureau of Public Health and the board of the Shanghai Cemetery.211 The board used all possible ways, including mobilizing members of the municipal senate, to challenge the position of the Bureau of Public Health.212 The bureau ruled out the possibility of removing again the coffins buried in the Miaohang Cemetery. It was a waste of money and there was not enough space in the First Municipal Cemetery. To clarify the situation, it sent an official with the chairman of the board to survey the Miaohang Cemetery.213 Eventually, it came down to 158 coffins that the families had refused to move to the Miaohang Cemetery and that had been placed in various coffin repositories.214 This was a clear indication of the importance to Chinese families to find the most suitable place for burial, at least for those who could afford the expense of keeping the excavated coffins in a repository. The board of the Shanghai Cemetery never received any compensation for the loss of its cemetery, which it evaluated at 4.3 billion yuan in February 1947 prices. There was a relative bad faith in the claim since the cemetery had already sold 8,617 burial lots and opened 2,428 graves before the Japanese Army confiscated the land.215 The mayor gave instructions to find burial lots for the 158 unburied coffins.216 Yet, almost two years later, the 158 coffins were not yet buried in the Hongqiao Cemetery where lots had been set aside for these coffins.217 There was no further documentation on this issue. The former owners of the land used to establish the Dachang Cemetery also filed an application with the municipal government for a restitution of their land.218 They argued the Japanese Army had seized the land by force to establish the cemetery. There was an exchange of memoranda between the municipal bureaus as the Bureau of Public Health was also interested in taking over the cemetery to bury some of the wartime-stored coffins.219 In fact, the Bureau of Land realized the cemetery was placed under the authority of the Office for the Processing of Enemy Properties of the Central Information Bureau.220 The office confirmed it held the property, but it challenged the claim made by the landowners. The Japanese Army had purchased the land at a fair price, which made it an enemy property. It also emphasized that removing the graves was bound to create disputes with the families. All the graves were Chinese graves.221 It took about a year and a meeting of all parties to sort out the fate of the Dachang Cemetery. Eventually, the office agreed to release the cemetery to the Shanghai municipality. Yet the acquisition of this cemetery failed to improve the situation of the municipal cemeteries since the Dachang Cemetery was already full.222

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One of the main concerns of the Bureau of Public Health was to ensure there would be enough burial space for the less privileged in the municipal cemeteries. The price of a lot in a municipal cemetery, even if it remained prohibitive to a large number, was still much lower than in the private cemeteries. It was also the sole alternative to burial in a charity cemetery. The sheer number of new deaths every month, in the range of 6,000, was already a challenge, even if a substantial number were expected to leave the city for burial elsewhere. The focal point of the Bureau of Public Health was to ensure there would be enough burial space for the new deaths. It was one of the reasons it rejected proposals to open more municipal cemetery land to bury the wartime-stored coffins and favored repatriation or cremation as this would have required 1,000 mu of valuable land.223 Quite interestingly, this is exactly the figure the post-1949 Bureau of Public Health came up with in terms of the maximum surface of land to be devoted to cemeteries in the whole municipality in 1950. In August 1946, the Bureau of Public Health sold 200 burial lots monthly in the Hongqiao Cemetery. To accommodate the increasing number, it requested to take back a large section left vacant under the Shanghai Municipal Council, which the Public Works Department used as a nursery for plants and trees and refused to concede. At the end of 1947, the two bureaus were still at loggerheads on this issue.224 As burial space ran out very quickly, the Bureau of Public Health continued to use the available space in the more central cemeteries, Bubbling Well and Baxianqiao, for the burial of children, but by November 1946 there was no space left. The burial of children was transferred to the Hongqiao Cemetery.225 In February 1947, a newspaper published an article titled “The Dead Have No Place to Rest.” Only the Hongqiao Cemetery still had some vacant land. The Bureau of Public Health requested the Shanghai Municipal Government to purchase 185 acres (500 mu) of land, but even if the purchase were made, the cemetery would offer only 50,000 graves. In view of the increase of burials, the cemetery would not last long.226 In March, the Bureau of Public Health confirmed that the Hongqiao Cemetery had already received 6,000 graves. The Zikawei Cemetery had only 1.8 acres (5 mu) left. The International Cemetery, with its 32 acres (90 mu), was full.227 By May 1947, the Bureau of Public Health had only about 2,000 burial lots left in the Hongqiao and First Municipal cemeteries. There were a few lots in the Zikawei, Bubbling Well, and Baxianqiao cemeteries, but this was marginal. In August 1947, a Chinese resident in the United States wrote to propose the sale of a piece of land it owned in the front of the International Cemetery. It had been used as a family grave, but now the resident had acquired nine lots in another cemetery and was prepared to sell the place.228 The Bureau of Public Health followed up on the proposal

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and started a survey to purchase more land. There were only forty burial lots left and it hoped to open 1,000 new lots on the newly purchased land. At the price of 600,000 yuan per lot, the Bureau of Public Health was confident to cover its expenses and even have extra money left for maintenance.229 The project proceeded as planned with the acquisition of 7.8 acres (21 mu) at 1.84 billion yuan in September 1948.230 The Bureau of Public Health was not consistent with its own policy of prohibiting cemeteries in the urban districts. In January 1948, the Bureau of Public Health returned to its proposal to extend the First Municipal Cemetery. The Bureau of Land Administration identified a piece of land, which would provide some relief.231 By that time the cemetery occupied 169 mu (62 acres) and offered little space without purchasing more land.232 Eventually, the extension at the First Municipal Cemetery was much smaller than planned because one-half of the purchased land fell within an area designated as residential in the city’s master plan.233 The final intervention of the municipality in opening burial grounds was the opening of a new Dachang cemetery in September 1949 to help with the evacuation of the wartime-stored coffins.234

A Final Resting Place? Cemeteries may be seen as places where the dead can enjoy an uninterrupted and undisturbed afterlife. Chinese cemeteries sold their burial lots as eternal (yongjiuxing) resting places. Foreign cemeteries by and large offered the same system. Yet, as time went by, it became necessary to introduce measures that limited the length of time a grave could remain in a cemetery. Moreover the right to stay was never guaranteed as the local authorities could use their power to condemn land for public purposes such as road construction. Thus mortal remains were in fact not assured a permanent lease, either because of the voluntary removal of a cemetery by its owners or due to forced eviction by the authorities. The management of space in the Shanghai cemeteries differed widely depending on nationality and cemetery. In the International Settlement, there was no limit of time in the earlier cemeteries. A resting place in the Shantung Road Cemetery, the Pudong Cemetery, and the Bubbling Well Cemetery was attributed forever. In the Baxianqiao Cemetery, the authorities initially did not regulate the duration of graves. The cemetery was the joint property of the Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Municipal Council in Chinese territory. The cemetery came to be included in the French Concession after the 1900 extension, which moved the French Municipal Council to adopt a tough stance on burials in its territory. It also

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led the municipality to adopt a regime copied from France where individuals could purchase a burial lot with different lengths of time. In the later cemeteries—Lokawei (Lujiawan), Zikawei (Xujiahui), and Western Cemetery (Cimetière de l’Ouest)—the French Municipal Council sold grave lots with time limits: permanent, twenty-five, fifteen, and five years.235 Once the resting period had elapsed, coolies excavated the graves and placed the remains in an ossuary. While tax-paying foreign residents could choose any length of time, some categories of foreigners had access to only the shorter concessions. The Vietnamese soldiers had a reserved site in the Lokawei Cemetery, but only in the fifteen-year section. The Cemetery Section monitored the “population of graves” closely and each year or every six months proposed the list of graves to be excavated. Families were given one-month notice, usually through the press, to collect the remains. In the Zikawei and Western cemeteries for indigents, the remains were cremated. The system introduced some flexibility in the management of space, but the number of graves that came up for excavation was usually too small to provide enough land for new burials. In 1944, for example, the Zikawei Cemetery offered only eight graves for excavation.236 To make room for new graves, the French municipal administration decided to excavate the graves of the Vietnamese soldiers and indigents earlier than planned.237 In the Chinese cemeteries, there was no limit of time, except for the charity graves. The private cemeteries emphasized the notion of “eternal grave” in their advertisements. In the guild cemeteries, very few references were found to the removal of mortal remains, except when the whole cemetery faced condemnation by the municipal authorities or the guilds themselves decided to move to a new location. There was one exception to the rule, however, with the collection of remains in the charity cemetery of the Guang-Zhao Guild, at least before the establishment of their Dachang cemetery. In 1916, the guild informed the families that the remains from 1910 would be collected and the bones placed in an ossuary (a “golden pagoda” in guild terminology). Families had the opportunity to collect and bury the bones themselves. It was not clear from the press notice whether this applied to the graves of indigents or to all the graves in the cemetery.238 This conformed to the Cantonese practice of second burial of the bones five to seven years after the initial burial. The major threat to the existence of cemeteries, however, was less the arbitrary decisions by the municipal administrations than the very process of urbanization and densification of the population. When cemeteries were established, their initiators did not foresee that the pleasant rural setting they had selected for their burial ground would one day be surrounded by a dense street grid and crowded with shops, houses, and unstoppable

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traffic. In May 1929, the Shanghai Federation of Actors (Shanghai Shi Lingjie Lianhehui) made public its decision to leave its Liyuan Cemetery on Rue Gaston Kahn in the French Concession and to move all the graves to a new site near Zhenru. The cemetery had been established before the 1914 extension of the settlement. The cost remained the responsibility of each grave owner, but the federation offered to help those with little means.239 The federation decided to build rental houses on its cemetery land.240 The choice of location for the new cemetery in Zhenru, however, was unfortunate. For a while after the Sino-Japanese conflict in 1937, the cemetery became fully inaccessible from the city.241 In January 1934, the Chinese Muslim Cemetery of Rihuigang, south of the French Concession, found itself fully surrounded by factories and houses. The Muslim community decided to purchase land near Zhenru to establish both a regular and a charity cemetery. About 1,000 people attended the ceremony, a procession that started at the mosque on Fuyou Road in the former walled city and proceeded to Zhenru. In this case, however, the graves in the original cemetery were left untouched.242 The Muslim community faced another challenge when the Japanese Army decided to seize the small 1.6-acre (10-mu) cemetery in Zhenru to make space for the construction of a railway line. They opposed the decision and sought to obtain a modification of the trajectory of the railway line to spare their cemetery. Feelings ran very high during the emergency meeting held on 5 October 1939, but the Japanese prevailed.243 Another example of the removal of mortal remains was the Guang-Zhao Guild. When it bought land in Dachang to establish its new cemetery, it carefully planned the removal of the remains from its western Zhabei location. This was the fourth time the guild moved its cemetery.244 The postwar municipal government attempted to reduce the presence of burial grounds within the urban districts. In 1947, it ordered the removal of all the graves from the Lingnan Cemetery.245 The Cantonese NativePlace Association in charge of the cemetery published announcements in the press that brought many families to take action, but after the first phase of grave removal there remained about 2,000 unclaimed remains.246 The association tried to obtain more time to organize the removal but the extension was denied on grounds that the association had been well informed of the regulations, as had all other cemeteries.247 The association made further calls to the families and warned them that the Bureau of Public Health would cremate the unclaimed remains.248 In April 1948, way beyond the set deadline, the association informed its members that it would start removing the unclaimed remains to the Guang-Zhao Cemetery. The Lingnan Cemetery took care of the removal of graves for the families

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of land in the countryside, sometimes far away from the city, but still in areas that became urbanized in the following decades (see Table 2.3). The guilds that owned land south of the walled city were more fortunate than those that acquired land in the northern and western rural areas. When the consular representatives of the United Kingdom and France negotiated the location of the land on which to open their settlements by virtue of the Treaty of Nanjing, the Shanghai daotai (circuit intendant) selected precisely the whole area north of the city wall, between the Huangpu River and a creek (labeled Defense Creek later on). The entire area was a major burial ground, especially between the city wall and the Yangjingbang Creek that separated the two foreign settlements. There were a few major sites, for example, the graveyards and compounds of the Siming Gongsuo and the Fujian Guild. The establishment of the foreign settlements initiated a process of urban development that forced the guilds to relocate their premises and graveyards.27 It generated tensions at times, but by and large the course of action was peaceful. Families and guilds received a financial compensation for the proper removal of the remains. There were also the well-known cases of resistance by the Siming Gongsuo, but as we shall see, the graveyard itself was not the main source of tension. It is very difficult to identify the exact location of guild cemeteries because the address was expressed only in vague terms (the name of a river, a bridge, or at best a village). A substantial list can be found in a 1918 local gazetteer, but with their distribution in the administrative divisions (bao and tu) on official maps. Among the thirty-four recorded guild graveyards, nineteen were located in the 25th bao and eleven in the 27th bao.28 The 23rd and 24th bao on Pudong had two each (see Map 2.1). Altogether, the graveyards covered 130 acres (793 mu) of land. Ninety percent of the burial land was concentrated in the 25th and 27th bao, with a large share in tu 2, 12, and 13 (44 percent) in the 25th bao and tu 11 (20 percent) in the 27th bao. Although we do not know their precise location, Map 2.1 table 2.3. Year of foundation of guild graveyards Name

Year

Name

Year

Huining Sigongtang Fujiian Jinhui Gongsuo Ranye Gongsuo Molisan Shantang Jiangzhen Gongsuo Rundetang Siye Rongyitang Chaozhou Tunrentang Xing’an Guoshantang Siqianye Chongyitang

1855 1855 1855 1855 1855 1860 1861 1861 1862

Siming Yisuo Shangchuan Huiguan Chengshantang Jiling Gonghui Liuyitang Yanye Gongsuo Zhe-Shao Yongxitang Guang-Zhao Shanzhuang Huining Sigongtang Guangdong Dapuxian Hengshantang Huangzhang Huiguan

1862 1863 1863 1864 1870 1872 1875 1875 1877

Source: Yao Wennan, Shanghai xian xuzhi, no. 3 (Shanghai: Nanyuan, 1918), 272–78.

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foreign cemeteries, where only foreigners had been buried. In March 1946, the Bureau of Public Health elaborated a memorandum on the removal of the graves from the Shantung Road Cemetery, closed to burial since 1871. There was no legal restriction on such a decision, but eventually the bureau gave up on the project.254 The issue was perhaps too sensitive politically as it could be perceived as antiforeign. In 1948 The British consulate complained once about the lack of proper care in the Bubbling Well and Baxianqiao cemeteries, following criticisms by local residents. The mayor took the British comment in earnest and asked the Bureau of Public Health to take appropriate measures.255 In April 1949, a Chinese-language newspaper published a scathing critique of the poor maintenance of the Shantung Road Cemetery, explicitly comparing with how well cared for it had been under the Shanghai Municipal Council. The article denounced its use by the staff of the Bureau of Public Health who trampled the plants with their carts.256 The bureau blamed the situation on the location of the cemetery in a very busy area and proposed adding a large sign prohibiting trespassing and asking the public health staff to stop going through the cemetery.257

The Predicament of Cemeteries Cemeteries were sacred final resting places. They were places for a stroll as they often offered large and quiet green space. This also implied that they remained well kept behind the protection of a solid wall. In many cases in Shanghai, cemeteries did not measure up to this standard and, when the economic situation became tense, cemeteries were turned into potential treasure troves. As discussed above, charity cemeteries were violated by grave robbers, even though these cemeteries did not receive people with many valuables. Private and municipal cemeteries were more attractive and offered little obstacle for determined grave robbers and other thieves. The safety of cemeteries was a recurrent issue, as most often they were not protected by a wall. At best, as for the more remote and less cared for cemeteries, a bamboo fence was the only protection around the cemetery. These fences not only offered little resistance to trespassers but also were the object of theft by passersby. In addition, maintaining a bamboo fence intact was a real challenge as sections kept disappearing. In July 1935, the French Bureau of Public Works reported two major breaches in the bamboo fence at the Zikawei Cemetery. Although it was probably not the first instance the municipal engineer came to examine, he argued that the 3-foot-high fence was enough to deter intruders at night, unless they broke through it.258 In September, the bureau again reported two major

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breaches.259 The following month, the Wai Wou Yuen soy sauce factory reported that thieves had broken through the bamboo fence and stolen soy sauce from its premises. It was the third break-in and the factory manager protested the negligence of the French authorities to build a proper fence.260 In February 1936 the same soy sauce factory reported another theft by intruders through the cemetery, following a previous intrusion and theft in January.261 The bureau had the fence repaired, but one month later it reported that sections of the bamboo fence had, once again, been stolen. He suggested building a brick wall and adding barbed wire. There was no follow-up on this proposal and people continued to take away parts of the fence. The same soy sauce factory was again the victim of a theft in April 1937.262 The soy sauce factory was not the sole target of “marauders.” The watchman of the Zikawei Cemetery complained of trespassers almost every night. They broke through the fence and stole objects from the cemetery.263 In May 1936, the watchman reported the seventh intrusion since he had assumed his position. His predecessor had reported five major cases. Thieves used the cemetery as a quiet and hidden rear base to dig tunnels into factories and steal soy sauce, salt, and so on. Eventually, the watchman requested the right to carry a handgun to patrol the cemetery at night.264 From the flurry of subsequent letters in the archival file, intrusion and theft in the cemetery did not stop. At the Lokawei Cemetery, thefts even took place in broad daylight. According to the watchman, thefts were perpetrated by Russians who came into the cemetery under the pretext of visiting the grave of a relative. Since they were Russians, the watchman could not stop them. Thefts consisted mostly of small items, for example, vases and glass. To back up his argument—he was criticized for neglecting his duty—the watchman produced newspaper clippings about Russians who were arrested for larceny at the Bubbling Well Cemetery.265 The issue of protecting the cemeteries from theft and other damages became more acute during the civil war. In November 1947, thieves took away valuable objects from Trinity Cathedral. Two years later the same church reported the theft of five glass covers and two glass vases at the Bubbling Well Cemetery.266 In July 1948, the watchman of the Hongqiao Cemetery reported the theft of copper statues and copper plates. He reinforced the surveillance with two workers who patrolled the large cemetery, but on 17 July again a new case of theft of copper statues and plates occurred. The following day, the warden sent six workers in an effort to improve surveillance. On 19 July, they saw three men intent on stealing entering through the broken bamboo fence. They managed to arrest two thieves. The watchman reported that, with twenty breaches in the fence, he did not have enough manpower to do proper surveillance.267 Even the

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Chinese Army was prone to seize material in cemeteries. In May 1949, a group of soldiers led a large crew of workers to take down tombstones in the International Cemetery and load them onto a truck. Several hundred were taken away.268 The Japanese cemetery was also the victim of plundering. In January 1948, the Bureau of Public Health reported that tens of tombstones had been stolen from the cemetery. More than thirty were found on the premises of a Chinese stone company. Quite clearly, some companies took advantage of the lack of maintenance and protection to collect and recycle tombstones.269 By August, the Bureau of Public Health observed that the situation had worsened with the systematic plundering of the tombstones. In agreement with the representative of the Japanese Liaison Office, it was decided to dig up all the graves and transfer the remains to the columbarium in the Bubbling Well Cemetery.270

Cemeteries after 1949: Reform, Removal, and Desecration By November 1949, there were forty-one private cemeteries around the city, but most grave space was nearly sold out. They could not open more graves without expanding their surface, something that ran counter to the land policy of the new authorities. The eight municipal cemeteries held a total of 43,736 graves, with additional space sufficient for only 13,539 graves. This fell short of the projected need of 30,000 per year. The Bureau of Public Health recommended cremation as a general principle, but it was aware that local society was not prepared for such a drastic change. The Bureau of Public Health and the Bureau of Public Works took over the concept of “cemetery zones” (Dachang, Pusong, Yangsi) defined by the previous administration for coffin repositories and cemeteries. The need for cemeteries was obvious and pressing. A total of thirty-eight applications had been received to open new cemeteries, with five emanating from charity organizations. All the other applications came from people who wanted to establish commercial enterprises.271 The political context contributed to facilitate the acquisition of land by private entrepreneurs. Landlords were afraid of the upcoming land reform and were eager to sell their land to get cash. At the end of 1949, land sold at a fairly low price in the rural districts, at about 300,000 yuan per mu (0.37 acre). Companies applied for a license to the Bureau of Public Health, but many applicants started at once to prepare the land and to bring in coffins. There were numerous such cases around Zhenru, where fourteen cemeteries had opened, occupying a total of 72 acres (194 mu). The bureau was worried about the conditions in these cemeteries where

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land was low and the coffins buried close to the surface. It also had a serious concern about the “outrageous profits” (baoli) the owners of cemeteries made through these money-driven operations. On 18 November, the People’s Government convened a meeting of all those involved in the management of death in the city, as well as the Zhenru district government (Zhenru Qugongsuo), to discuss the priorities in dealing with the issue of death in the city.272 The rise of cemeteries in the countryside created friction with landhungry peasants. They opposed the establishment of new cemeteries. They played up the issue of public health (even if past and current practices were even more likely to cause pollution). They also feared that the landowners would withdraw their tenure to sell the land. Of course, there were also issues of superstition, noise at the time of burial, and so on. Among other things, peasants refused to remove individual tombs erected in fields sold to the cemetery companies. At the same time other peasants accepted cemeteries as they could garner some money as watchmen for the graves. Conflicting interests, as in Zhenru, caused several cemeteries to stop working, leaving the coffins aboveground. To conciliate all interests, the Bureau of Public Health suggested a compromise by which the cemeteries would set aside a percentage of their income as a welfare fund for the local peasants. The private cemeteries would also be obliged to reserve 5 percent of their graves for free-of-charge burials and another 5 percent for half-price burials. Despite its reservation with private cemetery companies, the Bureau of Public Health advised the Zhenru District Office to find a solution to the persisting conflicts.273 The Bureau of Public Health and the Bureau Public Works wanted to avoid the repetition of incidents. They had held a joint meeting in September 1949 to discuss the possibility of defining areas where cemeteries could be opened. Eventually, they concluded that several measures would be pursued at the same time, namely to remove the wartime-stored coffins, encourage cremation, and allow new cemeteries in the “green belt” around the city.274 The People’s Government had not yet planned to take control of the private cemeteries or to open new municipal cemeteries (see Chapter 10). It supported the opening of new cemeteries provided they were “capitalist-style” cemeteries (vs. feudal-based guild cemeteries). It was prepared to override through persuasion the “feudal” concerns of the peasants. As a general policy, the bureau proposed to control the development of private cemeteries by limiting the size of individual cemeteries to 1.8 or 3.6 acres (5 or 10 mu) and the total surface devoted to cemeteries in the municipality to 370 acres (1,000 mu). The thirty-eight pending applications represented 185 acres (500 mu), a surface the Bureau of Public Health found reasonable and acceptable for the peasants. The bureau also planned to

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impose a uniform price for graves and levy the land tax to prevent undue speculation.275 However, these measures failed to curb the pressure for cemetery land. The Bureau of Public Health prepared a series of new regulations to define and supervise the conditions under which all funeral companies should operate and how new ones could emerge. The regulatory activity translated into five major regulations in March 1950 on private coffin shipping companies, crematoriums, coffin repositories, funeral parlors, and cemeteries.276 The regulation for the establishment and management of private cemeteries incorporated most of the proposals made in its 1949 report. Private cemeteries could only use the term sili gongmu (private cemetery), to the exclusion of all the designations previously used, such as huayuan, shanzhuang, and so on (Art. 2). The rates had to be approved by the bureau and no increase could be made without the prior approval of the authorities (Art. 4). Moreover, they were to set aside 10 percent of their total income as a reserve fund for the maintenance of the cemetery (Art. 5).277 There was initially no attempt to limit more strictly the size of graves set under the previous administration, but in the final version the length was cut by 1 meter (Art. 8). Cemeteries were required to employ at least one worker full time to ensure the maintenance and cleaning of the tombs (Art. 10).278 The regulation on cemeteries was supplemented with a guideline on the examination of applications. In this text, promulgated on 25 March 1950, the Bureau of Public Health established the various constraints that applied to private cemeteries. New applications or applications for extensions would be received only during the six months after the promulgation of the guideline. The People’s Government set the size of individual cemeteries to 3–50 mu (1.1–18 acres). Cemeteries could only be located in the “cemetery zone” (gongmuqu), at a set distance from railroads, roads, and waterways (30–50 meters) and any built-up area (300 meters). The cemetery zone was defined as south of Miaohang in the Dachang District, Zhangjiazhai in Yangsi, and Pusong between Hongqiao Road and Xinjingang. It was not different from the repository zone of the previous administration, but the People’s Government also defined a larger “green belt” (lüdai) area where cemeteries could be established. The guideline also defined the degree of concentration of graves per mu, with a minimum of 80 graves and a maximum of 150 graves. To protect the interests of the peasants, any landowner had to seek the agreement of the local peasant association. If the peasants lost revenue due to the creation of the cemetery, the cemetery company had to give an appropriate compensation to be approved by the local authorities.279

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In April 1950, the Bureau of Public Health convened a general meeting (zuotanhui) of all the actors involved to discuss the implementation of the guideline and to define how to address potential conflicts.280 By that time, the number of filed applications had increased to forty-six, which the Bureau of Public Health placed on hold pending a general discussion. Most conflicts had been resolved, according to the representatives of the various local districts, including Zhenru, and a couple of projects had stopped altogether. The unapproved Hongqiao Cemetery (Hongqiao Muyuan), not the old Hongqiao Cemetery, had even been closed down and the coffins removed to another location. The main summary by the secretariat of the municipal government pointed out the necessity to establish new cemeteries in the short term. Obviously, the secretariat was not ready to accept opposition unless it was well founded (feng shui and superstitions were ruled out). The meeting attributed most of the decision making to the Bureau of Public Health and the local takeover committees (jieguan weiyuanhui). It also adopted the principle that where coffins had been interred they should remain in place unless they presented serious problems for public health.281 The policy was in fact quite generous. In September 1950, a group of twelve cemetery companies were examined. After collecting the opinion of each actor, the authorities rejected only two applications. Three cemeteries were put on hold pending supplementary information. One cemetery was allowed to remain but could not open new graves due to its inadequate location (Hongqiao Shanzhuang).282 Eventually, as the pressure for cemetery land decreased after the removal of the wartime-stored coffins, the People’s Government started to enforce stricter rules on the establishment of new cemeteries in rural land. In July 1951, the Bureau of Public Health confirmed to the committee on land reform in the rural districts of Shanghai that no other cemeteries than those already approved should be allowed to operate. The bureau provided a list of thirty private cemeteries. All the other cemeteries should close at once. The unused land in these cemeteries was to be redistributed to peasants.283 In November, it confirmed its ruling that all the private cemeteries operating without a license should be expropriated if no coffin had yet been interred, except for the cemeteries of ethnic minorities.284 As the demand for graves continued to increase, however, the People’s Government made an exception to its own rule on the location of cemeteries. In 1953, there remained about 8,000 grave lots in the First Municipal Cemetery, about 500 in the Hongqiao Cemetery, and 1300 in the Dachang Cemetery.285 It opened a new municipal cemetery near Longhua, at the southern end of Caoxilu. The cemetery was planned for around 3,000 graves. The various cemeteries, both private and municipal, were nearly

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full by 1954. The Longhua Cemetery had space, but the price of its burial lots put it beyond the reach of ordinary people. It was reserved to revolutionary martyrs, military personnel, and cadres. Jiangwan and Dachang had a limited reserve of land, while the private cemeteries were almost full. The authorities promoted a new land-saving type of grave. Initially called paizang (burial row), they appeared of course as a less appealing form of burial that only the poorer families would accept. To change this perception and generalize their use, it was suggested to rename them putongxue (regular grave) and set their rate above that of urns used after cremation and under that of small coffins (children).286 The People’s Government also implemented a policy of systematic removal of the downtown cemeteries. The large cemeteries in the heart of the city represented valuable land in a land-hungry society. Shanghai was short on open spaces and building space. Under the foreign settlements, all attempts—it was limited to the Shantung Road Cemetery and the Pootung Sailors’ Cemetery—had failed due to legal objections. The People’s Government was no longer bound by legal considerations, but all the same it had to address the concerns and feelings of the population, as not just foreigners but many Chinese were buried in the cemeteries of the former foreign settlements. And many such families were influential families the government could not disregard. After 1949, the first cemetery on the priority list of the authorities was of course the Shantung Road Cemetery. Work on the cemetery started in November 1951 with the removal of the remains to the Ji’an Cemetery in the Qingpu District. The Shantung Road Cemetery made way for the Shantung Road Sports Hall (Shandonglu Tiyuchang).287 The second cemetery that came under the removal policy was the Bubbling Well Cemetery. The Bureau of Civil Affairs published press announcements to inform the families they had to remove the remains before the end of October 1953 to the Dachang Cemetery. The general policy was to entrust the families with the responsibility and cost of the removal, even if the bureau provided staff and vehicles to assist the families. Yet the latter had to pay for a burial lot at the Dachang Cemetery. If they chose cremation, however, it was free.288 The removal of the graves was not as straightforward as it seemed. Some families had a large stake in burial space. The family of Yan Fuqing, a famous physician and former minister of health, owned eighteen graves in the Bubbling Well Cemetery. The family was reluctant to remove the graves to a remote cemetery. The authorities had to negotiate with Yan Fuqing, who went to Dachang to check out the cemetery and select an appropriate spot. There was no trace of the final issue in the archives, but one can assume that the Yan family had only a narrow margin of maneuver since the government had decided to eliminate the

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Bubbling Well Cemetery. Yet the Yan family felt it was in a position to negotiate the conditions under which the removal would take place, including a cost-free operation and the privilege to select the location for reburial.289 Foreigners also had a stake in the graves, even if for a cemetery such as the Shantung Road Cemetery, which had been closed since 1871, hardly anybody would claim the remains in the graves. For the other cemeteries, however, people had been interred up to the early 1950s. When the People’s Government decided to eliminate the Bubbling Well Cemetery, the British Foreign Office tried its best to contact the families that had graves and inform them of the pending destruction. The British government did not substitute for the families who had to bear the cost of repatriation, but it offered its assistance in dealing with the Chinese authorities. The correspondence, however, shows that most people chose to let the Chinese authorities rebury the remains in Dachang and very few decided to incur the cost of repatriation.290 When the Baxianqiao Cemetery met the same fate in 1957, there was again a flurry of correspondence, though of a more limited nature. The cemetery was older than the Bubbling Well Cemetery and had stopped receiving burials in 1946.291 All the cemeteries previously established in the foreign settlements or by the foreign municipal authorities in Chinese-administered territory underwent the same process. In 1959, the Bureau of Public Utilities proposed to turn the Lokawei Cemetery in the Luwan District into a parking lot. The government of the Luwan District published press announcements in the local newspapers with a June 23 deadline, but given the nature of the cemetery, a paupers’ cemetery, it did not expect many families would claim the remains. There were 2,088 graves, most of which were foreigners (1,994) and only 32 were Chinese. The cost of removing the graves was transferred to the Public Transportation Company, which would benefit from the space. The Office of Funeral Management organized the transfer of the remains to the Ji’an Cemetery. By the end of July, the removal was complete.292 The land of the Zikawei Cemetery was later entrusted to an automobile factory. By the late 1950s, cemeteries had all disappeared from the urban districts. For cemeteries, however, political turmoil had a disastrous impact. The Great Leap Forward was the first major disruptive period. Because of political pressure to focus on production, several cemeteries went into nearcomplete neglect. At the Longhua and Yong’an cemeteries, for instance, the workers only maintained the section devoted to revolutionary heroes. In the other sections, grass and weeds grew everywhere. Before 1949, the municipal government recruited a higher number of temporary workers to keep up with the fast pace of growth in April–October. During the Great Leap Forward, after two years without cleaning, the cemeteries hardly

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looked like cemeteries. Many families expressed their resentment at the poor management, which they compared with the excellent maintenance when the cemeteries were privately run. The invading weeds proved extremely dangerous during the hot season when they became potentially combustible. Several cases of fire occurred when people burned incense. In one case, at the Anping Cemetery, the fire spread so much that it destroyed 260 trees.293 It is quite unusual to think of fires in cemeteries, but during the Great Leap Forward it became possible. The smoke-stained tombstones certainly did nothing to cheer up the concerned families. Another instance of less than adequate management was the “exploitation of the potential of cemeteries” to save land. What this translated into was using all the land around the existing tombs with the sole aim of maximizing the number of tombs. Workers opened graves on all the small alleys that ran through the cemeteries. Sometimes, they opened a grave just in front of a tomb, blocking its access door. In the Meilong Cemetery, the staff even opened graves between existing tombs, leaving absolutely no space in between. When digging up the earth, they sometimes exposed the adjacent coffins. The result was that cemeteries lost their pathways and visiting families had to walk over tombs to reach theirs. Of course, the narrow strips of land between two existing tombs could hardly appeal to the mourning families as a suitable resting place.294 Yet they had to put up with the rather disgraceful treatment unless they turned to cremation. This was not part of a devious scheme to push the population to use cremation. It was simply one of the most extreme outcomes of the political frenzy that overtook China during the Great Leap Forward and of the illusory attempt to seek saving or production by all means and at all cost. Official reports make clear that the situation hurt the feelings of the population.295 The Cultural Revolution brought another onslaught on cemeteries with far deeper consequences. Cemeteries and the rituals the families held therein became one of the targets of the Red Guards’ attack on the Four Olds (dapo sijiu). In 1966, gangs of radical youths literally raided cemeteries to upturn and destroy the tombstones and even dug up coffins and scattered the remains on the ground. Around 400,000 tombs were desecrated and obliterated.296 They targeted the tombs of “counterrevolutionaries” such as Qu Qiubai, whose tomb in Beijing was ransacked, as well as that of his parents in Changzhou, 100 miles from Shanghai. The Red Guards even dug up the tomb of the Song family in the International Cemetery. The appalling action gravely distressed Song Qingling. Zhou Enlai decided to take action and put a stop to the frenzy. Eventually, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) placed the cemeteries under its control. By then, nine cemeteries had already been turned over to various work units (factory,

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hospital, warehouse). The PLA took over the twenty-four remaining cemeteries.297

Conclusion The appalling desecration of cemeteries during the Cultural Revolution and the sheer neglect in which they fell during the Great Leap Forward should not obscure the persistent attachment of the Shanghai population to its cemeteries. Past the frenzy of the mass political campaigns, the political authorities restored order, repaired some of the damaged cemeteries, and opened new ones at the periphery of the municipality. Although cremation became the dominant mode in the years that followed the Cultural Revolution, with rates close to 100 percent in the 1980s, the attachment to earth burial in a cemetery remained. The nature of burial grounds over a century, however, underwent a profound transformation beyond the last political ripples of the 1960s. The funeral landscape around the city juxtaposed two main forms of burial ground, the individual graves scattered all over the countryside and charity cemeteries of the benevolent associations and those of the nativeplace associations. Lineages sometimes maintained a particular place for the graves of their members, but this was not a widespread practice. Rural communities also had a burial ground, but this is not part of the present study. The issue was how to deal with death in the city and the massive number of corpses that had to be buried. Social class drew a sharp dividing line between those who could afford repatriation of the coffin or who had access to a piece of land to erect a tomb outside the city. For the vast majority, including sojourners, there was hardly an alternative to burial in a charity cemetery. As discussed above, charity cemeteries were not attractive places. Despite the goodwill of the benevolent associations that operated such places, they were plain and unkempt burial grounds. Even if common people were buried there, the image of the charity cemeteries were tainted with the stigma of a place for beggars, exposed corpses, sudden deaths, and so on. This may also have contributed to the widespread practice of just leaving a coffin aboveground, on its own, pending later burial or collection of the bones. Historical sources attest to the persistence and massive character of this practice well into the twentieth century. The rise of private modern cemeteries started only in the 1920s, although the Chinese population in Shanghai had been exposed to the presence of such cemeteries in the city with the well-tended foreign graveyards. More than aesthetics or moral values, it was economics that made

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a difference. On the one hand, the population had grown to a point where the system in place could hardly cope with the number of dead bodies. On the other, enterprising individuals saw an opportunity in providing to the population an affordable alternative to charity cemeteries. The modern cemeteries were able to integrate various dimensions of previous practices, including the choice of a proper location, not just for the cemetery and its layout, but for the tombs therein, the preservation of a hierarchy among the tombs depending on their location, and miscellaneous services that would guarantee a peaceful resting place for the dead. The rapid development of modern cemeteries after the 1920s both met a demand among the population as much as they contributed to a change of attitude, through advertising and through the publicized burial of eminent figures (actors and actresses, political figures). The attempt by authorities at the national and local levels to promote burial in cemeteries to fight the practice of scattered individual graves was a dismal failure. The official propaganda and regulations had far less impact in changing social mores than the actual development of private cemeteries. In Shanghai, the municipal government failed to find the resources to fund its plan for four municipal cemeteries and eventually settled for just one. The municipal funeral domain expanded only by chance, with the takeover of the International Settlement, then the foreign cemeteries after 1943. It is also true that the municipal administration suffered from the consequences of war that struck twice and either damaged or locked up access to the municipal cemeteries. War had a far-reaching impact precisely because fighting and occupation centered on the outskirts of the city where most cemeteries were located. Some lost their ground, literally, when Japanese military power condemned the land to make way for military installations. The forced removal of cemeteries was also the result of the less arbitrary but equally inescapable process of urbanization, yet with a clear inequality between Chinese and Western cemeteries. After 1949, the People’s Government basically adopted the regulations and the policy of the previous administration in the early years after the takeover. There was hardly an alternative as the sheer number of deaths pressed the authorities to find space for burials. Private companies continued to dominate the funeral field until the socialization process that took place after 1956. The People’s Government favored the adoption of cremation, but it realized the Chinese were still a long way from turning to this method. The major challenge was to conciliate the imperatives of burial space, the protection of land and the peasants who tilled the earth, and the need to rely on private companies. There was no attempt by the People’s Government to establish municipal cemeteries and to exclude private companies entirely in the early phase. Basically, it relied on the existing

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cemeteries inherited from the foreign settlements and the previous municipality until such time when the national government decided to launch its drive toward the socialization of all the means of production, including the funeral sector. After the situation stabilized with the opening of cemeteries in the periphery and a better control on the population, the People’s Government implemented a policy to remove all the urban cemeteries from the urban districts. Foreign cemeteries were the most visible instances, since they had been spared under the previous administrations, but all cemeteries eventually disappeared. Shanghai lost its last physical markers of death in the city.

Foreign Cemeteries and the Colonial Space of Death  

5

With the signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, the fate of Shanghai took a new course. The establishment of foreign settlements opened a new space that ultimately led to the emergence of three separate administrations within the same city. The economic success of the city brought increasing numbers of foreign immigrants. Westerners figured most prominently in the early decades, but with them came along a mixed lot of colonial subjects, especially soldiers in times of crisis. The Japanese arrived much later, but their community soon overshadowed all other foreign communities altogether. Finally, there were a few cases of refuge-seeking Westerners— Russians in the 1920s and Central European Jews in the late 1930s—who came in sudden waves. The composition of the population in Shanghai became truly international. At the same time, there was more at stake than a too-often glamorized cosmopolitanism. Foreigners administered two major areas of the city and ruled, regulated, and even passed sentence on all matters of urban life. But as much as life, they also had to regulate death or more precisely the management of death. Foreigners came with all kinds of creeds, beliefs, and religions. It meant a lot when it came to death. The urban space was fragmented as much as the social landscape was segregated. Depending on their nationality, people did not enjoy the same rights, dead or alive. This chapter concerns the issue of the management of space for the foreign dead. This is a curious angle from which one can also get a sense of how “colonialism” operated in Shanghai. The focus here is on the foreign settlements since both had to deal with the issue of mortality among their increasing populations. This is about how the Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Municipal Council defined policies on death and marked out territories with various privileges to accommodate the dead. A central

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aspect of this study is about cemeteries as spaces of inclusion and exclusion, tension and contestation, and urban transformation.

Cemeteries as Colonial Markers of Death The reading of Western imperialism seizing Chinese territory with a readymade blueprint to parcel it out and conquer more land over time requires some revision.1 The establishment of “settlements” in treaty ports was conceived by both sides as an expedient, for foreigners, to have a foot on Chinese territory with a large degree of autonomy and, for the Chinese authorities, to manage an alien population by conventional means of setting them apart and making them responsible for their own kind. Within these enclaves, especially in Shanghai, foreigners acquired far more autonomy and power than was written in the treaties, while the settlements evolved into full-blown towns with millions of residents.2 If the Chinese and foreign authorities had probably foreseen problems with the living foreigners, the dead also had to be taken care of. And as the Chinese moved into the foreign enclaves, they also became part of the social and human equation. The extent to which death required the attention of the authorities resulted first from population growth. Foreigners, except in the very early years, were no more than a tiny minority within the whole population. There were about 50 residents in the British settlement in 1845, a couple hundred by 1855, and more than 500 in 1860. After a surge in numbers in 1865 (2,297), the foreign population actually decreased and did not regain its initial level until 1880 (2,197). It resumed its growth, doubling between 1900 (6,774) and 1910 (13,536), again in 1930 (29,997), and almost again in 1942 (57,351). In the French Concession, there was a similar though more modest movement upward, from 460 in 1865—it remained basically at that level until 1900—to 831 in 1905. It increased at a quicker pace thereafter, with the foreign population doubling from the 1910 level (1,476) in 1920 (3,562), 1925 (7,811), 1931 (15,146), and 1942 (29,038).3 In terms of deaths, the annual number among foreigners in the International Settlement was never very substantial compared to that among the Chinese population. As discussed in Chapter 1, it is impossible to compare the figures until 1902, when finally some statistics were kept for the Chinese population. Among foreigners, the number of deaths almost doubled between 1880 (55) and 1900 (97) while the mortality rate decreased. Thereafter, with a fairly stable rate, the yearly number of deaths was multiplied by 5 from 138 in 1902 to 560 in 1936.4 Due to its role as a harbor, there was at any time a large foreign transient population among whom

 

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some unfortunates unexpectedly passed away during their stay. Periods of political tension or outright military confrontation also brought large contingents of foreign troops. Between 1887 and 1907, there were often as many, or even more, visitors who died than there were adult residents.5 What these rough data reveal is that from the beginning several dozen to several hundred foreigners died every year in Shanghai and required local burial.

The Birth of Foreign Cemeteries in Shanghai There were initially no provisions for deaths and burials in the agreements signed between China and foreign countries. The early foreign settlers probably did not foresee they would have to manage deaths and burials. Dispositions on burial grounds came at a later date in the second round of treaties, signed in 1858–1860. Yet people did not wait until such agreements were made to die in the foreign settlements, both Chinese and foreigners. The case of Chinese residents was addressed in a very simple and straightforward way. They were not allowed to be buried in the foreign settlements, in accordance with the initial rule of nonresidence by the Chinese in the settlements. Although that rule was not enforced, the prohibition on burials was maintained. The only exceptions were the existing cemeteries that came to be part of the territory of the settlements as the latter expanded westward. These Chinese cemeteries, for the most part, were established by and for sojourners or charities. The recurrent confrontations and the delicate process of negotiation that accompanied the removal of the Chinese burial grounds in the foreign settlements were discussed in Chapters 2 and 4. The first piece of land (1.3 acres, 8.25 mu) acquired for the purpose of establishing a cemetery was purchased in 1844 at a cost of 730 taels. The title deed of the “Shanghae Cemetery” stated it was meant for “the use of British subjects at this port as a place of interment.”6 The creation of a cemetery by private individuals followed the new pattern established in Great Britain proper with the move away from parish graveyards and the rise of cemeteries as municipal or private ventures.7 In the context of settling in an alien land at a time when there was as yet no formal municipal authority beyond the management of “roads and jetties,” the birth of foreign cemeteries in Shanghai came out of nothing more than the concern by private individuals to provide a decent burial to those who happened to die in the city. The cemetery was instituted as a shareholders’ venture, with 73 shares of 1 tael each taken up by foreign residents. In 1847, the Reverend W. H. Medhurst was made the trustee of the cemetery in the

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collective name of the original shareholders. The “Shanghae Cemetery” was located in the countryside, outside the limits of the settlement, replicating the same pattern as around the walled city. Urban development, however, soon placed the cemetery in the heart of the city.8 It was closed to burials in 1871, by which time it had accommodated 469 graves. The cemetery remained known as the Shantung Road Cemetery. Although the foreign community was small, the number of deaths among visitors, mostly sailors, had immediate consequences on space in the Shanghae Cemetery. In 1855, with fifty foreign sailors interred in the portion of land allotted for that purpose, the cemetery was running out of space. The Committee of the Shanghae Cemetery decided it was time to find another location to accommodate these dead, “out of regard for the health of the community.” The committee emphasized it had no intention of making “invidious distinction between the dead” but it had to provide burial ground for future wants. In 1859, a new subscription bill was circulated among the community to collect the $3,000 necessary for the purchase of a piece of land on Pudong across the Huangpu River (see Map 5.1).9 The Pootung Cemetery was twice as large as the first cemetery (16.22 mu). Yet the Pootung Cemetery was closed in 1904, well before it reached its capacity.10 To a certain degree, one can see the location of this cemetery for the foreign transient population in Pudong in the same light as the charity cemeteries that also favored this area. Symbolically and physically, it set these dead apart from the main community of foreign settlers. A third cemetery opened in 1865 in the form of a joint cemetery, a unique experience that the two settlements did not repeat. In the course of 1865, the Committee for the New Cemetery (a name one finds on maps for a long time) was established to organize the purchase of a large piece of land well into the Chinese countryside beyond the limits of the two settlements (see Map 5.1). This was the first involvement by the French authorities in municipal cemeteries.11 During the first two decades of the settlement, the very small size of the French community hardly called for the establishment of its own burial ground. The New Cemetery was divided into two sections, each settlement taking care of its own. The extension of the French Concession in 1900 placed the cemetery in the middle of its territory, with full control over its use. It created an uneasy situation for the Shanghai Municipal Council, with repeated disputes over mostly minor issues, except about the Muslim cemetery. Thereafter, the two municipal administrations chose to follow their own path and policies. Over time, the private initiatives found it more difficult to cope with the increasing responsibility of providing burial grounds for the expanding local community, especially with the rapid turnover of residents in the early

 

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Shantung Road Cemetery

Pahsienjao

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Pootung Cemetery

map 5.1. Shantung Road Cemetery, New Cemetery (Pahsienjao), and Pootung Cemetery (1900). Source: A Map of the Foreign Settlements at Shanghai, Stanford’s Geographical Establishment, published for the North China Herald and North China Daily News offices, Shanghai, 1900

decades of the foreign settlements. For another part, the movement toward a greater involvement of municipalities in the supply and management of cemeteries in Europe implicitly called for an intervention of the Shanghai Municipal Council in the management of cemeteries. Eventually, by mutual consent, the two cemeteries—Shanghae and Pootung—were transferred to the council in February 1866.12 This marked the end of the privately run foreign cemeteries and the beginning of a larger process of regulating death in the foreign settlements. Only some specific communities of foreigners, as discussed below, continued to own and manage their own cemeteries. During the same period, in fact, the two settlements took over the New Cemetery—later known as the Pahsienjao (Baxianqiao) Cemetery—which also became joint municipal property. Apart from the early private initiatives, cemeteries were also created as a result of circumstances, usually military events that left numerous dead among the troops. Those who died from their wounds during fighting or

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from disease would be buried close to their initial encampment. The first such cemetery was established near the wall of the walled city, on its western side, in Chinese territory. It came to be known as the “Soldiers’ Cemetery.” The cemetery served for only two years, between 1862 and 1865, and accommodated some 300 bodies of soldiers from British regiments who died in 1862–1863.13 The site somehow fell into oblivion as the soldiers were buried without individual tombstones.14 The Shanghai Municipal Council also inherited this cemetery, which proved difficult to maintain with a decent appearance. Nevertheless, the council was relentless in preserving this area.15 While this burial ground went on record, other burial grounds were established for the colonial subjects of British and French troops, but no record or memory of them was preserved.16 In September 1935, a sailor wrote to the North China Daily News about an abandoned cemetery near Wusong. Three days later, a foreign resident, A. Griffin, recalled that the place was a burial ground used for the French Marines. For years, it was indeed abandoned and desecrated. In 1909, a small sum of money had been raised among the French residents, but little had been done. In October 1912, however, the same resident published an article in L’Echo de Chine and obtained the transfer of the remains to the Lokawei Cemetery and the construction of a brick wall around the cemetery.17 Following this exchange of letters, the North China Daily News published a short article titled the “Foreign Cemetery near Woosung.” Although it had been neglected and forgotten for over twenty years, it was still surrounded by a low brick wall that was partly destroyed during the Sino-Japanese hostilities in 1931–1932. It still contained three graves, two of them identified as French nationals, while the rest of the cemetery was cultivated by local peasants.

Population Growth and the Expansion of Municipal Cemeteries The provisions for the burial of foreign residents soon proved inadequate for the size of the population. In 1896, the Shanghai Municipal Council decided to acquire 10 acres (64 mu) of land along Bubbling Well Road to establish a new cemetery (Bubbling Well Cemetery) and a crematorium.18 The new cemetery was located much further west, in Chinese territory, far away from the built-up area, although eventually the urban sprawl caught up with it (see Map 5.2).19 By 1928, however, the Bubbling Well Cemetery was already running out of space. 20 According to the Public Health Department, there was a strong sentimental attachment among (foreign) residents to the cemetery rather than to the Hungjao Cemetery

Zikawe i (1934) Lokawe i (1908)

0

1

P ootung (1859)

S oldie r's Ce m. (1862) Mus lim Ce m.

S is te rs Ce m.

P ahs ie njao (1865)

P ars i Ce m. (1900)

S hantung Road (1844)

S ikh Gurdwara (1907)

Japanese Cem.

S ikh Gurdwara

map 5.2. Foreign cemeteries in Shanghai. Source: Virtual Shanghai

Hong qiao (1926)

Cime tiè re de l'Oue s t (1943)

Bubbling We ll Road (1898)

J e wis h Ce m. (1900)

J apanese Ce m. (1908)

J apane s e Ce m. (1927)

2 km

Cemetery

International Settlement French Concession

Waterway

Railway

Street

J e wis h Ce m. (1917)

J e wis h Ce m. (1941)

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opened a few years earlier, which also served as a paupers’ cemetery (1926). In fact, the Bubbling Well Cemetery was considered “prime burial ground” by the foreign community due to its proximity. Rates were also higher than in the Hungjao Cemetery, which reinforced its social status. In 1939 the cemetery was still in operation, thanks to various alterations that gave it extra space to the expense of shrubberies, workshops, and pathways.21 In the French Concession, pressure on the Pahsienjao Cemetery led to the establishment of a new cemetery in 1905 outside the settlement’s boundaries but right next to Chinese territory, in Lujiawan (Lokawei), to the south of the settlement. After the 1914 extension, the cemetery was included in the settlement. The French authorities managed space in their new cemetery as in France. The Lokawei Cemetery offered grave spaces with various terms: perpetual (506), twenty-five years (40), and fifteen years (247). This regime allowed a certain degree of flexibility and renewal of the graves. The removed bones from the expired concessions were exhumed and reburied in a collective ossuary. This rule applied to the Vietnamese (Annamese) tombs (424) in the Lokawei Cemetery and to the tombs of indigents in the West Cemetery (see below).22 There was also a separate section for soldiers (36). Although not done consciously, the French authorities and residents literally grounded themselves in Chinese soil with a view to staying forever.23 The statistical figures for burials in the Lokawei Cemetery show a sharp ascending curve in relation to population increase, with the number of burials doubling every five years. Altogether, the Lokawei Cemetery contained 1,377 graves. Even if there was a program of excavation, it failed to keep pace with the acceleration of burials therein (see Figure 5.1). In 1934, the French Municipal Council eventually decided to open a third cemetery further west, also outside its boundaries, in Zikawei, for free pauper burials.24 In September 1939, there were 738 individual graves.25 No other statistical record could be found, although the 560 unclaimed victims of the Great World bombing on 14 August 1937 were all buried there. By 1939, the Lokawei Cemetery was running out of space. The margin for expansion was found in the Vietnamese section. The previous rule had been to exhume the graves after twenty years and remove the remains to an ossuary. It was decided to implement a program of early removal and disinter the Vietnamese remains to make room for new perpetual graves. Yet there was no end to this process with population increase in the settlement.26 In November 1939, the director of municipal services proposed to purchase a new track of land for a new cemetery in the outside roads area, but this was not followed up.27

203

 

Foreign Cemeteries and the Colonial Space of Death 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

1918

1923

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1938

figure 5.1. Number of burials in the Lokawei Cemetery (1918–1938). Source: “Inhumations à Lokawei,” 1933, U38-1-1008; Letter, Directeur des services to Directeur général, 11 December 1939, U38-4-3280, Shanghai Municipal Archives

By September 1942 the authorities observed the sharp increase in mortality among foreigners (116 up to September 1942 versus 75 in 1941). Both in Lokawei and Zikawei, work had to be done to open new space, but in both cases no extension was feasible. In Zikawei, there remained only 170 spaces for burial. The secretary general again advised using municipal property to create a new cemetery for paupers. The last addition to municipal cemeteries—the Cimetière de l’Ouest (thereafter West Cemetery)—was established in July 1943 to receive the bodies of indigents, mostly foreigners without resources in the Russian community. At the same time, the status of the other two cemeteries slightly changed. Lokawei was devoted entirely to perpetual concessions, while Zikawei offered only fifteen-year grave space. The West Cemetery was reserved for paupers’ burials.28 There was no charge for burial ground, but there was a time limit. The right to a burial place rested upon a clear hierarchy based on wealth and ethnicity. In the International Settlement, the Shanghai Municipal Council followed the same pattern of moving the location of its cemeteries west and establishing them outside its official boundaries. In 1926, the decision was made to acquire a large tract of land that would be prepared and used as demand arose. The new cemetery was located in the Hongqiao area and came to be known as the Hungjao Cemetery. The Shanghai Municipal

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Council implemented a subtle rate policy that made the Bubbling Well Cemetery more expensive and the Hungjao Cemetery more affordable. As in other aspects of social life in foreign Shanghai, the rate policy drew lines between the most well off and the rest of the population. This policy did not follow the general pattern in Great Britain or France where such differences were eliminated. To the contrary, the pressure on burial space and the conditions of war combined to reinforce the differential rates and reserved the Bubbling Well Cemetery for the richer segments of the foreign population.29 The Hungjao Cemetery underwent several extensions over time (1932, 1933, and 1935).30 The availability of farmland around allowed for such continuous expansion, especially after 1937, when the rise in mortality rates required more burial space. As the city expanded, cemeteries followed a pattern of migration westward where farmland was available at a low cost (see Map 5.2). Death contributed to the colonization of land beyond the limits of the foreign settlements. The urban space was dotted with these permanent burial grounds that came to be fully included in the city, except for the last two additions. As we shall see, other “dots” appeared over time, but their lack of official status made them vulnerable to destruction. Overall, the western area of Shanghai actually became a “cemetery area,” a phenomenon made even more pronounced during the war, as discussed in Chapter 3. The Nationalist authorities confirmed this less than enviable status after the war when they included Hongqiao among the three designated “cemetery areas” (gongmuqu) around Shanghai.31

The General Policies of Cemetery Management For whom were the cemeteries? On the surface, the answer to this question seems simple. After all, cemeteries were created for the benefit of Shanghai residents. Yet, in life as in death, rights were not the same among Shanghai residents due to not only ethnic divisions but also religious differences and residential patterns. The Western settlers created spaces for their enjoyment to which one was admitted according to ethnicity, wealth, religion, and so on.32 When it came to death, each settlement cared for its own residents although, of course, reality was more complex. Among Westerners, issues of religion drew hard lines when it came to burial. The general rule that applied was the exclusion of the Chinese from the municipal cemeteries. The cemeteries were reserved for the foreign population, actually to the Western residents. Over time, however, it became problematic to exclude all Chinese, even if no policy was ever designed to take care of the dead among the Chinese population. The Japanese were not welcome

 

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either, and by virtue of their own self-organization, they established their own burial grounds. In the French Concession, for example, the authorities tried to limit access to the Lokawei Cemetery to its residents, but they also had to take into account the transient foreign population that happened to die on their territory. To sort out “right-holders,” a different set of rates applied for residents and nonresidents. This rule was introduced in 1926 and maintained until 1943.33 The same held true in the International Settlement, but defining “residents” and “nonresidents” proved to be a tricky question. In 1933, the Public Health Department proposed a text that would first define residents according to nationality.34 Therefore, the French residents, as well as other foreign nationals living in the French Concession and, of course, all Chinese, would have been excluded from the cemeteries of the settlement. Yet the Shanghai Municipal Council realized that many of its former residents had moved to the French Concession and might die there, even if they could claim a right to a burial in the settlement.35 In the 1930s, excluding the Chinese—actually Christian Chinese—also proved politically and religiously sensitive and even offensive. Eventually, the Shanghai Municipal Council came to the conclusion that a formal scheme would cause too much trouble if made public. It did not shelf the idea entirely and decided to use it within its own bureaucracy. Basically, it favored restricting cemeteries to Christian burials, even if it admitted that, “on a strict municipal basis, non-Christian ratepayers are entitled to be treated on parity with Christian ratepayers.” To manage a way out of this dilemma, the Shanghai Municipal Council reserved for itself the right to make such rules as it saw fit to restrict the use of cemeteries to the burial of Christians.36 This issue was not discussed again until 1937 when pressure on burial ground increased as a result of war.37 The Chinese had been “admitted” in the Bubbling Well Cemetery by way of reservations of burial ground. By 1913, however, the increase in such applications caused some alarm to the Public Health Department, which asked for instructions. Prior to 1913, occasionally, the Chinese “having professed Christianity” were buried there. Since 1912, population increase and the success of conversion also meant that more Chinese wanted to be buried in this cemetery. The health inspector reviewed three options, and only one appeared workable: to limit the number of burials of Chinese to around twenty per year pending the creation of a cemetery for the Chinese.38 The Shanghai Municipal Council found it advisable to purchase a suitable site, when the opportunity was offered, as a burial ground for the Chinese.39 Thereafter, the existing cemeteries would be reserved for foreigners only. Ten years later, however, the Shanghai Municipal Council had not done anything in this direction.40

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that the graveyard started to fill up. The guild also faced the same issue of urbanization. A vibrant district, Zhabei, had developed and threatened to absorb its graveyard, located on prime land, right behind the busy North Railway Station. Whereas in 1896 Zhabei had hardly existed, by 1920 the whole area was covered with streets, workshops, and rows of houses.44 After much debate, in 1924 the guild purchased a very large track of land (49 acres, 300 mu) between Jiangwan and Dachang, two small towns a few miles to the north. The guild funded the project from its reserve (116,000 yuan), which it supplemented with donations by Cantonese sojourners (238,000 yuan), grave reservation fees (105,000 yuan), and loans from Chinese banks (83,000 yuan). Altogether, the guild invested 538,000 yuan in its graveyard.45 Yet the purchased land was located in a remote place without road access. The guild asked the Hubei Bureau of Works, Police, and Taxes (Hubei Gongxunjuanju) to open a road, to no avail. The Shanghai Municipal Government eventually opened a road three years later, but in the meantime the guild was not able to use its brand new cemetery.46 The consecration of the cemetery took place on 30 August 1930 with a whole body of Daoist and Buddhist priests. Opera companies performed Cantonese and Beijing opera. The ceremonies lasted for several days between 30 August and 20 September.47 However, it was not until 1932 that the new cemetery became fully operational. The Guang-Zhao Guild was very proud of its cemetery and adopted a strict set of rules. The charter claimed that the Guang-Zhao Cemetery should be a modern “model cemetery.”48 The cemetery was open to all Cantonese irrespective of their origin. Smaller Cantonese organizations kept their own cemeteries, but the Guang-Zhao Cemetery, although formally devoted to the sojourners from the Guangzhou and Zhao qing counties, had an all-encompassing vocation.49 In its documents, the Guang-Zhao Guild referred explicitly to the 200,000-strong Cantonese community in Shanghai.50 The large cemetery was expected to accommodate 10,000 public (or “model”) graves, 15,000 pauper graves, and 8,000 children graves. The cemetery charged a fee for the model graves and used the proceeds to pay for the burial of paupers. The model tombs came with a perpetual lease, whereas the paupers’ tombs were excavated after ten years, the bones placed in urns and reburied. The guild claimed this accorded with the practice in Cantonese society and respected the sensibility of the people.51 Although the cemetery was located in the area where heavy fighting took place in August to November 1937, it was saved from major damage. After the war, the guild launched a general cleaning of the cemetery and a program of restoration of the roads and tombs.52 Yet inflation eroded the financial capacities of the guilds. In January 1947, the income from the sale

 

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A Place for Each, but Each in Its Own Place: Ethnic Cemeteries In terms of foreign population, Shanghai was home—albeit often a temporary one—to a myriad of nationalities. The 1935 census listed fifty-one different national groups in the two foreign settlements. Yet nationalities do not tell the whole story as colonial subjects of the major powers were sometimes listed under the “main” nationality. Some communities were permanent and acquired a certain size, while some came to Shanghai for a short time, usually with the military, and went home. Yet, while they were there, they left behind their dead, which more often than not were buried in specific places and forgotten. Even the more stable communities, such as the Japanese or the Baghdadi Jews, had “rotating” burial grounds before being settled in one final resting place (see Map 5.2). The geography of death in Shanghai, therefore, was a constantly unfolding process, with new and vanishing places, to meet the needs of individual communities. The Shanghai Municipal Council as well as the French Municipal Council actually never wanted to be involved in establishing and running cemeteries for specific communities. There were issues of cost but also of principles, even if these principles were not adhered to when it came to the majority group of Western Christians. Only two community cemeteries were sponsored by the Shanghai Municipal Council: one for Muslims and one for Jewish refugees. In both cases the Shanghai Municipal Council made a free gift of a piece of land. It further justified its lack of concern for the Chinese population as respect for its “traditions”: By custom of long standing, cemeteries in China are provided by families, guilds and benevolent societies—it is because it is not in the established custom for municipal authorities to provide cemeteries for Buddhists that the Shanghai Municipal Council has refrained from attempting anything of the kind, knowing that to disregard this custom would involve interference with the authority and influence exercised by families, guilds, and benevolent institutions.48

This was obviously an ex post facto rationalization of a complete disregard for the needs of the Chinese population, even if we take into account the practice of shipping back the coffins to the native place, as discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. The foreign settlements never made any arrangement for the burial of their Chinese residents.

Colonial Subjects With the French came colonial troops, mostly from Indochina. Vietnamese (“Annamites”) were assigned to Shanghai in times of crisis as part of

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the colonial contingents that were sent to protect the settlement. The first batch arrived in 1900, but it became a regular practice after 1907.49 They were also recruited as permanent officers in the Garde Municipale (French police), playing the same role as the Sikhs did in the Shanghai Municipal Police. Many of these transient or permanent Vietnamese residents, as well as members of their families, died in Shanghai.50 The policy toward the burial of colonial subjects in the French Concession followed the same principle of inclusion as for all other foreign residents in the settlement but with different rights. They were interred in a separate section of the Lokawei Cemetery where 424 graves were reserved to them. After a period of twenty years, however, their remains were excavated and placed in an ossuary.51 During the war, however, the cemetery filled in more quickly due to the considerable increase of the “foreign element” in the settlement. The French Municipal Council initiated a program by which the lease was reduced to fifteen years to accelerate the turnover of grave sites.52 The Sikhs were also a prominent element of the British colonial presence in Shanghai. They worked in the police force but also as private guards and in various menial jobs. They constituted a permanent community of substantial size with specific burial practices. A major feature in Sikh religion was the cremation of dead bodies. The first cremation site—gurdwara—was established outside the city, north of Hongkou.53 The gurdwara was poorly maintained but above all was located in an unfavorable environment, lowland often covered with water. In 1911, a Sikh assistant superintendent of police asked the Shanghai Municipal Council to do some work on the site.54 The Shanghai Municipal Council installed the gurdwara in another place close by, across from Hongkew Park. The housing development nearby made it difficult to maintain it and two years later a new location was proposed along Rifle Range (see Map 5.2).55 By 1923, however, shooting practice required another move. This was the last displacement. The gurdwara was a simple installation described as “merely a concrete slab in the open air.”56 Although there was a strong preference for cremation on the gurdwara site, its location at the northern fringe of the city exposed it to the ravages of war. On two occasions, in 1932 and 1937, the outbreak of Sino-Japanese hostilities ruled out any cremation at the abandoned and damaged site. Cremations were performed at the Bubbling Well Crematorium, as in the aftermath of the 1932 Sino-Japanese hostilities.57 A 1900 map also shows a “Parsee Cemetery” (Parsi), which all subsequent maps failed to mention.58 The Parsi did not normally bury their dead, but with so little information, it is difficult to speculate on this site. Since the Parsi community mostly disappeared from Shanghai at the end of the nineteenth century, no care was taken of the cemetery. It eventually melted into the urban landscape.

 

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Muslims have been present in Shanghai among the Chinese population. Maps show a spate of Muslim cemeteries on both sides of the post-1900 southern limit of the French Concession. These were cemeteries established by the Chinese community. Many Muslims, however, came as members of the British colonial troops, mostly from India. The French also brought troops drawn from their colonies in North Africa, although they were never numerous. Since the early cemeteries were established for British subjects of the Christian faith, Muslims had to be accommodated elsewhere. The first mention of a Muslim cemetery appears in a correspondence in 1910. We learn that a piece of land was purchased at the southwestern corner of the Pahsienjao Cemetery some years before. One-third was filled by Muslims who had come at the time of the Boxer Rebellion. In 1910, the representative of the mosque, R. Rajabally, asked the Shanghai Municipal Council to purchase an additional piece of land to enlarge the burial ground for Muslims. After some quibbling, the Shanghai Municipal Council eventually agreed to provide 3 mu of land. The final decision rested with the French Municipal Council on whose land the cemetery was to be located.59 There began a trail of correspondence that clearly revealed the reluctance of the French authorities to accept an extension of the Muslim cemetery. They flatly refused to grant an extension “for reasons of public interest,” which meant that, since the extension of the settlement in 1900, all deposition of coffins was prohibited.60 The French Municipal Council remained adamant about not authorizing another extension. It could not prevent the Shanghai Municipal Council from using its current land holding for the Muslim cemetery, but it refused the purchase of the adjoining lots. In 1940, the Shanghai Municipal Council still owned the land it had bought to extend the cemetery but had to leave it vacant.61

Non-Christian Foreigners Jewish settlers were among the first to come to Shanghai after the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. Several of them became exceptionally successful. The names Sassoon and Hardoon are the most famous, but a much larger community developed over time. A second significant wave of Jewish Russian refugees came on the heels of the Bolshevik Revolution in the late 1910s. Finally, a third wave came from Central Europe, Germany, and Austria to flee Nazi persecution.62 Of course, the very different conditions under which these various groups came—the difference in size too— implied different forms of accommodation when it came to burial. As with other minority communities, a permanent ground was not found until late.

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A map of 1900 shows a Hebrew cemetery along Bubbling Well Road, next to the racecourse. It was still listed eighteen years later on a 1919 map of the city, but not on subsequent maps.63 The first stable Jewish cemetery was established by the community itself off Baikal Road. It served the whole Jewish community well into the late-1930s. In February 1936, a real estate company wrote to the Shanghai Municipal Council—on behalf of the Jewish community—to be allowed to purchase additional lots on Kwenming Road to extend the cemetery. The Shanghai Municipal Council expressed no objection.64 In fact, the archival record shows that the Public Works Department offered to sell an 11-mu lot in another location, in the easternmost part of the Yangshupu District on Glen Road.65 After 1939, however, the Shanghai Municipal Council had to face the issue of the high number of deaths among the Jewish refugee community. The Jewish cemetery on Baikal Road had space, but it was only open to people who could afford the cost of burial spaces therein. The Shanghai Municipal Council debated whether it would set a “dangerous precedent” by setting aside a portion of the Hungjao Cemetery for the Jewish refugees. It feared that other communities would expect similar favorable treatment and apply for their own specific section. The Shanghai Municipal Council considered giving money to the community to purchase a piece of land, but eventually the Public Health Department’s view prevailed to reserve a corner of the Hungjao Cemetery as a Jewish burial ground.66 Although the Shanghai Municipal Council had decided it would not provide cemeteries for specific communities, it made an exception in this case due to the large size of a largely impoverished community. The opening of this burial section failed to solve the problem of a Jewish cemetery in the long run. In December 1940, the representatives of the Jewish Liberal Community applied for a piece of land to bury the dead according to Jewish customs.67 In December 1939, there was an argument about whether to make land in the Hungjao Cemetery available free of charge.68 The major problem, however, was the distance between Hong kou, where most of the Jewish refugees lived, and the Hungjao Cemetery, which was at the other end of the city. The matter was finally settled in March 1941, when the Public Health Department and Public Works Department won the argument to give out a piece of land located at the corner of Point Road and Liping Road at the far end of the Eastern District.69 While this provided a temporary respite, the cemetery proved inadequate to meet the high mortality rate among the Jewish community.70 In September 1943, the Juedische Gemeinde informed the Shanghai Municipal Council that there were only six burial spaces left in the Jewish cemetery.71 The Shanghai Municipal Council tried to stick to its principle, but

 

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eventually it gave in and authorized the Public Works Department to sell an additional 3 mu of land.72 The Chinese municipality also faced the issue of a burial ground for Jewish residents after the war. Even with the departure of most Jewish residents after 1945, it took time before the community resettled elsewhere. In April 1946, a Jewish organization, the Ashkenazi Hevra Kadisha Society, asked a Chinese lawyer to initiate contacts to establish a new cemetery in the city. The application led to a very interesting situation. Although the municipal government officially restricted the creation of new cemeteries, the Bureau of Public Health stated that its policy did not apply to foreigners. Even more surprising, it did not reject the selected location along Hongqiao Road, slightly beyond the railway line, even if the planned cemetery was located in an urban district and not in one of the three zones to which new Chinese cemeteries were restricted.73 Perhaps this was due to the fact that it was adjacent to the International Cemetery. The Bureau of Public Health noted that eventually this cemetery would become the Jewish section of the International Cemetery. Yet there was a final hurdle, as foreigners could not legally purchase land in China.74 The Bureau of Land proposed a solution to circumvent the legal restriction: the cemetery would be a municipal cemetery reserved for the Jewish people, but all the costs would be borne by the Jewish association.75 The Municipal Senate approved the operation and work started almost at once, although it caused some friction with the neighbors and the local dibao.76 This must have been the last Jewish, and even foreign, cemetery created in Shanghai. Despite the importance of the Japanese community in the city, little evidence remains of its cemeteries. At the turn of the century, a cemetery existed west of the pre-1899 limits of the International Settlement, along what would become Carter Road. This burial ground was still visible on 1908 and 1919 maps, but it disappeared thereafter.77 As the community concentrated in the Hongkou area, a new burial ground was established north of Shanghai.78 Yet it has not been possible to find documentary evidence of Japanese cemeteries until the early 1930s, except for passing mentions of a small military cemetery near Wusong. Navy officials regularly paid their respect upon leaving Shanghai.79 In 1932, the Shanghai Municipal Council signed an agreement with the Japanese Amalgamated Association of Street Unions of Shanghai to rent a piece of land of 0.5 acre (2.9 mu) for twenty years on the east side of Kiangwan Road in the Chinese municipality to be used as a Shinto shrine.80 Yet, whether out of financial trouble or on purpose, by 1938 the association had defaulted on the payment of the rent.81 After the occupation of the International Settlement by the Japanese army, the shrine expanded by 3 acres (18.8 mu) with a new

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lease of twenty years starting in 1942. Eventually, the site of the Shinto shrine was one of the largest foreign cemeteries in Shanghai (5.1 acres).82 After the war, the municipal government inherited the Japanese cemetery, although it did not turn it into a municipal cemetery. In fact, there remained a few thousand Japanese residents after 1946. In May 1946, the association representing the Japanese community asked permission to use the cemetery to bury its dead.83 The mayor approved its temporary use as a cemetery by the Japanese residents. Yet the municipality was already considering claiming back the land and the repeated plundering of graves led to its closure.84 The military conquest of Shanghai by the Japanese military failed to bring any significant change in cemetery policy. In December 1942, a Ceylonese Buddhist, D. W. S. Kelambi, asked the Japanese-dominated Shanghai Municipal Council to allow Buddhists to use municipal chapels and cemeteries for their funeral services and burials. He made a point of denouncing past Western dominance: “When the Shanghai Municipal Council was solely monopolized by British hands, any Buddhist or Hindu upon his death was denied a resting place unless the body was baptized postmortem in any of the Municipal cemeteries [. . .] This is one of the many unjust and unfair treatments meted out by the Anglo-American complex, and which was outrageous to the entire Asiatic population.” Japanese dominance notwithstanding, the standing policy of the Shanghai Municipal Council did not change. The Public Health Department noted that chapels had been open to all creeds since 1899 and suggested that opening burials to all creeds would fill up the cemeteries very fast. The Shanghai Municipal Council came to the conclusion that available space in the Shanghai Municipal Council cemeteries was insufficient to accommodate persons of the Buddhist faith and, similar to its British predecessors, suggested that the cost of such a cemetery be borne by the concerned community.85

Paupers’ Cemeteries The establishment of cemeteries by the authorities of the two foreign settlements was also guided by the need to make burial grounds available to the less affluent members of the foreign community. Each cemetery had a section where paupers were buried. The Bubbling Well and Pahsienjao cemeteries had a reserved sector for these burials, although the largest part was reserved for those who could afford the price of a grave for their dead. After 1926, all paupers’ burials in the International Settlement were moved to the Hungjao Cemetery. With the increase in the foreign population,

 

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especially people who came with limited resources and found it difficult to find their place in the economically competitive environment, the need for burial grounds where such people could be buried free of charge or at a low price also increased. One such example was the Russian community, whose members belonged in the majority to low-income groups. In the International Settlement, the Shanghai Municipal Council reserved a section for impoverished Russians in the Hongqiao Cemetery. It also opened a small cemetery on Columbia Road during the war. Yet the notion of pauper included a larger range of people: all those who could not afford the cost of a burial and a grave in a public or private cemetery. In the French Concession, the Lokawei Cemetery served almost exclusively for the burial of paupers, especially Russians. When Lokawei started to fill up, two new cemeteries opened to accommodate the bodies of the poor and destitute: Zikawei followed by the Western Cemetery. These offered only the bare minimum. The paupers’ section of municipal cemeteries looked like ordinary Chinese burial grounds. Coffins were buried just below the surface and covered with earth that formed “unsightly mounds” in the view of a local newspaper that advocated leveling the ground into a flat lawn with a small marking stone signaling the presence of a grave.86 Paupers’ cemeteries were also the most exposed to abuse and destruction. After 1939, the Japanese seized the Russian cemetery west of Hongqiao to build a surveillance post. Then the Chinese police built a police station, which the Bureau of Police took over after 1945. The Bureau of Public Health was never able to regain its control over the cemetery.87 What emerged from these developments and policies was a pattern of juxtaposition of burial grounds for each subgroup. All claims to “cosmopolitanism” notwithstanding, cemeteries reflected the ethnic and social dividing lines that ran through the social body in the foreign settlements. Hybridity could be found, to a certain extent, in the cemeteries designed for Westerners, although the hard core for admission remained set on a mix of religion (Christianity) and ethnicity (Westerner). French cemeteries allowed for more encompassing hybridity, but with unequal rights (Vietnamese). With slightly diverging views on cemetery policy, the two foreign administrations imposed their own cultural and political hegemony on the territories of death in the city, including those outside their own boundaries.

The Preservation of Colonial Memories Cemeteries are meant to last, though not necessarily forever. In the case of Western cemeteries in Shanghai, issues of religion, memory, and law

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contributed to the preservation of cemeteries long after they had been closed. In 1918, the Shanghai Municipal Council projected to reinter the remains in the Shantung Road Cemetery (the original Shanghae Cemetery) and rebuild the Shantung Hospital on the site.88 Although the trail of documents is thin, it appears the matter was dropped due to legal complications. In 1925, again, the Shanghai Municipal Council consulted its legal adviser about using the burial ground for a new fire station. The adviser stated that the removal of graves and remains was open to contestation by the heirs of the deceased. Even if the chances were low—the cemetery had been closed since 1871—the Shanghai Municipal Council decided to give up.89 In 1939, the Public Works Department rejected a new proposal by a private company to turn the cemetery into a parking lot.90 The last document found is about an unsuccessful attempt to turn the cemetery into an open space and sell frontage for buildings. Yet the precedent of selling a portion of the Pootung Cemetery and removing the remains in the Soldiers’ Cemetery, with the verbal consent of the British Consulate, failed to provide enough legal support. By 1940, the land occupied by the cemetery represented a passive asset worth about $1,000,000.91 In the postwar period, the Bureau of Public Health took a different view and argued there was no legal objection to removing graves from cemeteries. Nevertheless, it refrained from taking action in view of the susceptibility among the foreign population.92 The Pootung Cemetery was also the object of regular solicitations to use part of its ground. For a long time, the Shanghai Municipal Council abode with a strict line of not allowing any infringement and protecting the nature of the site as a burial ground. The location of the cemetery, however, caused some problems when the area came to be covered with factories and wharves. The presence of a cemetery that cut the frontage of a river into two disconnected sections created an obstacle to circulation between the factories and the wharves. The Shanghai Municipal Council denied both right-of-passage and pathway to the foreshore.93 Even the application of a Protestant parish was rejected.94 Eventually, the Shanghai Municipal Council softened its position in part under the pressure of the companies, in part because it was seen as advantageous to have the companies pay for the cost of erecting and maintaining a fence and a gate at each end.95 The erection of illegal Chinese huts forced the Shanghai Municipal Council to consider selling the foreshore part to avoid further colonization.96 In 1932, after a negotiation with the municipality, the Chinese police expelled the fifty-nine families of squatters (see Figure 5.2) who, however, received a financial indemnity.97 The Shanghai Municipal Council wasted no time in putting the land on sale, which brought a large sum of money to the council.98

 

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figure 5.2. Squatter huts in the Pootung Cemetery. Source: U1-16-2536, Shanghai Municipal Archives

The Soldiers’ Cemetery, next to the former wall that surrounded the city, posed a more complex challenge. Despite its small size, it represented a much higher stake in terms of memory among Western residents. Whereas the Pootung Cemetery was treated as a second-rank burial ground, the Soldier’s Cemetery held a privileged status in the eyes of the Shanghai Municipal Council leaders. It had proved difficult to maintain since the 1860s, but the destruction of the wall in 1912 brought serious concern about its preservation. The press related the poor condition of this forgotten and neglected cemetery. In 1907, the Shanghai Municipal Council had leveled the enclosure and converted it into “a little green sanctuary amidst a wilderness of squalor” according to the North China Herald.99 There may have been some exaggeration in this idyllic description of the place because this remote portion of land amidst a densely populated area was exposed to various forms of encroachment. The major issue was its use as a dumping ground, which remained a constant problem. In 1924, a Chinese company put up advertising signboards which the Shanghai Municipal Council found intolerable. It pressured the Chinese authorities and obtained the removal of the signboards.100 Because of these repeated incidents, the Shanghai Municipal Council considered removing the graves to one of its own cemeteries in 1929 but was unable to solve the thorny

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issue of rights over the remains.101 The Shanghai Municipal Council was tempted to sell the land, valued at $13,000 per mu in 1933, to the Chinese municipal government, as the latter was interested in turning it into a park. The absence of an official title deed foiled the proposal, which the British consulate opposed.102 In 1938, the superintendent of cemeteries once more reported its deplorable conditions after the hostilities in late 1937. The place was full of rubbish from the No. 7 Refugee Camp and there were six coffins placed aboveground.103 The Shanghai Municipal Council approached the consulate with a proposal to remove the remains to the Hungjao Cemetery and provide them with a memorial.104 After a lengthy process that involved the successors of the regiments in the United Kingdom to which the soldiers had belonged, the operation was implemented in November through December 1938.105 Instead of the 2,000 bodies Couling and Lanning claimed in their semiofficial history of the city, the workers of the Shanghai Municipal Council found only 316 adult bodies and 2 children.106 The English-language press was ecstatic about the removal: “New Graves for Taiping Heroes” and “Romantic Old Burial Ground Has Now Been Abandoned.”107 The removal of the remains turned into an ode to the great sacrifices made by Westerners (the British) to protect and save Shanghai. It became part of an exercise in “memory building” based on the reading of Shanghai history exclusively through Western eyes. The memorial was unveiled at a grand ceremony on 3 October 1939. The English-language press reported extensively on the event, which brought together civic, religious, diplomatic, and military representatives of Western countries.108 Neither the list of guests nor the photographs seem to have included Chinese dignitaries. There was only one short report in the Shenbao.109 In February 1949, the North China Daily News published a scathing critique of the poor maintenance of foreign cemeteries. It raised the case of the small cemetery opened in 1941 across the Columbia Road Cemetery to bury indigent Russians and Jews. The article used strong words and a dramatic tone to highlight the desecration of the cemetery: “Ten of the graves are empty and desecrated by human excrement,” “a few human bones litter the ground,” and “they were disinterred by vandals.” There was no case for such criticism, even if the Bureau of Public Health admitted in its internal memorandum that there was neglect in handling the cemetery. In its reply to the newspaper, the bureau stated it was not robbers who had dug up bones to steal jewels and other valuable objects or to take away coffin wood as firewood. The families themselves had requested the permission to move the remains to the Hongqiao Cemetery or to cremate them. They did not want the graves to stay near a paupers’ cemetery. Since work was recent, the land had not yet been flattened and

 

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the outside appearance was misleading. Yet the bureau did not mention the fact that refugees had indeed taken wood away to use as firewood, as noted in an internal report.110 The misguided article by the North China Daily News was representative of the particular sensitivity that surrounded foreign cemeteries as sacred ground to be protected at all cost. A foreign resident sent a similar scathing critique about the poor maintenance of the Shantung Road Cemetery two months later.111 Cemeteries carved out spaces in both the urban physical ground and social landscape. The colonial subjects and the minority groups, except for the large self-contained Japanese population, did not enjoy the same rights as the members of the majority of Western settlers. They had to take care of themselves or depend on the reluctant benevolence of the authorities. Even in the more public-minded French Concession access to burial ground followed a clear hierarchical pattern. On the other hand, the “feature” cemeteries were the object of constant care and protection. Attempts to recover their space for other purposes, as with the Shantung Road Cemetery, were foiled by the fear of encountering legal and religious challenge. Cemeteries that were part of the “history” of Westerners in Shanghai, for example, the Pootung Cemetery or more evidently the Soldiers’ Cemetery, provided the occasion for small or large ceremonies when it came to transferring the remains of their occupants. Such ceremonies nourished the colonial memory and vision of the city.

Cemeteries as Spaces of Contestation Burial grounds created all kinds of friction. In the early days of the foreign settlements, the individual tombs scattered all around the walled city were a constant problem for the management of land. The area outside the wall served as a place of burial for the local population, pretty much as was the rule throughout the countryside around Shanghai. The presence of a large population, of course, increased the density of tombs in the area that became the settlements. This was especially true in the French Concession, although the westward extension of the foreign enclaves absorbed hamlets and villages around which graves were to be found. Most of the time, the removal of the individual tombs was negotiated with the owner if the family was still around. It rarely created a problem. As for cemeteries, however, their removal or transformation was more delicate. The French authorities were able to negotiate the removal of the Fujianese cemetery after they obtained the section of the riverfront south of their original limit.112 Yet, as shown in Bryna Goodman’s study, the handling of the Siming Gongsuo Cemetery became a tug of war

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that escalated twice into riots.113 Even in less violent forms of opposition by the Chinese population, the foreign authorities were sometimes unable to have their way. As in the French Concession, the Shanghai Municipal Council was powerless over Chinese cemeteries that existed prior to the extension of the foreign settlements. While it avoided a confrontational approach, the council maintained a strong grip on a piece of land it would have liked to disappear. In 1893, a cemetery owned by the Tongren Fuyuantang—a charitable institution devoted to collecting and burying exposed corpses and abandoned coffins in the city—happened to have been included within the newly demarcated boundaries of the “American Hongkew Settlement.”114 The Shanghai Municipal Council signed an agreement with the benevolent association establishing that it would not build roads across from or interfere with the cemetery. The charity, for its part, had to maintain the place in good order and avoid anything offensive or injurious to health.115 In 1902, the Shanghai Municipal Council proposed to purchase the land to build a Chinese public school. While the Tongren Fuyuantang initially gave its consent, influential members within and outside of the organization expressed considerable opposition, including a demonstration before the seat of the county magistrate. The Shanghai Municipal Council backtracked and purchased another piece of land. Yet it also imposed a new agreement on the charity by which the latter was prohibited from using the land for another purpose or selling it.116 This marked the beginning of a quiet but persistent tug-of-war between the Tongren Fuyuantang and the Shanghai Municipal Council. In 1906, we learn from a report by the chief engineer that the cemetery was dirty and neglected.117 The file on the cemetery in the subsequent years shows mostly correspondence or reports by public health inspectors that point to the “considerable quantity of garbage and debris dumped over cemetery walls.”118 In 1930, the Shanghai Municipal Council again attempted to obtain the cemetery and turn it into a public park. The plan was to make a swap with the Chinese municipal government in exchange for the Soldiers’ Cemetery in Nanshi. The proposal failed.119 Two years later, the same offer to create a public park was made to the Tongren Fuyuantang through the municipal government, but the Shanghai Municipal Council was unsuccessful.120 The cemetery continued to be used as before in a way that brought constant criticism from the health inspectors of the council. A 1933 colored map of the cemetery shows a stall for the sale of second-hand goods, squatter-type dwellings, human excrement, and so on.121 In March 1936, a report noted the use of the cemetery as a playground for football, the presence of squatter huts, and even a woman dying her wool.122 A company contacted the Shanghai Municipal Council

 

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about the possibility of building on the cemetery, following a request by the Tongren Fuyuantang to vacate all the graves. The benevolent association may have tried to test the Shanghai Municipal Council’s dispositions indirectly, but the council reasserted its position that no change could be made to the use of the land. In fact, it appears the cemetery was never put to another use, at least up to 1940. A school applied to use it as a playground in the spring of 1937, but the Shanghai Municipal Council turned down the proposal. The school principal described the cemetery “like a wilderness, as before the war . . . [it] has become filthier than ever. Residents in the neighborhood use the place to dry their laundry and rowdies [. . .] frequently put up gambling stalls. Garbage is dumped all over the place.”123 In February 1938, the Shanghai Federation of Charity Organizations was allowed to establish sheds for refugees on the cemetery.124 In 1940, the cemetery was no longer a refugee camp and had reverted to its original usage as an “open space.”125 Despite its pressures and regulating powers, the Shanghai Municipal Council was both unable to obtain the sale of the cemetery land for its profit and unable to regulate the use of the land in a satisfactory manner. The restrictions imposed in 1893 and the failed attempt to purchase it in 1902 left a legacy of implicit animosity that both sides expressed by neutralizing each other. On the whole, however, the Tongren Fuyuantang was the main winner in these strong-arm tactics that left the organization with actual control on the use of its burial ground.126 Another example of cemeteries as places of contestation and competing claims is the Hungjao Cemetery. After its initial purchase of land, the Shanghai Municipal Council acquired successive lots to extend the capacity of the cemetery. In 1934, after two previous extensions, it offered to buy Lot 11184. A round of negotiations followed with the owner, who still found the proposed price too low, even if, according to the Shanghai Municipal Council, it was above market value. In 1939, the issue of purchasing the lot came up again, but no move was made. 127 The targeted lot became a bone of contention between the Shanghai Municipal Council and the owner, who did not take care of his land. The Shanghai Municipal Council wanted the lot because it was located in the middle of the cemetery area. In 1941, finally, a new round of discussions was opened through a comprador, but the owner kept asking more every time a deal was struck. The Public Works Department suspected the owner had bought the land for the sole purpose of speculating on its value and to “put us in a hole.”128 A new offer was made, but the owner asked four times more. Out of frustration, the Public Health Department suggested removing the path that gave him access so as to inconvenience him. Yet no action was taken.129 One last attempt was made in early 1943, but it seems to have failed.130

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Quite clearly, clever landowners could anticipate cemetery extensions and bet on the rise in price for otherwise little valued farmland. The Shanghai Municipal Council also met with serious difficulties with ordinary peasants, especially with land owned by a lineage. Despite all the rhetoric about colonial abuses, it appears that the “vested powers” the Shanghai Municipal Council enjoyed under the land regulations had their limits. One must also acknowledge that the Shanghai Municipal Council abided by the laws and regulations it imposed on the population within its territory. In 1907, the Shanghai Municipal Council planned to purchase the whole piece of land adjacent to the Bubbling Well Road Cemetery so as to cover the whole block (see Map 5.3). In February, after initial contacts, the Public Works Department reported its failure to convince the owners to negotiate with the council.131 The matter was dropped for a few months, but the Works Committee renewed its instructions to proceed. The department approached the head priest of the Bubbling Well Temple (Jing’ansi) to seek his collaboration in the discussion with the villagers. From the minutes of the interview, we learn that the opposition by the landowners was related to the refusal by the Shanghai Municipal Council to let them repair their local temple; one landowner was willing to sell, but the other refused because it would cut access to their own land; the landowners had a definite idea about the value of their land (no less than 5,000 taels per mu).132 A second meeting took place between the Public Works Department, the head priest, the local headman (dibao), and the district headman. They concurred that it was pointless to deal with individuals and suggested a general assembly of the villagers.133 The Public Works Department prepared a list of the twenty owners—among them seven Zhang and nine Gu—and called a meeting on 15 November 1907. During the meeting, the Shanghai Municipal Council representatives explained that the council was prepared to purchase their land at market value and use its power to claim the land. The villagers were given three weeks to formulate counter claims. Past this deadline, the council would post a proclamation and use its powers of land condemnation.134 On 12 December 1907, the proclamation was advertised in Chinese and English to inform the villagers that the land commissioners would proceed to assess land for its acquisition by the Shanghai Municipal Council.135 Yet, by March 1908, the Public Works Department reported that the villagers had taken no notice of the proclamation. The Works Committee decided to take no further step.136 Obviously, the threat to use its vested powers had failed to impress the villagers. Probably, the Shanghai Municipal Council realized its planned purchase relied on shaky legal ground. Moreover, it also had to deal with the resistance not of individuals but of two tightly knit communities around the Zhang

 

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map 5.3. Bubbling Well Cemetery and the “resisting” lineage’s land lots. Source: U1-14-6913, Shanghai Municipal Archives

and Gu lineages. The passive resistance of the villagers forced the Shanghai Municipal Council to shelve its project. In 1911, however, the Shanghai Municipal Council planned again to resume the land purchase. There was a serious internal debate within the council about its strategy. The Public Works Department argued that it was pointless to try again unless the council was prepared to go all the way to complete the purchase. If, for the second time, it was to withdraw as in 1908, this would convey to the villagers the impression that the Shanghai

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Municipal Council was weak.137 A careful and detailed survey of the area was made with the view to see whether the lineages could be divided between rich and poor members (see Map 5.3).138 Although nothing like this appears in the documents, the Public Works Department had little reason to check the socioeconomic status of each landowner for the sake of academic knowledge. Despite these preparations and although the planned purchase was to take place at a time when the local Chinese authorities were in shambles, due to the revolutionary movement, the Shanghai Municipal Council eventually decided not to pursue the purchase.139 The council felt it did not have the force to press the villagers to sell and did not want to put its face at risk. As in the case of the Tongren Fuyuan tang cemetery, however, the Shanghai Municipal Council retaliated by refusing all permits for the repair or construction of houses in the area.140 The failure to purchase the land remained a burning scar. In April 1916, the Works Committee again recommended the acquisition of the land, but nothing seems to have happened. There is no further trail of documents.141 The Public Works Department resumed its attempt to purchase the land in February 1920. In a letter to the secretary, it argued about the advantage of acquiring the area. The tone of the reply amply revealed the frustration of the Shanghai Municipal Council: “The Council does not require and will not buy this land under any circumstances.”142 Thereafter, the relevance of purchasing this lot decreased, first, because the area had become largely urbanized and, second, because the Hungjao Cemetery had opened.

Conclusion The expansion of the foreign settlements westward created a trail of cemeteries. This particular “journey to the West” of burial grounds reveals that population growth and urban expansion always exceeded the capacity of anticipation of the municipal authorities. New locations had to be found further west to accommodate the increasing number of graves for the various foreign communities. Over time, the western area of Shanghai became de facto a “cemetery area,” a phenomenon which the Sino-Japanese conflict reinforced dramatically. There were indeed more than the two large Western cemeteries. Next to them was a large Chinese cemetery visible on a 1932 map. After 1937, this is where the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery and Tongren Fuyuantang rented land to bury the paupers’ bodies as well as all the exposed corpses and abandoned coffins they found in the streets. Hongqiao also became an area where coffin repositories opened to store the coffins of the Chinese whose bodies could no longer be shipped

 

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back to their native place. The cremation site the two foreign settlements established after 1938 was also located in Hongqiao. Cemeteries were initially created on an ad hoc basis to meet the biological consequences of death among the foreign settlers or sailors. There was nothing planned or designed for the burial of foreigners in Shanghai. Burial grounds were created by private initiative until it became obvious that they required public attention. The control of cemeteries by the Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Municipal Council, however, introduced a new dimension, as they became the object of policy and regulations. Such public involvement contributed to make cemeteries increasingly social markers defining who belonged—and who did not—to a given community or subgroup. The living had the opportunity to either mingle with each other or stay separate in their respective working or leisure places. In death, however, one came back into the fold of one’s community or, for those who belonged to subaltern groups (Sikhs, Vietnamese, Jewish refugees, etc.), had little or no agency on the disposition of their remains. While the foreign authorities took great care of the dead from the majority groups, they were much less involved in providing burial grounds for those from their colonies or who had come to Shanghai as refugees. It was almost under duress that the Shanghai Municipal Council agreed to distribute land for the purpose of creating community cemeteries. No money was paid for the maintenance and upkeep of these places. The cost rested entirely on the concerned communities. Access to a burial ground, therefore, followed the hierarchy of nationality, race, religion, and wealth. Those with financial means could find a graveyard in a decent cemetery, but those without money or who belonged to colonial subaltern categories had to rely on benevolence or their own limited resources. Even among the colonial subjects, one can sense a subtle hierarchy, as in the more careful consideration given to Sikh requests versus those of the Muslim community. Cemeteries were also places of contention and competition. It did not take the form of violent action, but quite clearly the Chinese landowners tried to take advantage of the expansion of burial grounds on their farmland. Cemeteries brought “urbanization” away from the city and increased land values. Yet, outside of sheer speculation, the main issue was the capacity of Chinese organized groups—lineages, benevolent societies— to stick to their land and prevent foreign power-holders to purchase it, to force a sale or even to regulate the usage of their land, as in the case of the Tongren Fuyuantang. Passive resistance was a far more powerful tool to block off the Shanghai Municipal Council’s ambitions than is generally assumed. Yet the dominant mode in the management of the space of death in Shanghai before 1949 was one of exclusion—the bulk of the Chinese

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population—and division among unequal communities. The takeover of Shanghai by the CCP did not put an immediate end to the presence of foreign cemeteries in the city, but as for all burial grounds in the urban districts, the new government implemented a policy of systematic removal of all cemeteries to the periphery. The legacy of foreign cemeteries was all gone by the mid-1950s, with only two large public parks—unknown to Shanghai residents today—as distant surrogates to the open spaces once used as foreign consecrated land.

6

Invisible Deaths, Silent Deaths

The rituals and practices associated with death in China were grounded in a deeply rooted system of values and beliefs. Yet, as for other social phenomena, practices and beliefs changed with time and context. In urban settings, especially in large cities, the issue of death took a different dimension and scale. More people died, which called for specific forms of “management,” especially for those who could no longer rely on the strong social bonds that supported individuals in life and death in small rural communities. Moreover, the massive influx of population, combined with periods of crisis (natural disaster, warfare), has historically contributed to sudden increases in mortality. Although various kinds of formal and informal bonds sustained individuals in Shanghai, urban life exposed the lower classes to risks and difficulties for which their social capital did not provide an adequate support. This chapter examines a very specific aspect of death, namely the issue of exposed corpses and abandoned coffins, all the “bodies without masters” with no one to take care of or responsibility for.1 In late imperial and Republican Shanghai, poor people without relatives or whose relatives could not support them died or were dumped in the street, on the pavement, in squares, on market places, in back alleys, virtually anywhere. Taking care of the poor and destitute, alive or dead, had become a major feature of the work of the benevolent societies that emerged by the end of the Ming.2 These voluntary associations engaged in a variety of relief work (see Chapter 4).3 In Shanghai, some associations eventually concentrated their action on establishing charity cemeteries where unclaimed bodies could be buried after a proper ceremony.4 Despite the scope of the phenomenon of the poor in the city and the existence of strong municipal administrations, the phenomenon did not generate in Shanghai any form

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of public awareness such as Edwin Chadwick’s relentless efforts in favor of the poor championed in London and major cities in England.5 The issue of “invisible deaths” had a long history in the city. Exposed corpses were one of the most gruesome aspects of urban life until the early 1950s. The data on which this chapter is based come mainly from the archives of the two foreign settlements in Shanghai. It does not cover the areas under Chinese administration. This is not a deliberate choice. It reflects the state of archival documentation. The “administration of death” does not seem to have ranked high in the concern of the Chinese municipalities, while the archives from the charities involved in collecting exposed corpses remain largely untraced. Shanghai experienced an unusually high level of infant mortality, which explains the extraordinary phenomenon of exposed corpses in the city, although adults were also found in large numbers in the street, especially during periods of acute crisis. The massive presence of these unwelcome bodies failed to provoke a direct involvement by the local authorities until 1937, when special circumstances made it nearly impossible to deal with the staggering number of dead bodies in the public space. Up until 1937, two main associations were engaged with great efficiency in the grim task of collecting the exposed corpses and providing them with proper rituals and a burial in a pauper’s cemetery. Their records embody a much-overlooked facet of modernity in a splendid, but unforgiving city.

“Silent” Deaths, “Invisible” Bodies Throughout the Republican period and into the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), exposed corpses were collected daily in the streets. These people passed away, a huge proportion of them children, and remained where they had died or were abandoned, in public spaces. Shanghai was like a gigantic funnel that swallowed up lives by the hundreds or thousands, even in times of peace.6 With the outbreak of hostilities, as in 1931–1932 or in August 1937, death became more prevalent with thousands of indigent people dying in the street, almost at every corner. In the context of war and occupation, the issue of exposed corpses changed drastically. Despite the existence of well-established organizations and practices, death came in the form of new and exceptional challenges for the population and the authorities. At all times, indigent people or their offspring died in the streets of cities. These were deaths that left no trace and made no noise. These were deaths that went unreported, except perhaps in the records of charity organizations; corpses were picked up and disposed of as soon as they were spotted and bodies were poorly wrapped in bamboo matting that urban

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residents would rather “not see.” These were socially shameful deaths, by Chinese standards, deaths better forgotten, as if the individual had never existed. Nevertheless, various charity organizations were involved in this work with the explicit intent to give these abandoned corpses their share of a decent ceremony and burial. The oldest organization, the Tongren Fuyuantang, had a long history in the city since the mid-nineteenth century when several associations merged their assets to bring relief to the population.7 Established in 1913, the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery (SPBC) went into full operation in 1915 and remained active well into the early 1950s. It devoted itself almost exclusively to collecting and burying exposed corpses in Shanghai.8 Merchants from the Ningbo community were strongly involved in both organizations that remained at the forefront of taking care of abandoned bodies in the streets or in the battlefield. Despite the high incidence of exposed corpses in the city, the press, Chinese or foreign, rarely addressed the problem. When it did, it was either to report briefly on the activities of the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery (Pushan Shanzhuang, hereafter SPBC) or the Tongren Fuyuantang or because a particular case, as during the war, caused some “annoyance.”9 The “invisibility” of these exposed corpses and coffins was less a physical reality, especially when their number rose into the thousands per year, than a “social invisibility,” a phenomenon that came to be part of daily life, something so present and so pressing that eventually the eye just glossed over it while the mind simply erased it. Even when figures grew exponentially after 1937, there was hardly any public discussion of it. It was taken for granted as an inevitable curse of urban life that indigents died in the street. Quite strikingly, all our press cases come from the 1930s, except for a long article on the SPBC’s activities in 1923. This article focused on the “commendable work” done from the point of view of public health, with an emphasis on the “custom of poorer Chinese to abandon their dead children of less than a year.”10 In 1934, the China Press reported “25,753 bodies found in the city in 1933,” but the bulk of the article reported on the activity of the SPBC and its cooperation with the local authorities. Four years later, “Society makes grim report” provided an account of the situation in 1936 in words like “grisly account” and “grim inventory” but no discussion of the problem itself. Even the staggering figure of 1938 failed to cause any particular alarm: “60,000 free burials are handled here during 1938.”11 The other English-language newspapers carried similar headlines with the same content, with one of them finding it “astonishing that the SPBC dealt with more than 60,000 unclaimed human bodies last year.”12 Most of the time, however, the annual report by the SPBC was not worth more than a short paragraph.13

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The presence of dead children in the street was rationalized, at least in public discourse, as something due to “the age old Chinese customs of not burying their dead children—the corpses of children up to the age of ten are invariably wrapped in rags, tied round with matting [. . .] and thrown by the roadside. This unsanitary and regrettable custom was attributed to a superstition that if a decent burial is given to a child, the spirits of the dead children would return to take away with them their companions in this world.”14 This explanation, however, goes against various beliefs and realities. On the one hand, a high number of children were found encoffined, which tends to show that parents cared, even if they lacked the means to organize a proper burial.15 On the other hand, for adults at least, proper funeral and interment were important precisely to pacify the spirit of the deceased and make sure it would not come back to haunt the living. Obviously, even if there was a recognized practice of burying children very simply in the countryside or even of dropping the corpses of infant children in cities, the major point of high mortality was simply missed or overlooked.16 That so many bodies found their way onto the pavement had less to do with a “regrettable custom” than to the stark reality of an exceptionally high infant mortality. Another reason for the lack of discussion may have been the class-based view through which this phenomenon was reported. In September 1942, the Shanghai Times interviewed Stone Loh, the director of the SPBC. Apart from predicting serious death rates in the upcoming cold months, Loh made the case that “only the children died of starvation.” He contended that the death rate of adults was comparatively small and that “almost all of these beggars are addicted to drugs . . . when they have no money to buy the drug, they die. The high mortality of children could be reduced if the authorities could maintain a hospital for babies.”17 This line of argument by the head of the SPBC is quite striking. There may have been a strategy in pointing to the tragic case of children from poor families to attract donors and help to raise money for the SPBC. Adults were easily and conveniently presented as sorry cases hardly worth the trouble they gave. Presenting them as drug users—an image that made its impact on the Shanghai residents—can also be read as a way to give oneself good conscience and whitewash the problem.18 Of course, it goes against all evidence and even common sense that the use of drugs could explain why poor people ended up dead in the street and why there were such dramatic changes in times of economic crisis or warfare. In examining this issue and its impact, one has to distinguish between two kinds of “bodies without masters.” For people with limited resources, a quick and cheap way of handling the deceased was to deposit the coffin on a piece of vacant land, hardly buried, often simply above the ground.

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It was a temporary expedient pending better days or ulterior removal and proper burial. It was the most affordable solution for those who could not afford the cost of a coffin repository or the assistance of a guild coffin repository. A well-entrenched Chinese custom, which is discussed in Chapter 4, was to keep the coffin of the dead until a proper time and place for burial had been found in the city or in the original native place.19 For the poor people, the second and more common practice was to wrap the dead body in a crude bamboo matt and leave it in the open air. The practice was not unusual and fit with the habit of leaving a coffin aboveground, covered with bamboo matting, in the countryside. While vacant land was also used, most bodies were found in the street in more or less public spaces. This was especially true of infants and children for whom the expense of a coffin was not considered essential. Yet adults were also found in this condition, generally in their clothes, although women were very rarely left without a coffin. This point will be discussed later. De Groot makes the point that children, especially below the age of ten, were not given proper rituals and even burials. In cities, perhaps to deal with the issue of infant mortality, there were so-called baby towers, in which parents could deposit their dead child (see Figure 6.1). Both de Groot and Milne mention the existence of such structures in southern cities.20 Only rare mentions

figure 6.1. View of a baby tower near Fuzhou. Source: Lucy Bird, Chinese Pictures: Notes on Photographs Made in China, 1900, 62; no copyright

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were found of a similar construction in Shanghai in the nineteenth century. Milne, who made it a point to visit charities and coffin repositories, does not make any mention, whereas he presents the work of collecting exposed corpses by the Tongren Fuyuantang in the mid-1850s.21 Yet foreign residents reported on its existence outside the city wall near the Western Gate.22 It also appeared once on a British 1862 map.23 The tower collapsed in 1881 after heavy raining, but it must have been reconstructed as we have a visual testimony as late as 1921.24 It is probably impossible to take a full measure of the number of exposed corpses in Shanghai. To start with, the nineteenth century is largely illusive, as no record has been found. Moreover, even when there are records, they are incomplete and/or cover different areas within the city. Yet it is obvious this was an issue that caused the Shanghai Municipal Council to seek the cooperation of the Shanghai xian magistrate as early as 1893.25 While two major organizations took care of most of the work of collecting bodies, a few smaller associations also come up in the records. There is also the issue of sorting out the corpses picked up in the street from those received from hospitals, charity homes, or refugee camps. Generally, these were separate categories, but in times of acute crisis such a distinction became blurred. Finally, anything beyond the close limits of the urban area went unrecorded. Most of our data were generated by the involvement of the municipal authorities in the International Settlement (after 1928) and the French Concession (after 1937). For a crude assessment of the phenomenon, we start from the records of the main organization, SPBC. I was fortunate to find a four-page pamphlet published on the occasion of a fund-raising campaign in late 1947. The document contained a table with the annual count of bodies gathered throughout the history of the association up to June 1947.26 Since the figures may have been exaggerated for publicity purposes, they were checked against similar data retrieved from various sources, in particular archival documents. The published figures were consistent with those of internal reports. Table 6.1 presents these figures with additions for the late 1940s and early 1950s. There is little doubt that the number of exposed bodies followed an ever-ascending curve, with massive increases in times of crisis. The records of the early years probably do not reflect the extent of the phenomenon.27 By 1917, however, they may convey a sense of the actual number of exposed corpses in the city, although the surge from 2,720 in 1918 to 5,642 the following year cannot be explained by any special circumstances.28 From the time of its foundation, the SPBC advertised regularly in the newspapers to publicize its action and encourage poor people to bring their dead children.29 By 1921, a plateau was reached that lasted for

table 6.1. Number of exposed corpses and abandoned coffins collected by the SPBC in Shanghai (1915–1954)

Year

1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 Total SPBC 1948a 1949 1950 1951 1954 Grand total

Adult bodies and coffins

Children bodies and coffins

62 51 91 152 243 503 644 625 528 620 609 438 627 1,312 1,003 3,088 1,413 1,292 1,360 1,993 7,452 14,989 8,365 8,720 8,708 12,265 3,598 2,595 2,926 1,702 558 88,532 588

259 758 2,012 2,669 5551 6,405 11,660 12,352 11,751 11,950 20,307 24,423 15,847 23,201 26,926 35,064 33,978 33,616 24,410 35,685 29,337 38,352 42,229 45,075 32,711 20,720 26,425 18,805 13,262 15,305 10,752 14,436 13,638 659,871 9,456

89,267

671,691

Total

259 758 2,074 2,720 5,642 6,557 11,903 12,855 12,395 12,575 20,835 25,043 16,456 23,639 27,553 36,376 34,981 36,704 25,823 36,977 30,697 40,345 49,681 60,064 41,076 29,440 35,133 31,070 16,860 17,900 13,678 16,138 14,196 748,403 10,044 43,140 44,661 30,850 25,754 848,759

Adult bodies and coffins (%)

Children bodies and coffins (%)

3.0 1.9 1.6 2.3 2.0 3.9 5.2 5.0 2.5 2.5 3.7 1.9 2.3 3.6 2.9 8.4 5.5 3.5 4.4 4.9 15.0 25.0 20.4 29.6 24.8 39.5 21.3 14.5 21.4 10.5 3.9 11.8

97.0 98.1 98.4 97.7 98.0 96.1 94.8 95.0 97.5 97.5 96.3 98.1 97.7 96.4 97.1 91.6 94.5 96.5 95.6 95.1 85.0 75.0 79.6 70.4 75.2 60.5 78.7 85.5 78.6 89.5 96.1 88.2

Source: “Pushan shanzhuang jianshi,” Pushan shanzhuang boyin mukuan tekan, 26 July 1947, Q1-121502; Shanghai shili gongmu huozang ji lushi tuzang huozang renshu, Report, n.d. [1948], Q400-1-3928; Shengming tongji zong baogao, July 1950–June 1951, 1, B242-1-255-1, SMA; Shanghai minzheng zhi, chap. 17, “Binzang guanli” (http://www.shtong.gov.cn/node2/node2245/node65977/index.html). a 1948: partial estimate.

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half a decade, followed by a prodigious increase that, except for a slump in 1927, pushed the figure to a new level until 1929. The next decade saw another jump, though with jigsaw oscillations. In the French Concession a report by the Tongren Fuyuantang shows that by 1929 the association was collecting almost 4,000 bodies per year. If we combine the figures for the SPBC and those of the Tongren Fuyuantang, the number of exposed corpses and abandoned coffins recovered in the late 1920s and mid-1930s amounted to 30,000–40,000 per year. In both settlements, however, serious disruptions in daily life had farreaching consequences. The 1930–1932 period was particularly unforgiving. These were years of crisis in the surrounding countryside, especially during the Yangzi flood of 1931, that forced tens of thousands of peasants to seek refuge in Shanghai, but above all there was also war in the midst of the city during the winter of 1931–1932. With the first and shortlived Sino-Japanese confrontation, the number of exposed corpses simply doubled in the French Concession. People who would normally bury their dead were forced to abandon bodies and depend on the assistance of the benevolent associations.30 Thereafter, there was hardly any return to the previous level, especially in the International Settlement. This respite was short, however, as there was a dramatic upsurge after 1937. The outbreak of Sino-Japanese hostilities in 1937 in the city had enduring consequences far beyond the immediate effects of fighting. The first major consequence was a massive displacement of people who left their home with few resources. In a matter of weeks, one million people were turned into refugees. Warfare in the neighboring countryside also brought successive waves of peasants in search of a temporary shelter. While large numbers were evacuated back to their native place—around 300,000— most stayed behind, hoping to get back to their jobs and housing. Unfortunately, bombing, shelling, and fires turned the Northern and Eastern districts into ashes.31 In others words, residents-turned-refugees had to survive much longer than expected in the foreign settlements. Death took an exacting toll on the poor and destitute, especially children. While 1937 saw a new surge, mostly in the second half of the year, 1938 set an infamous record with more than 78,000 deaths/corpses for the main two organizations—214 on every single day on average—left by the road side. There was a significant decrease over 1939 and 1940, although no breakthrough below the 30,000 baseline. The harsh conditions of the winter of 1941–1942 again pushed the figures for both years upward. The phenomenon of exposed bodies became markedly a problem centered in the International Settlement, escalating from one-half to close to 70 percent of the total between 1937 and 1943.32

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In the latter years of the war, the number of exposed corpses fell back below the level of the 1920s, except in 1942. This may have resulted from the policy of forced departure of the population by the authorities and the enforcement of the baojia system. At any rate, the movement upward resumed in 1947, even if the data are incomplete. This was again a period that also saw great economic instability, warfare in the countryside, and a massive influx of displaced population. By June 1947 the SPBC had collected more than 14,000 bodies and there is every reason to believe the remaining half of the year brought in as many bodies. The latter part of the civil war brought extreme difficulties, between hyperinflation and streams of displaced population. The figures for 1949 and the early years of the Communist regime in Shanghai show a tragic return to above 40,000. There is probably no way to make an accurate assessment of the number of exposed corpses and abandoned coffins found in the city. Our series are incomplete and inconsistent. Different sources provide different and contradictory figures. Most of the time, the discrepancy is limited, but during the war one can be certain that many bodies went unaccounted for. Altogether, for a single organization—the SPBC—the total number of collected corpses and coffins between 1915 and 1951 comes to an astounding 848,759. For a shorter period of twelve years, the Tongren Fuyuantang gathered close to 116,000 bodies. Even with a cautious rule of thumb, an aggregate of all statistics from all organizations would easily push the number to one million for the 35-year period under study here. This was the number of bodies left behind, wretched in both life and death, most of them premature fatalities of an unforgiving economic system and devastating wars. The wartime period (1937–1945) alone accounted for more than 280,000 bodies in the SPBC report, while the four years of the civil war amounted to about 100,000 exposed corpses. There is no denial that the turmoil caused by war conditions took a high toll on the life expectancy of the poorer classes.

Who Were the “Bodies without Masters”? Is there any way to learn more about these invisible and silent deaths? As one may expect, they were found with nothing, and the associations that collected the bodies concerned themselves only with removing and burying them. Only very minimal data were recorded about the exposed corpses and coffins discovered in the street. In most records, the dead were anonymous figures with no name, no age, no profession, and sometimes no sex (for children). One can probably make an educated guess that the vast

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majority belonged to the poorest sectors of the population, for example, unskilled manual workers and coolies. In a 1939 report, the Public Health Department quoted from the SPBC that unclaimed adult bodies were those of beggars (33 percent), refugees (42 percent), and residents (25 percent).33 Since refugees were for the most part former residents from the war-torn areas in the city, with some of them falling into the ranks of “beggars,” it is not an exaggeration to think that a majority of the unclaimed bodies were of Shanghai residents. Our statistical series start with the involvement of the Shanghai Municipal Council, which required daily, monthly, and annual reports in exchange for its subsidy. Unfortunately, these reports provide only very rough data, namely sex, age category (adult/child), coffin/matting, and police district. There is no indication about the precise location where the bodies were found, nor is there any breakdown by age groups. For the French Concession, there are daily reports of exposed corpses found by the police.34 Whereas in the International Settlement only the corpses of adults were examined by the police before their removal by the SPBC, the French police, at least in wartime, made a record of any body that came to its attention. The policemen dutifully noted the exact address and age of the victims. They indicated the age in months for infants, in years for children, and decades for adults (20, 30, 40, etc.). From these series I collected a solid sample of 4,083 individuals for the years 1937 and 1940. It is readily apparent in Table 6.1 that infants and children vastly outnumbered adults. They were the primary victims of poverty, malnutrition, and disease (see Figure 6.2). The high figure for children, many of them newborn or infants, is not surprising. They were the less well prepared to survive in a context of poor housing, lack of food, and adverse weather conditions. Over thirty-five years, they represent on average 88.2 percent of exposed corpses and coffins collected by the SPBC, but in most years before 1937 the figure was above 96 percent. The Tongren Fuyuantang data in Table 6.2 also support the trend of a large number of children. In times of crisis, as in 1932 or more clearly after 1937, the number of adults tended to increase substantially to one-fifth or one-quarter of the victims. Citywide, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the share of adults increased tremendously from 15 percent in 1937 to almost 40 percent in 1942. The year 1942 was unusual and symptomatic of the hardships brought about by the lack of food combined with a rigorous winter. Immediately after the war, the decrease was substantial, but the mortality rate among adults remained high (10.5 percent). After 1946, however, the overall trend was a return to a disproportionate share of children. Unfortunately, the post1949 statistics did not distinguish between adults and children.

figure 6.2. Children encoffined in a single coffin at the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery. Source: Jack Birns, Life, 1949 (published in Assignment Shanghai: Photographs on the Eve of Revolution [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003], 39)

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table 6.2. Number of exposed corpses and abandoned coffins collected by the Tongren Fuyuantang in the French Concession (1929–1941) Year

1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 Total

Adults

Children

Total

Adults (%)

Children (%)

394 668 728 1,350 445 452 596 691 2,443 3,494 2,315 1,673 1,645 16,894

3,601 4,613 4,715 7,649 5,371 4,483 2,960 3,313 10,642 15,090 14,465 11,663 10,764 99,329

3,995 5,281 5,443 8,999 5,816 4,935 3,556 4,004 13,085 18,584 16,780 13,336 12,409 116,223

10 13 13 15 8 9 17 17 19 19 14 13 13 15

90 87 87 85 92 91 83 83 81 81 86 87 87 85

Source: “Tongren fuyuantang shenqing buzhu, mianfei chezhao ji qingdu yongju, yaoshui,” U38-5-1641; Note, Chef inspecteur de l’hygiène, 20 December 1941, U38-5-1638, SMA.

There was an overwhelming majority of males among adult exposed corpses. In the International Settlement, the share of adult males between 1928 and 1943 remained almost constantly close to or above 90 percent. There were exceptional years, related to war (1932 and 1933; 1938–1939), with a larger proportion of female bodies. In the French Concession, the population of exposed corpses notified by the police in 1937–1940 included 4,082 individuals, with 981 adult males (88 percent) and 138 adult females (12 percent). This ratio was quite different from the SPBC data for the International Settlement. Female bodies were more numerous. If we make a rough divide between adults (above fifteen years old) and children, the former represented one-quarter of the total, but with a sharp difference between males and females. Adult women represent only 8.2 percent of the female bodies versus 41.3 percent for male bodies. As in the International Settlement, adult female bodies ended up in the street much more rarely than men. Since there is no reason to consider that natural resistance or better nutrition would have spared the lives of women, and even considering that there were more men than women among the poor or refugee population, the only rational explanation for the low number of female corpses is one of economics. The surviving spouse was more able to pay for or organize the burial of the deceased when the former was a man, with more physical strength and income, than it was for a woman, who depended on the husband for a living. A breakdown by age group among adults in the French subset does not modify the general picture. The major line of divide was between teenagers/ adults and children, but even more so among children below the age of five

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years. Infants and children one to five years old represented respectively 27.4 and 42.4 percent of the total number of exposed bodies, but the ratio for the combined two groups was 89.6 percent for females, far above that of males (56.3 percent). If we are to trust the assessed age recorded by policemen, infants one to six months old fared worse (one-quarter of the total), which may be related to weaning or supplementing breastfeeding with artificial food.35 Definitely, young children below the age of five were far more exposed to premature death. They had not yet built immunity and resistance against various infectious diseases, while they must have lived in poor housing and lacked proper nutrition, a major factor in infant mortality.36 If we examine more closely the data on infants and children, especially the ratio between females and males, there is a general balance between the two, although up to one year there is a slightly higher mortality rate for girls (52/48 percent). For babies one to six months old, the unfavorable ratio is even more pronounced (59/41 percent). Of course, this raises the issue of infanticide, or at least of the preference/neglect for boys and girls. Due to lack of data on registered births, we do not really have data to put these figures in perspective. If we assume that the natural rate was 1:1, girls appear less numerous in the few fragmentary census tables we have, which may indicate a lower survival rate and support the interpretation of “active” or “passive” infanticide. Past the age of one year, however, males are more numerous, and increasingly so as they get older. Yet our figures do not support a clear pattern.37 There is a good chance that, as most studies of mortality in premodern and modern cities show, poor nutrition, unhealthy environment, and lack of medical care took an even greater toll on the life of infants and young children, males and females alike. Almost without exception, adults were found dead without any cover or coffin. Figures vary for certain years in the International Settlement, but there is no distinguishable pattern. Only in the 1937–1939 period can we observe that there was an effort to place dead adults in coffins. In 1938, more adults were found in coffins than usual (25 percent for males and 45 percent for females), but this was exceptional. Children were generally found in coffins or wrapped in matting (about one-third before the war, then it increased to 60–80 percent). Obviously, economic difficulties made it increasingly difficult for poor families to even afford a small and simple coffin and bodies were just tossed away. This issue is not indifferent for the degree of visibility of exposed corpses and the reaction of local residents. Depending on whether the body was encoffined or not, whether it was a child or an adult, the sensitivity of residents could be strongly affected (see Figure 6.3). The distribution of exposed bodies in Shanghai amply supports the view that it was a phenomenon that any resident, except in the wealthier areas, was bound to come across.

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figure 6.3. People watch as SPBC employees encoffin an exposed corpse. Source: H1-25-4-11, Shanghai Municipal Archives

Seasonality was also a factor in the number of bodies collected in a given month. Although there is no absolute pattern, some months figured more prominently in almost all years. March was a regular high-record month. It came at the end of the winter period, when a combination of malnutrition and cold-related diseases left many with weakened bodies. There were regular peaks in July or August that may have less to do with malnutrition—although July–August was often a period with higher prices for cereals—than with temperature, bad water, and infectious diseases. The pattern just described was that of peacetime. Wartime shattered that pattern very badly from late 1937 through much of 1938. Thereafter, the same pattern returned, though with an unusual peak in January–March 1942, when a combination of exceptionally cold weather, lack of food supply, and high prices drove a part of the population to starvation, and again in August 1942 during a hot and dry summer.38 The distribution of exposed bodies in the urban space is a fundamental issue for an understanding of how this phenomenon could have been perceived by Shanghai residents. Exposed corpses and abandoned coffins created a particular geography of death in the city. Through mapping it is possible to reconstitute this geography, even if a visual representation cannot actually re-create the original phenomenon. These are aggregated

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­

data projected onto a space, but they do convey a sense of the widespread nature of the phenomenon. In the International Settlement, data were aggregated by police district. These data reveal a moving geography through time as population density and access to certain areas changed.39 Before 1937, the larger numbers of bodies were collected in all four administrative districts, with a concentration in specific police wards: Louza in the Central District; Yangtsepoo, followed by Wayside, Yulin, and Kahsing in the Eastern District; Hongkew or West Hongkew alternatively in the Northern District; and Bubbling Well in the Western District. Except for Louza, these were areas with a higher concentration of factories and workshops (Northern and Eastern districts). They were home to a large population of workers. They were also the place where recent immigrants (peddlers, coolies) found a shelter, most often in rudimentary forms of housing. Louza stands out mostly as a place where adult bodies were found, whereas children corpses explained the high number in the Western and Eastern police districts. The war drastically altered this geography. The Eastern and Northern districts almost disappeared from the map in 1937 as these areas were emptied of their population as a result of fighting and remained inaccessible through most of 1938. As a consequence, the westernmost districts received a much larger share, but the largest number was collected in the Central District, with 64 percent of all bodies. In 1939, West Hongkew, home to several refugee camps, reappeared on the map of exposed bodies, along with higher numbers in the westernmost districts and in Louza. Sinza and Chengtu, in the Central District, also figured far more prominently in a geography that hardly changed in the following years. What this quick survey shows is that a much higher share of exposed corpses were found in the most densely populated downtown districts during and after the Sino-Japanese War. What had been a diffused phenomenon with concentrations of bodies at the periphery turned into an unwelcome and unsightly presence almost at people’s doorsteps. The detailed record of the French police in 1938 makes it possible to “see” more precisely where the exposed bodies were found (see Maps 6.1 and 6.2). As in the neighboring settlement, every district was affected, except for the small Eastern District: by order of importance, Central (31 percent), Joffre and Foch (almost at par with 19 percent), Pétain (14 percent), Mallet (13 percent), and Eastern (2 percent). The figures are not related to the size of the districts or to their population. Yet the low figure for the Eastern District may be related to its size and shape (it is a narrow strip along the Huangpu River) and the constant movement of passersby. The Central District had a substantial share probably because it encompassed the largest section along the Zikawei Creek on its southern border, a

0

0.5

1 km

Density

363 364 - 1,111

6-

(corpses/km�)

No corpse

2,889 - 6,125

1,112 - 2,888

10 5 1

Adults (above 15 years) Total at given location

NANSHI

map 6.1. Distribution of adult exposed corpses in the French Concession in 1938–1940. Source: Virtual Shanghai

Police districts

Waterway

Railway

Street

French Concession

International Settlement

0

0.5

1 km

796

308

797 - 2,304

308 -

15 -

(corpses/km�)

No corpse

2,305 - 4,249

Density

10 1

99

Children (0-15 years) Total at given location

NANSHI

map 6.2. Distribution of children exposed corpses in the French Concession in 1938. Source: Virtual Shanghai

Police districts

Waterway

Railway

Street

French Concession

International Settlement

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convenient place to dump corpses by the resident population in the French Concession or in the adjacent district of the Chinese municipality. Police records confirm that in wartime the phenomenon occurred everywhere, with bodies found on the pavement, on market places, but mostly in the numerous lilong (alleys) that ran through the residential blocks. At night, these were ideal places to drop a dead child unnoticed. A major difference can be observed between children and adults. Whereas children of both sexes were found throughout the concession (see Map 6.1), adults were concentrated in the two most central districts, East, Mallet, and part of Central (see Map. 6.2). Babies and children were “dumped” in every corner, but adults most probably just died where they happened to be, and the central districts were those where they tried to eke a living (as in Louza in the International Settlement). There is ample testimony in the police records that people were found in a state of “physiological misery, agonizing condition.”40 Both maps introduce a certain distortion as all bodies collected over a period of several months are represented here.41 Still, they offer a genuine visualization of silent deaths in the French Concession. They highlight quite clearly that even in one of the most developed areas of the city, amidst plentiful resources and even wealth, a significant number of people were left to die or abandoned in open air.

Each Forever Laid

­

­

The problem of exposed corpses raised a significant challenge in a city where the municipal authorities refrained from getting involved in the management of death beyond cemetery regulations. As for other matters of public concern in Chinese cities, the task was taken up by private charities. In late imperial and Republican Shanghai, the two major associations involved in the removal of dead bodies and abandoned coffins from the streets were the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery (SPBC) and the Tongren Fu yuantang. The Chinese state or the foreign administrations played no role, even after 1927, and actually entirely relied on these organizations. The Red Cross was likewise absent from this domain in Shanghai.42 The Tongren Fuyuantang resulted from the merging of various charities involved in the support of the poor. Its immediate predecessors were the Tongcitang and the Tongrentang, founded in 1746 and 1805, respectively, with the latter absorbing the Tongcitang at the time of its foundation. In 1834, a new organization, Puyuantang, emerged. By 1856, however, it merged with Tongrentang and became Tongren Fuyuantang.43 By the mid-1850s the Tongren Fuyuantang was recognized as the organization

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in charge of burying paupers.44 Although the Tongren Fuyuantang was already involved in collecting abandoned corpses and coffins, a group of Ningbo merchants led by Wang Yiting, a famous Shanghai philanthropist, felt the urge to establish an additional organization (SPBC) entirely devoted to the same task. The following year, it acquired its first burial ground and then proceeded to acquire a large track in Dachang in 1918. From its original base in Zhabei, the SPBC expanded in the International Settlement (1922), Nanshi (1925), and Pudong (1926).45 Both organizations had squads of coolies to collect the bodies, but they also offered money to anyone who found a dead child’s body and brought it to the associations.46 The Tongren Fuyuantang and SPBC performed a social service that was not unique to Shanghai as the phenomenon of exposed corpses and abandoned coffins was not specific to Shanghai, or to the Republican era, although we hardly have any actual records for the late imperial period. Yet, from various sources, it seems to have been a feature of Chinese urban life in the nineteenth century. In Ningbo, the Practical Benevolent Society distributed no less than 279 coffins, including 63 coffins for children, in 1835. The North China Herald reported on several halls that buried unclaimed bodies and collected scattered bones.47 In Canton the Aiyu Shantang (Hall of Sustaining Love) provided 836 coffins mostly for unclaimed bodies found in the street in 1872 and 547 the following year.48 Seventy years later (1946), the records of the Bureau of Public Health in the same city testified to the persistent presence of exposed bodies. In one of its reports, a map graphically showed the extent of the phenomenon—8,250 bodies were collected between January and August 1946.49 Unless we consider the phenomenon was more pronounced in southern cities, it is surprising that the historiography on Beijing or Tianjin failed to mention an issue that had an obvious impact on public health and resulted from deficient sanitary conditions.50 Issues of ethics were central in the action of the two organizations, even if the reference to public health emerged progressively in the late nineteenth century. In Chinese towns and cities, and even in rural villages, when an unknown person happened to die suddenly, the local community was responsible for providing a coffin and burial.51 All dead had a right, however simple, to a decent burial.52 The number of such cases in large urban centers explains why some organizations devoted their energy to collecting and burying exposed corpses after a simple ceremony. To preserve the urban residents in Shanghai, there was even a ceremony three times a year to summon the “wandering ghosts” resulting from “bad deaths” (see Chapter 7). Even in times of emergency, all souls were accounted for. For example, the hastily cremated remains of the people found in the war zone

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in late 1937 were entrusted to the SPBC “for burial in accordance with such rites as they seem advisable in order that no religious susceptibilities will be offended.”53 Thirty Buddhist priests were called on duty to perform the required rites.54 While the two associations dealt with the burial of exposed bodies as their main activity, they actually provided a wider range of services. In particular, a major pursuit was the provision of free coffins to poor families to bury their dead properly. Between 1915 and 1947, the SPBC distributed 271,832 coffins.55 The division of labor between the two associations remains unclear. As early as 1864 the Tongren Fuyuantang had opened a branch in the French Concession, although the French authorities recognized it as the sole legitimate organization only after 1937. The SPBC was officially recognized in the International Settlement from 1928 onward while its base of operation was the new Zhabei District that developed after 1900 across Soochow Creek. The sources in the archives mention other organizations, usually because they applied for a grant from the Shanghai Municipal Council, but they were small-scale latecomers that never played a significant role.56 In 1929, a Li Yi Benevolent Society, claiming to be established since 1918, applied for protection and support from the Shanghai Municipal Council. It appeared, however, that it was concerned mostly with dispensing free coffins to the poor and to hospitals.57 In 1939, a 1,000-member strong Chinese Moral Association (Zhongguo Daoyihui) declared that it had begun to remove corpses in the International Settlement, yet it limited its operations around its seat on Yates Road.58 The Tongren Fuyuantang and the SPBC became quasi-official undertakers for the poor and destitute to which other benevolent associations and hospitals sent their unclaimed or destitute dead.59 For example, in 1925 the SPBC received 6,941 bodies from outside institutions. Five years later, in 1930, the total from outside institutions amounted to 10,772. Both organizations went to great lengths to guarantee a resting place to their unclaimed bodies.60 The SPBC owned a large cemetery (Puyi Gongmu) in Dachang, north of Shanghai, that it opened in 1935.61 The Tongren Fuyuantang owned some thirty-three burial grounds in Pudong across the Huangpu River where it shipped the coffins in highly recognizable junks.62 With the war, however, both organizations lost access to their cemeteries and had to acquire new land, mostly in the Hongqiao area, west of Shanghai.63 Because of difficulties accessing the burial ground in Hong qiao after hostilities moved westward, it used temporary burial grounds within the International Settlement and in Nanshi.64 As soon as the conflict moved away from Shanghai, the SPBC undertook to remove the tens of thousands of temporarily stored coffins to the Hongqiao Cemetery.65 No doubt, the SPBC spared no effort to ensure the burial of unclaimed bodies,

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despite all pressures by the Shanghai Municipal Council and other private associations to use cremation to deal with these bodies.66 As these places filled up, the two organizations had to obtain more land in the area. Eventually, the SPBC owned 150 mu (55 acres) of land, next to the Hungjao Cemetery of the Shanghai Municipal Council.67 In January 1941, the Public Health Department warned that the remaining space would be depleted within two months, even if the coffins were piled up in rows of two to three coffins with hardly any earth to cover them.68 Although the need to remove the exposed bodies from the streets certainly helped the SPBC to obtain the support of the authorities, there were repeated closures or bans on burials in the Hongqiao area. The SPBC acquired land further away from Shanghai in Panlong in Qingpu County, some 10 kilometers away from the city, therefore incurring higher transportation costs.69 After the war, the absentee owner of the land used by the SPBC to bury the coffins of identified or unclaimed coffins came back and claimed his land. The SPBC started to excavate the coffins, but the task exceeded its logistical capacities. An agreement with the owner eventually prevailed, by way of paying him a rent pending the removal of the coffins.70 Struggle for more burial space was a continuous process, not only because access to established burial grounds came to be closed, but also because of the additional demands imposed by continuing military conflicts.71 Despite the difficulties and costs, the two organizations never relented in guaranteeing a resting place to the bodies they had collected, even if it took moving them several times. No body should get lost.

Regulating Unwanted Corpses For most of the history of the foreign settlements, the local authorities were not directly involved in the issue of abandoned corpses or coffins. In the late imperial and early Republican period, down to the 1920s, the responsibility for the collection of abandoned corpses in the International Settlement was officially entrusted to the local headmen (dibao) who supervised land transactions in their respective areas. The dibao was expected to attempt to identify the person, contact relatives, and file a report describing the state of the corpse as well as all the personal effects found on the body.72 Since the land regulations that governed the foreign settlements forbade the burial of any Chinese in the settlements, the removal of exposed corpses was a duty that also fell upon the dibao. Failure to take action might bring the dibao before the Mixed Court and get him fined.73 On the whole, the job was done quite efficiently even if, occasionally, the Shanghai Municipal Council would lodge a protest about coffins

106

Chapter 3 table 3.2. Annual income of four coffin repositories (February 1941) Income class

Dahua Dahua Zhonghua Zhonghua Wan’an Wan’an Leyuan Leyuan

Coffins Rate Coffins Rate Coffins Rate Coffins Rate

1

1 720 31 11,160 4 2,400 1 400

2

18 2,160 35 8,400 12 4,320 16 3,840

3

2 120 115 13,800 24 5,760 22 2,640

4

5

6

485 17,460 155 18,600 240 14,400

193 11,580 1,417 51,012

408 14,688

Total

506 20,460 181 33,360 796 57,348 1,696 72,292

Source: Memorandum, Deputy treasurer, SMC, 21 February 1941, U1-16-2471, SMA.

high-income families was also rewarding. With hardly 181 coffins in store, its revenue was just one-half of Leyuan and its 1,696 coffins. A coffin repository required only a relatively modest investment and limited staff, except for the higher class establishments. The cost for maintaining the premises was low. There was hardly any movement and wearing out of the premises. Finally, with each additional year of storage, the coffin repositories turned a profit that came close to 100 percent. In the wartime context, coffin repositories represented low-risk ventures with a high return on capital and a profitable business. It also means that the managers of repositories had little incentive to see a rapid turnover of coffins.

The Rise of Shanghai’s “Necropolis” War radically transformed both the geography of death and the social institutions in charge of the dead. The major ingredient in this transformation was undoubtedly the difficulties the traditional organizations met in removing the dead from the city in a context of higher mortality. The two major actors in the field—the guilds and charities—used to remove the dead to places located outside the city proper. Even if there were exceptions, most guild repositories were located in the suburbs and served only as a space of transit before burial in the native place. Charities owned cemetery land all around Shanghai and in Pudong. By and large, these places became inaccessible during the early years of the war. Lastly, in the context of Japanese occupation, the Chinese were unwilling to bury their dead in the cemeteries around Shanghai. As a result, as T. K. Ho, deputy secretary of the SMC wrote: “Shanghai has literally become a place of refuge both for the dead and the living.”23 Indeed, most of the dead remained in the city during the greater part of the war period, almost exclusively in the International Settlement, which gave rise to a huge necropolis in its midst.

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that took care of removing the “unwanted dead” certainly played a role in obliterating this phenomenon from the view and conscience of Shanghai residents. Periods of armed conflict dramatically increased the workload of the two organizations.85 During the Sino-Japanese hostilities of 1931–1932, the number of people found dead in the streets increased twofold. In a letter of 12 February 1932, the commissioner of public health noted that the number of corpses collected were twice the normal number.86 The SPBC recorded more dramatic figures for March 1932, with a total number of corpses as high as five times that of the same month in the previous year.87 With a full-fledged battle again in and around the city in 1937, the number of deaths increased dramatically. The population that fled from the war-torn districts in the Chinese municipality left with limited belongings. While many found a new home among relatives and friends, large numbers settled in the streets and alleyways, or at best in the refugee camps established by the benevolent societies and guilds. With little cash and limited savings, these families could not survive very long in Shanghai.88 Yet a new problem emerged, not just because of the increase in the number of abandoned bodies, but because it was no longer possible to remove and bury them in areas outside the foreign settlements due to Japanese occupation or to the blockade of traffic on the Huangpu River or Soochow Creek. What had been handled reasonably well by private Chinese organizations in peacetime required the forceful intervention of the foreign municipal institutions in wartime. In the early months of the war, abandoned bodies were processed in situ. The Shanghai Municipal Council used the refuse carts of the Public Works Department and hired the coolies of the slaughterhouse to cart away the dead bodies.89 The authorities only made sure that the bodies were removed as speedily as possible to places where they could be buried.90 Yet Chinese wounded, both civilian and soldiers, were brought wholesale into the International Settlement. The Public Health Department stated that the organization of the SPBC simply broke down under the sheer volume of bodies to be processed. 91 The end of the hostilities in December 1937 failed to bring a remission. There was hardly a day without a letter or a complaint by residents or factories.92 The Shanghai Municipal Council was soon overwhelmed by the number of people who died on its territory with no possibility to remove the bodies outside.93 Various solutions were explored. In May 1938, in a confidential document, the Shanghai Municipal Police proposed the dumping of bodies at sea.94 Yet the commissioner of public health opposed the idea as both impracticable and unnecessary, arguing that approximately 30,000 coffins had been disposed of sanitarily by fire during the preceding four months.

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Furthermore, the commissioner contended, “the Chinese population has as much right to their sentiments as any other section of the population.”95 By spring 1938, the authorities in both settlements had become seriously concerned with the issues of space and health. In particular, they started to worry about the removal of dead bodies before the hot summer months. The Shanghai Municipal Council decided at this point to impose the cremation of abandoned bodies and coffins.96 Cremation for unclaimed bodies had been broached upon by the Council before the war in its correspondence with the SPBC, though with little success. It had suggested establishing a joint crematorium with the French and Chinese authorities to cremate the exposed corpses of children.97 During the early months of conflict, cremation had been enforced as an emergency measure to deal with the abandoned bodies resulting from fighting in the war-torn areas, but the practice was discontinued thereafter.98 In May 1938, the French Concession also introduced the cremation of abandoned bodies when the site run by the Tongren Fuyuantang became too small to bury the coffins of indigent people.99 The association protested against a measure carried out without its consent and threatened the French Concession with the suspension of the collection of abandoned bodies.100 The authorities in both settlements prevailed against the reluctance and protests of the Chinese charities. With very few exceptions, all exposed corpses were cremated.101 The measure was lifted on 1 January 1940 in the French Concession when the resumption of traffic to Pudong allowed the Tongren Fuyuantang to ship the coffins for burial in its cemeteries.102 In the International Settlement, however, cremation was maintained until the end of the war.103 While the two benevolent associations were instrumental in transporting the bodies to the cremation site, they made sure, including in public notifications in the newspapers, they were not involved in the actual cremation of bodies, left to the foreign authorities.104 The Public Health Department pointed out that, despite their public critical stance, the associations benefited greatly from cremation as it lowered their expenses substantially.105 Cremation took place in two different rudimentary facilities in western Shanghai.106 Official reports tell a grim and dehumanizing story of the technical requirements for cremating bodies en masse.107 By August 1938, the Public Health Department cremated bodies at a rate of 5,000 per month.108 In the first six months of 1939, the figure jumped to 20,531.109 The extent of the human tragedy that war brought to Shanghai can be measured with two simple figures. By May 1944, in the International Settlement the Public Health Department had overseen the cremation of 182,225 bodies. If we add the cremation done by the French Concession, about 20,000 in two years, the total figure exceeds 200,000 human

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lives.110 These figures show that, during these years, there was almost no way for an ordinary Shanghai resident to escape the view of dead children and adults lying in the streets or in alleyways. One can find occasional mentions of this phenomenon in memoirs by Westerners or in Shanghai: A Novel by Yokomitsu Riichi.111 Although it never became a matter of public debate, the tendency was to believe that the forceful intervention of the authorities reflected both their concern for public health and the growing uneasiness of the population toward these unwelcome and intrusive deaths in the urban space.

The Living and the Dead: A Changing Perception

­

Over time the presence of exposed corpses in residential neighborhoods seems to have become a more frequent cause of alarm among Shanghai residents. The issue of people’s sensibility is one for which we have limited data. Aside from the press, one can rely only on the letters left in the archives. To what degree they are representative is hard to tell. Nevertheless their dating as well as the response of the authorities may support the idea of a growing concern starting in the early 1920s. In the International Settlement, the Shanghai Municipal Council was the natural target of people’s anger or complaints, even if it was not directly involved in the collection of dead bodies. Under pressure from such protests, the council had to work out various schemes to address the collection of exposed corpses. Residents usually complained about three main issues: smell, sight, and delay. Abandoned bodies might turn up—literally—at various intervals. On 28 February 1920, residents complained to the Shanghai Municipal Council about 500 coffins left within 300 yards of the boundary of the International Settlement. It appeared that the land belonged to the Tong ren Fuyuantang and had become a dumping ground for coffins. When the dibao who lived in the vicinity considered that a sufficient number of coffins had accumulated, he arranged for their removal. The Shanghai Municipal Council asked the Chinese authorities to stop this practice.112 Yet, in 1926, the Public Health Department wrote about the same location: “many of these coffins had been torn open by pariah dogs and portions of the remains strewn about the place. Many of the bodies were merely wrapped up in matting . . . in hot weather an unbearable stench emanates from the accumulated coffins.”113 From the correspondence in the archives, it appears that the issue was never solved and foreign or Chinese residents made regular protests as late as 1935.114 In July 1937 residents protested about “bad smells” from unencoffined corpses in the collection station near the racecourse.115 The bombing of the

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Great World a month later brought a very large accumulation of bodies that the SPBC, according to neighbors and the Shanghai Municipal Council, was too slow to remove.116 In December 1937, a Chinese resident living off Kiaochow Road reported the presence of corpses of children on the ground. It was apparently a practice by thieves to come at night, throw the bodies out of the coffins, and take the empty coffins away as firewood.117 Of course, such acts were punished when people got caught in the act, but this was hardly a deterrent in times of hardships.118 In April 1938, in the Chinese municipality, the shopkeepers around the famous teahouse next to the Yuyuan Garden in Nanshi complained about the bad smell from the pond due to the presence of dead bodies in the water. On the Ningbo Wharf, an accumulation of exposed bodies also caused serious concern among the population.119 On wasteland scheduled for building off Ichang Road, workers disinterred about 200 coffins in May 1938 and lined them up against the walls of the staff quarters of the Naigai Wata Kaisha cotton mill. The Japanese director of the mill asked the Public Health Department to remove the coffins.120 Between December 1937 and August 1940, the Shanghai Municipal Council received forty-five such letters of complaints about unattended coffins.121 While this represents a small flow—probably many more complaints were lodged by phone—it is significant to see that residents were increasingly unhappy with what they perceived as a disturbing presence. This aspect came to dominate the correspondence between the Chinese charities and the authorities of the settlements that demanded more expediency and to avoid anything offensive to Shanghai residents. Both municipal councils tried to impose rules on the removal and transportation of exposed bodies. In particular, they insisted that the bodies should be fully covered when the carts went through the streets on their way to the collection station.122 But the rules were obviously difficult to enforce, especially in times when the available manpower was overwhelmed by the sheer number of bodies: “in spite of repeated protests both verbal and written regarding the ill-treatment of corpses, i.e. being conveyed along public roads in an exposed manner and thrown about in a careless way [. . .] yesterday . . . child corpses [were] thrown about off a truck onto the public roadway like rag dolls. Passersby were holding their nose in anticipation of smell, the sight was disgusting.”123 The Shanghai Municipal Council asked the SPBC to have its trucks covered by a tarpaulin “of sufficient size as to effectually conceal all of the coffins on the trucks.”124 The Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance in the French Concession was even more critical of the Tongren Fuyuantang, although it was not until March 1938 that it imposed a regular inspection of the premises.125 The bureau repeatedly and bitterly complained about the lack of proper rules

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­

and complete neglect of basic hygienic standards by the Tongren Fuyuantang. While the association tried to abide by good standards, its coolies often failed to follow the rules. They would pick up bodies, sometimes completely naked, and transport them through the streets uncovered.126 Local residents also protested the operation of the Tongren Fuyuantang, denouncing an overflow of corpses on the premises, sometimes in the street itself.127 The description of the collection station of the Tongren Fuyuantang on 89 Rue de Ningpo, in the heart of a densely populated area, conveyed an apocalyptic vision of rotting corpses and sprawling worms and flies.128 In June 1941, the French Concession even reduced its grant from $5,000 to $3,000 to sanction the Tongren Fuyuantang. Yet the association flatly replied it was helping the authorities in dealing with unclaimed bodies and requested a reversal of the decision with the veiled threat of suspending its operation in the settlement.129 One year later, the director of public health expressed the same complaints, but he remained powerless in replacing the valuable and critical service the Tongren Fuyuantang provided, whatever its deficiencies.130 The collection of exposed corpses was performed with a limited staff and basic equipment. Our data cover only the wartime period. We hardly know anything about the staff employed by the SPBC or Tongren Fu yuantang. Obviously, collecting corpses was a poorly paid job that brought little social esteem. The men employed by the two organizations came into contact with dead bodies and coffins all day long (see Figure 6.4).131 The equipment they had remained fairly stable until the beginning of the war. In February 1938, the SPBC owned one motorcar, three motor trucks, three delivery tricycles, and three bicycles. To keep up with the workload, it had to purchase a new “Chevrolet” truck.132 Four months later, a new “Diamond” truck was added to the fleet.133 By December 1939, the SPBC had a small fleet of vehicles, including one motorcar, four motor freight vehicles, three delivery tricycles, and four bicycles. Yet, in addition to the trucks it used for the removal of coffins, it was planning to add additional tricycles.134 In the French Concession, the Tongren Fuyuantang had two wheel-stretchers, two pedicabs, and two trucks in late 1938 for the collection of abandoned bodies, although only one truck was used for indigent people.135 In 1938, the Tongren Fuyuantang maintained a staff of six coolies for the stretchers, the tricycles, and the trucks plus two drivers. On the receiving side, in the Hongqiao Cemetery, it maintained a team of eight coolies and one foreman.136 A prewar document listed a total of forty-five employees, but with one-quarter in administrative positions.137 By 1942, the staff had hardly changed. It included three coolies to collect bodies in the street and eighteen coolies (including one cook) to take care of the

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figure 6.4. Tongren Fuyuantang pedicab used to pick up the exposed corpses of children. Source: Jack Birns, Life, 1949 (published in Assignment Shanghai: Photographs on the Eve of Revolution [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003], 38)

coffining, transportation, and burial of the unclaimed bodies.138 To expedite the removal of exposed corpses, the coolies brought them first to the collection stations established in various places in the settlements. From there, the bodies were removed to the western areas to either be buried or, after 1938, be cremated (see Figure 6.5). After December 1941, however, new difficulties emerged. It became increasingly difficult to obtain gasoline for the trucks, while the number of bodies continued to increase. Another major concern was the cost of securing wood to make coffins.139

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figure 6.5. Truckload of coffins taken to burial by the Tongren Fuyuantang. Source: Virtual Shanghai, ID15451, source unknown

 

In December 1941, the SPBC had to revert to handcarts—each could accommodate four large coffins—to transport coffins for short distances.140 Eventually, the SPBC relied on just its six handcarts for transportation to western Shanghai where burial and cremation took place.141 The Tongren Fuyuantang also failed to receive enough gasoline for its trucks.142 In fact, the authorities were never able to remedy the issue of faulty notification and prompt removal of exposed corpses.143 In January 1942, the Public Health Department admitted that “faulty notification [was] still our real bugbear.”144 There was an attempt in the same month by the Shanghai Municipal Council to establish an interdepartmental scheme that by-passed the SPBC.145 An initial daily collection by the Public Works Department would be started in the early morning as soon as the police had communicated the list of reported locations. If the police were to locate other corpses after 9:00 a.m., a supplementary collection would be undertaken. The bodies were removed to the two collections centers on Tiendong Road and Muirhead Road.146 Complaints by residents, however, forced the closing of the former in the summer of 1943. Thereafter, all corpses were sent to the Muirhead Road center and the SPBC depot site on Racecourse Road.147 By April 1942, however, no improvement had been made: “on the contrary, corpses are being left on the street or in the alleyway for two or three days at least while the SPBC who used to remove them within two days is denied such activities.”148 The coolies of the Public Works Department disliked their new duty and made no effort

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to promptly remove the corpses. In late 1943 the involvement of the department in body collection was discontinued and entrusted again to the SPBC.149 In the French Concession, the authorities also entertained the idea of creating a municipal service for the removal of unclaimed bodies from the streets in February 1943, but the plan did not materialize.150 In fact, while the collection of bodies was technically simple, in both settlements the systematic investigation the police made in the case of adults for the sake of identification and to make sure that the death did not result from foul play often generated delays.151 All abandoned corpses were photographed before burial or cremation, although this was discontinued after December 1942.152 After the end of the Sino-Japanese War, the issue of processing the unclaimed bodies in the city became the responsibility of the Chinese municipality. The archival record, however, is very sketchy and makes it difficult to follow the policy of the authorities on this issue in the postwar period. The municipal authorities, while sympathetic, cared foremost about public health and sought the transfer of all mortuary installations outside of the city center.153 The municipality also continued to provide financial support to the SPBC and the Tongren Fuyuantang in 1946, but the instability of the political situation and the financial difficulties of the local government seem to have led to the suspension of its subsidy after 1947. At the end of the war, the SPBC had started to use the radio and other media to raise money. The first campaign was launched in 1944 on a radio station (wenhua diantai) based in the French Concession.154 In December 1945, it started a two-day campaign that became an annual operation to supplement the income from its properties in a time of hyperinflation.155 From the 1930s onward, but more so after war broke out, a different sensibility emerged among both the authorities and the public about death. Public health concerns dominated in official discourse, which led to more forceful intervention and monitoring by the authorities. Whereas funerals were events that were acceptable for the public view, the dead bodies of the poor should be hidden and made as invisible as possible to the public. After 1945, the Nationalist municipality tried to enforce policies of exclusion of all death-related operations from the city proper. Among the population there was also a growing rejection of the physical proximity with death that exposed corpses and abandoned coffins imposed by their sheer presence in the midst of the city. Yet official measures failed to tackle the fundamental problem of invisible deaths that increasingly offended the sensibilities of Shanghai residents.156 After 1949, all mentions of this issue disappeared from the press. It is possible to follow the trail of exposed corpses only through the internal reports of the Bureau of Public Health. Yet, even under a regime that claimed a professed sympathy for

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the “wretched of the earth,” there was not substantial discussion of this phenomenon.

Conclusion In late imperial and Republican-era Shanghai death did not strike evenly. Among the local residents, age, fortune, sex, or ethnicity traced various paths on the demographic grid that ran across the local population. Throughout the late nineteenth century to the late 1930s, death took a heavy toll on the less fortunate, especially when climatic or economic conditions became more severe. Of course, periods of military conflict— accompanied by the complete disruption of normal social and economic order—represented a climax that created social havoc and left many literally “on the side of the street.” Yet this was not exactly the case. Shanghai’s experience is closer to that of the cities of the first industrial revolution with high death rates or the Third World cities with the massive migration of poor people.157 Many, if not most, of those who ended up on the streets of Shanghai had come to the city with few resources, no privileged contacts or networks on which to rely, ill health, or few physical reserves. Of course, in wartime, the net caught a wider circle, but by and large most residents with a decent income had the resources to survive a major crisis. There is no doubt, also, that among the poorer groups of the population, children were those most exposed to premature death. The crude figures are simply shocking. Paradoxically, this phenomenon was so massive, so present in everyday life, and probably so unbearable that it became something people chose not to see or to care about, except when a dead body landed on their doorstep. Through a double process of social denial—being denied proper care and being denied proper burial—these invisible deaths were pushed out of collective memory. Despite, or perhaps because of, the massive increase in exposed corpses in the 1930s and during the war, an unconscious process of social “erasure” set in. This process obscured one of the biggest human tragedies in wartime Shanghai. People turned a blind eye toward a phenomenon that could be met at every street corner. The press failed to raise and discuss this issue beyond summary reports. Officials concerned themselves strictly with preventing these bodies from affecting the health of inhabitants. These deaths were the exact opposite of the “publicized” deaths embodied in funeral processions. These were “invisible” deaths, deaths that were relegated to obscurity and social denial. Yet these “bodies” were those of human beings. Their life may have been cut short—the vast majority were infants or children under five—but for the organizations that made it their

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task to collect them, they deserved a form of burial. The SPBC and the Tongren Fuyuantang provided an irreplaceable service to both the dead and the living in Shanghai. They could not address the root of a problem that was beyond their control, but their actions expressed a form of humanity toward the victims of misery. After 1949, the two organizations came under the supervision of a joint committee on the management of charity organizations (Shanghai canfei yanglao gongzuo weiyuanhui).158 The new municipal government issued a set of regulations that basically followed those adopted by the previous Nationalist administration. These regulations, however, did not change reality. Unclaimed bodies continued to be picked up in the streets at least into 1954 when our sources become silent. The new authorities were overwhelmed by the extent of the problem of unclaimed bodies in the street.159 As part of their effort to get hold of the city and probably figure out how to provide the population with adequate means of living, they endeavored to establish a system of population registration and vital statistics. Their genuine effort was undermined by the sheer number of unrecorded deaths. The Bureau of Public Health noted that it was trying to improve the reporting methods about the age and sex of street bodies, but it felt powerless to know more about them. Unclaimed bodies, the author bitterly complained, affected the accuracy of the work of compiling vital statistics.160 Whereas registered deaths in the whole city amounted to 64,834 individuals in 1951, the number of unclaimed bodies added a staggering 44,661 individuals (5,252 adults and 39,409 children).161 Between June 1949 and October 1954, the authorities cremated a total of 129,248 bodies of children and buried 34,382 adult bodies.162 Yet in none of these internal reports did the Communist cadres express either curiosity on the source of the phenomenon or a political condemnation of it. They seem to have been more concerned with the practicality of establishing a reliable statistical system. In December 1953, the Bureau of Public Health came up with a regulation on the processing of dead bodies that made reporting compulsory for both individuals and organizations involved in caring for dead bodies (hospitals, funeral parlors, SPBC, etc.).163 On the practical side, they installed “corpse collecting boxes” (lushixiang) in the city to lessen the visibility of exposed bodies.164 Yet the new government launched several campaigns of vaccination, at the same time as it was introducing small health offices down to the level of lilong. The Women’s Federation organized to identify pregnant women and to set up small clinics. Kindergartens were established at a rapid rate in the early years of the communist regime.165 The conjunction of these measures contributed to reducing the high infant mortality rate and, eventually, eliminating the phenomenon of unclaimed bodies in the streets of Shanghai.

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The phenomenon of invisible deaths finally disappeared from the everyday life experience of Shanghai residents, but by the same token its memory was also erased. As the press and all public organs, including the Communist authorities, failed to bring up the issue for public discussion, even in internal documents, the tragic fate of the poor became a forgotten casualty of history.

7

Funerals and the Price of Death

Funerals are the expression of bereavement and loss. They are the performative ceremonies through which the living, family and friends, collectively assume the loss of someone and honor the dead one last time before its final disposal. In Shanghai, people followed time-honored customs, even if the nature of the rituals depended on the social position of the family. There was much more inequality in the city than in rural society. Moreover, the urban context, in both material and cultural terms, introduced changes and adaptations in customs and the social expression of mourning. While in contemporary societies funerals belong mostly to the private realm, funerals in the past were also public statements about social status and wealth. This dimension faded away quite early in Europe, but it retained a central role in the arrangement of funerals in China. The elaborate funerals of the elite groups reflected the genuine belief about the need to provide the dead with everything that was thought necessary for a comfortable living in the afterlife, probably even more than what the person had actually enjoyed. Funerals drew a deep and wide gap between the elites and the common people. The latter could only see with awe the formidable display, sometimes extravaganza, through which elite funeral processions materialized wealth and status in the city. In contrast, large segments of the Shanghai population simply could not afford a funeral, not even a burial place. For all their symbolic dimension, funerals rested primarily on economics. The economy of death was a complex and elaborate system on which, for the most part, sources are scarce before the intervention of the state during the Sino-Japanese War period. In their attempt to control or jugulate inflation, the authorities started

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monitoring, then regulating prices in all the fields of economic activity, including the funeral business. Although the data cover a later period, they reveal the intricate architecture of services and prices related to death in Shanghai. Death generated a complete system of production of funeral artifacts and services, with rates and prices that established another form of social hierarchy based on wealth. In Shanghai, death carried a price tag that placed commercial funeral services beyond the means of the majority of Shanghai residents. It was one of the incentives for the new regime after 1949 to regulate prices very strictly and to transform the funeral business into a form of public service.

Funerals: Private Rituals and Public Events Much has been written on Chinese funerals. Anthropologists have observed funerals in contemporary Chinese societies on the mainland, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore, mostly among rural communities.1 Their works attest to the enduring legacies of the past, with variations along a core set of practices.2 Historians, however, have shown little interest in funerals and rituals related to death, except in their elite political dimension and the uses of past heroes’ tombs in politics.3 The bulk of existing historiography concentrates on ancient and medieval China.4 The nineteenth and twentieth centuries basically elude us, except for the study of Mechthild Leutner on Beijing.5 We are fortunate, however, to have firsthand accounts by Western observers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, although their works addressed the rituals of the elite families or those in rural communities.6 The funerals of the common people were not worth much attention. There is also a geographical bias in the available historiography as the two major existing works examined funeral practices in Fujian and a third one, much less detailed, surveyed funeral practices in Beijing. Yet, although there were traditions that were specific to certain localities, such as the double burial in Southeast China, the core elite conventions were fairly unified all over China.7 We are indebted to Jan Jakob Maria de Groot for the most detailed account of funerals in the upper classes in Fujian province, with mostly similar observations by Justus Doolittle and John Gray.8 Annie Cormack and H. Y. Lowe offer a view on funeral traditions in Beijing.9 Unfortunately, there is very little about Shanghai beyond press reports and visual traces. These sources only shed light on the public dimension of funerals, as discussed in the next section, but they provide very little about the funeral rituals and the experience of individuals in mourning.

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Funerals as Rituals Funerals meant first the observance of a prescribed set of rituals as well as how much the actual condition of the families allowed them to abide with these rules. The previous chapters have established that people were not equal before death and that there was a clear social and economic hierarchy that reflected on the disposal of the dead. From antiquity, the Chinese elites created sophisticated sets of rules to direct the steps to be followed after death, each set of rules based on the status of the deceased in the family and defined for the descendants according to their rank and degree of kinship.10 The ritual norm took for granted that parents, father and mother, or older relatives, uncles and aunts, died first. Their children, especially sons, were expected to take care of the passage of parents into the afterlife. The ritualists, according to Granet, codified the ways in which mourners expressed their pain, grief, and emotions, in the same way as the expression of love and courtship followed conventional formulas and gestures.11 The rituals evolved over time and the strict rules imposed on mourners became much less stringent, especially the mandatory three years of mourning by officials.12 Nevertheless, Chinese funerals continued to abide with complex sets of prescribed rules and behaviors that conditioned the expression of grief.13 Death was a traumatic moment in Chinese culture, not just because the family lost one of its members, but also because the death of an individual presented a potential threat to the living if the soul of the deceased was not taken care of properly or worse, as in the case of accidental deaths, was left unattended. The elaborate rites the bereaved performed in prescribed sequence were meant to meet all the needs of the soul in the afterlife and ensure that it would not come back to haunt and hassle the living. Death was taboo in itself. It could pollute the living and bring bad luck unless appropriate measures were enforced.14 There was a wide range of prescribed actions (disposing of the body right before and after death, gifts of protective items in predefined colors given to guests) and exclusions (presence of women, especially pregnant women, at certain stages of the funeral, no presence of animal or animal matter in any form, including leather or fur, etc.). There was hardly any contact with the body, except for its customary washing and dressing. In addition, the sons and relatives who had taken part in these actions immediately ate a bowl of vermicelli soup as the long threads of this food were believed to neutralize the life-shortening influences that contact with the dead may have produced.15 All the rituals associated with death had as much importance for the dead, to whom respect and filial piety was expressed, as for the living, who believed their fate and those of their descendants depended on taking the right course of action.

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There would be no point in paraphrasing or summarizing de Groot’s massive work on funerals in China, with most of his observations from personal experience during his extensive stays in Fujian in the late nineteenth century.16 The most relevant points here for the study of death in Shanghai are the deeply entrenched beliefs in the obligations the living had toward the dead, especially in the proper disposal of the body and its protection from negative influences and physical damage. This played at two different levels, that of individual Confucian or religious belief (with a strong mix of the two in China) and that of the materiality of the body, even after its interment, whose integrity should be maintained. In the previous chapters we have seen how much resistance was met to attempts to remove graves or whole cemeteries or to forcefully cremate bodies throughout the century under study. Even the modernizing elites of the Nationalist period or the more radical elites in the Communist era adopted a careful and progressive approach to changing funeral customs. Yet, in Shanghai, as probably in most of China, funeral practices displayed a surprising mix of intense respect for the dead but abhorrence for death itself, utmost care for elaborate funerals and disregard of corpses in periods of acute epidemics, a complete absence of regulation, except in the foreign settlements, but elaborate social organizations to handle death in the city.17 Two French physicians left a rare record of the disposal of bodies in the late 1930s in Shanghai. Their testimony was based on several decades of observation of health issues in the city.18 When death occurred, according to their report, the face of the deceased was covered with a piece of cotton cloth. The body was washed carefully, dressed, and displayed in the main room of the house. The body never remained on the death bed in the bedroom. Rites were performed, which the authors do not describe, with Buddhism having the most pervasive influence among the common people.19 They point out, however, that the service of an undertaker was beyond the reach of most people who relied on relatives or charity organizations. The body was usually displayed for a wake and visits by friends and relatives for no more than three days. In Shanghai, it became customary to establish a mourning hall (lingtang) where relatives, friends, and colleagues could pay their respects, either in the house or outside in a dedicated temporary construction. For official figures or celebrities (e.g., actors), a public mourning hall would be set up for the memorial service. After departure of the body for burial or to a coffin repository, the family opened the room where the body had laid and burned incensed to chase all evil spirits away. The personal belongings of the deceased were destroyed, burnt, or given to beggars or rag pickers.20 The coffin was a central element in funerals. It could be made of different types of wood depending on how much money the family was

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120,000 100,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 20,000 0 May 1938

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Oct. 1939

Sept. 1940

Sept. 1941

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figure 3.1. Number of stored coffins in the International Settlement

inexorable increase that bewildered the authorities of the International Settlement. Four years into the war period, on the eve of Pearl Harbor and the full occupation of Shanghai by the Japanese, the settlement was home to almost 50,000 coffins. Two years later, the figure had doubled to more than 100,000 coffins. There is little doubt that the number of stored coffins continued to increase until August 1945. Even a company established in January 1943 managed to garner 1,500 coffins on its premises by December 1946.34 Yet the figures above do not represent the full extent of the storage of dead bodies. On the one hand, despite the destruction of their premises, the guilds eventually resumed their operations in the Japanese-occupied Chinese municipality. Nevertheless, the capacity of the guild premises was no match to those of the commercial repositories. We have only partial data on the stored coffins in the Chinese municipality. In September 1941, a partial count recorded 11,536 coffins. Two years later, a more complete set recorded 12,302 coffins.35 As the two sets overlapped only marginally, it is safe to assume that the total number of stored coffins in the Chinese municipality must have ranged between 12,000 and 16,000 coffins. Taken together, these figures point to a population of 60,000 stored coffins in September 1941 and 120,000 in September 1943. A rough count also shows that about 85 percent of these coffins were located in the International Settlement. Thus coffin repositories accommodated a massive population of unburied coffins in mostly urbanized areas, even if many were located at the western fringe of the city. Yet, during and after the war, almost all these areas became congested and densely populated. Maps 3.3 and 3.4 are based on the statistics of the Public Health Department. Even

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figure 7.1. Chinese coffin shop in Shanghai (1940s). Source: Jack Birns, Life, 1949 (published in Assignment Shanghai: Photographs on the Eve of Revolution [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003])

thick veil of silence. Neither the literature nor private papers have shed any light on the experience of mourning and grief in modern Shanghai. In the late nineteenth century, de Groot claimed that the outpouring of cries and wails were mainly a ceremonial observance, a rite that precluded and

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figure 7.2. Coffin on the move in the street. Source: R. Barz, Shanghai: Sketches of Present-Day Shanghai (n.p.: Centurion, 1935), 116; no copyright

enveloped the expression of deep emotions.32 The expressions of personal feelings found their way in the personal writings of elite men and women, although it is not always easy to draw a line between the behavior that rules of propriety and filial duties commanded and the sense of pain and loss individuals felt.33 A few historians have attempted to reach out for the inner feelings of the bereaved, mostly through certain genres (epitaph, poetry, eulogy), but mourning often overshadows personal grief in these texts.34 Death itself was a strong taboo that rarely translated into words or painting, except for the customary funeral portrait (later replaced by a photograph).35

Funerals as Public Performance Funerals were the most visible aspect of death in the city. Once the coffin left the home, it entered the public space where it became part of a different exercise: the explicit display of the family’s respect for the deceased and the statement of difference that sustained the social status of the group. Major funerals were genuine extravaganzas not dissimilar to the ostentatious displays of grief that Victorian society required from the wealthy in England.36 At stake was first and foremost the genuine endearment of the

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family for the achievements of the deceased and the social and material legacy bestowed upon them as a result of his or her deeds. It was also crucial to provide the deceased with all the resources that, as in real life, were believed to be necessary for a comfortable afterlife. Finally, funerals were a potent moment for the affirmation of the social standing of the whole family. Public opinion assessed the degree of filial devotion of mourners from the way in which they celebrated the funerals of their parents.37 As one went down the social ladder, however, the scale of the funeral processions decreased gradually, even if families were willing to go into debt to organize a decent funeral. Individual beliefs and social pressure combined to produce an urban funeral culture that placed the emphasis on lavish expenditures, which revealed the gap between the upper classes and the common people. Thomas Laqueur’s comment about pauper funerals in London fully applies here: “The ignominious funerals of the poor came to signify the opposite—their absolute exclusion from the social body.”38 Wealth as such was much less visible among the living than the sumptuous funeral processions of the wealthy that proceeded through the city under intense scrutiny, curiosity, and awe from the public. The publicization of death started with the display of symbolic items outside the house, such as the sedan chair that would carry the tablet for the soul or, for ordinary people, white or black strips of paper to cover the traditional propitious vertical written couplets (duilian) pasted on doors on the New Year. This advertised that a death had occurred in the house. In the absence of compulsory registration, these displays helped notify the police that someone had died in the city.39 Wealthier families built a kind of awning, made of bamboo poles and white cloth or matting, at the entrance of the house. In the cities, as in Shanghai, it could just be something placated onto the façade of a building, especially on funeral parlors and coffin repositories where the coffin was displayed (see Figure 7.3). The awning remained in place until the departure of the coffin but had to be dismantled before the family returned from the burial ground. We have many pictures of such funeral decorations as they were meant to be visible to the outside. In the case of public figures, mostly officials from the government or large public companies, a separate structure akin to a tent was built on open ground to accommodate the flow of people who would come to pay their respects. At the beginning of the twentieth century, essentially after 1905, a new form of memorial service emerged. The “memorial assembly” (zhuidaohui) was a tribute to the people who had played a role or had died in the course of political action. Whereas the term zhuidao appeared infrequently in the Shenbao between 1875 and 1894, it always referred to a eulogy in the form of a written text.40 I found the first occurrence of a memorial

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figure 7.3. Decorated funeral parlor for Fu Xiao’an’s funeral service (1940). Source: H1-1-14-2183, Shanghai Municipal Archives

assembly in 1905 upon the death of Zou Rong in the jail of the Shanghai Municipal Council. Zou was an anti-Qing revolutionary linked to the Subao, a cause célèbre in the early Chinese press.41 Thereafter, the memorial assembly became a standard public way of paying respect to a person, often a public figure, in the presence of the coffin when the event took place in a funeral parlor (as in the case of Ruan Lingyu discussed below), but more frequently with the body in absentia when it was held in any location the organizers selected. The publicization of death through memorial assemblies grafted another layer onto the ceremonies held within the private sphere. Funeral processions were a major attraction in Chinese cities. They could draw considerable crowds of onlookers, both Chinese and foreigners, in the same way as people crowded the streets in London for elite funerals.42 Since the large processions were often announced in the press, people would gather along the main streets that the procession followed. In Beijing, it was a common occurrence to see “funeral viewing” in the city’s guidebooks.43 Although large funeral processions were less frequent in Shanghai, such events created much havoc for traffic, even in the early days, when horse-drawn carts and rickshaws were the only means of

1

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map 3.3. Growing inventory of stored coffins (1937–1941). Source: Virtual Shanghai

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figure 7.5. Funeral procession (1890s–1900s). Source: Historical Photographs of China. Courtesy of Historical Photographs of China project, University of Bristol; no copyright

­

a medium-size funeral attracted only those who happened to be around the place where a funeral procession proceeded. In the photograph in Figure 7.5, from the 1890s–1900s, only casual onlookers observe the passing procession. The compositions of the large funeral processions were not standardized, even if some elements (soul tablets, banners, wailers, musicians, etc.) always appeared whose presence has been attested to for centuries. Yet it is also obvious that under foreign influence the organizers of funerals integrated new elements that gave more prestige to the funeral. De Groot noted that “funeral processions as a rule may be said to differ from one another rather with regard to show and length than with regard to arrangement. The wealth of the family, the social rank of the dead and the consideration in which he was held during his life, the position of his sons, the number of his friends and acquaintances, etc. have a most decisive influence on the pomp displayed in the train and on the number of persons and groups composing it.”47 Although the description below is based on de Groot’s record, a comparison with the account of a funeral in Suzhou in the 1920s confirms that there was a wide degree of local improvisation, based on customs but also on the proposals put forward by the funeral masters. Gu Jiegang expressed very critical views of such developments.

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Whereas the central items in a funeral procession amounted to no more than seven, the procession for his grandmother in the early 1920s was blown up to eighty items altogether. Yet Gu felt that it was unavoidable or his family would be ridiculed for holding a cheap funeral.48 Visual sources tend to confirm these variations. In Figure 7.5, for instance, the whole funeral procession fits in one frame, although it does appear to be the funeral of someone with a certain social status. Yet it displayed little extravagance compared to later funerals. Funeral processions varied greatly, but they followed a basic structure. In major funerals, a relative or a coolie opened the procession to clear the way for the coffin and the soul of the dead. It was both practical and necessary to make sure the funeral train kept moving to abide with the propitious timing set by the professional diviner. Next came a paper scatterer, whose function was to distribute round or square sheets of paper to divert the attention of the evil spirits that were believed to prowl about. The spirits were expected to rush to the fake money and forget the coffin and the soul of the deceased. As it was feared this might not be sufficient to fully rid the path of all spirits, musicians were hired, initially trumpeters or horn players, to blast sounds at the front of the procession. In some areas, families would also explode firecrackers as additional protection. Yet, paradoxically, a group of men carried placards demanding silence and reverence. The second part of the funeral train started with bearers who carried white cylindrical lanterns (baideng or madeng) inscribed with the name and titles of the dead. There could also be large yellow or tinfoil placards that eulogized the dead person. These items served to guide the soul, wrapped in darkness, onto the right path to the burial ground. In large funerals, there would be all sorts of placards and banners, and later flags, all gifts from friends, relatives, colleagues, companies, and so on, to eulogize the deceased. Next came a band of musicians playing various Chinese instruments (gongs, drums, clarinets) even if, as discussed below, modern times brought other types of musicians. De Groot passed a harsh judgment on these bands whose main function, in his view, was to make as much noise as possible. In Shanghai, Western bands were introduced along with the traditional Chinese groups of musicians, in both private and official funerals. A drawing from Dianshizhai Huabao in 1889 shows a band of Western musicians in a Chinese procession in the honor of Mazu, the goddess of the sea. The accompanying comment stated that the band played on funerals as well.49 The band of the Shanghai Municipal Council was available for such occasions to make money to purchase its instruments.50 Commercial bands were also for hire. The band of the Small World, an entertainment center, advertised its service for weddings and funerals in the Shenbao. In

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a 1920s photograph, a Western-style band of Chinese musicians dressed in Western uniforms marched right ahead of the catafalque and seemed to be opening the funeral procession. In fact, large funerals usually accommodated several bands, with a mix of civilian and military bands for those who had held official positions, as we shall see for Sheng Xuanhuai’s funeral. Musicians usually preceded the white portable pavilion, as can be seen in Figure 7.5 (1890s–1900s) in Shanghai, that contained the image of the Road Clearing God (kailushen) whose terrific appearance, again, served the purpose of purging the funeral train from evil spirits.51 Among middleand low-income families, however, the portable pavilion was used, though there was no image inside it. It was believed that the mere aspect of the vehicle would intimidate the spirits of darkness. In imperial times, if the deceased had purchased an official title, the original imperial decree was carried in a special pavilion, similar to a sedan chair, in the imperial yellow color. Another band played music, while the family had at heart to have literati march along the pavilion. Finally, there came the most important section of the funeral train, the coffin and the mourners. This group also opened with a band of musicians and another sedan chair that contained the tablet that would receive the soul of the departed after the burial. It used to include a painted portrait of the dead, but in a funeral held in the early 1920s in Suzhou, a photograph placed on a separate pavilion replaced the portrait. A group of Buddhist monks marched in front of the tablet to afford additional protection. The catafalque came next with the “managers of the coffin,” relatives or kinsmen who walked immediately in front of the coffin. The hearse was not the means of transporting the coffin in Chinese funerals. It appeared in the early twentieth century, often for official processions, in imitation of Westerners. In view of the heavy weight of the coffin alone—250–300 pounds—a large number of pallbearers were hired to carry the elaborate catafalques. They were special structures made of wood that must have weighed 500–600 pounds. In early modern England, a temporary structure was also set around the coffin to display the drapes, heraldry, and so on, in the case of nobility.52 According to de Groot, the number of pallbearers followed strict numeral rules patterned after the lucky number 8: 8, 16, 32, 64, with 8 as the most common number and 32 the largest number of bearers employed in Fujian.53 Gu Jiegang, a prominent historian and intellectual, recalled that thirty-two pallbearers carried the coffin of his grandmother in 1922, which confirms de Groot’s observation.54 Yet this depended on the resources of the family. The number of pallbearers had more to do with the intention to impress than with the actual weight of the coffin. A 1920s picture of a funeral procession in

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figure 7.6. Chinese elite coffin catafalque with thirty-two pallbearers. Source: R. Barz, Shanghai: Sketches of Present-Day Shanghai (n.p.: Centurion, 1935), 106; no copyright

Shanghai shows eight bearers. A 1935 photograph displays a catafalque with thirty-two bearers on Kiukiang Road (see Figure 7.6). In this photograph, the bearers all wear white light shirts and white hats in a casual way, with their breasts visible, over pants and straw sandals.55 De Groot was very critical of what he viewed as the unsightly appearance of the common coolies hired to carry the coffin in Fujian.56 The wailing sons of the dead, as well as other family members and clansmen, all male, followed immediately behind the coffin, dressed in sackcloth mourning garb and with straw sandals on their feet. Wearing white mourning clothes remained a standard practice well into the 1940s.57 The funeral procession closed with the sedan chairs, horse carts, or automobiles (depending on the period) that transported the women of the family and the guests. The coffin was not visible as it was placed on a catafalque and covered with embroidered drapery and elaborate sculptures. Even the poorer families covered the coffin with a coffin pall (guanzhao).58 Although we have a few pictures of coffins as they proceeded in the streets of Shanghai, none actually matches the highest grade of catafalque as described by de Groot or reported in photography for Beijing. A midlevel funeral procession in the 1920s (see Figure 7.5) shows an exquisitely decorated small-size catafalque, covered on top with a bridge and a crane as an icon of longevity. The catafalque was decorated in the form of a dragon.

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figure 7.7. Large paper figures in a funeral procession. Source: Virtual Shanghai, ID32817. René Antoine Nus. Reprinted with permission

This seems to have been a standard practice as we can see the same model, though for a much larger funeral, in a 1935 photograph (see Figure 7.6). The description above does not do justice to the actual size of large funerals.59 There is ample evidence that in Shanghai as elsewhere many more actors were involved in large-scale funeral processions. Men and children carried all kinds of paper-made figures or boat-shaped and pavilion-shaped floats (see Figure 7.7), censers burned incense all along, groups of Daoist and Buddhist priests partook in the procession, and hired bands of wailers cried all they could to chase away the bad spirits. Gu Jiegang recalled that his grandmother’s funeral included a total of eighty items. Since several of them required a number of carriers, the total number of participants could not have been under 350 people.60 De Groot calculated that a large funeral in Fujian involved 700–1,000 people.61 While there were few events that matched this size in Shanghai, especially due to the restrictions imposed on funeral processions in the foreign settlements, there were a few exceptional cases. I examine two cases of large-scale funerals that took place over a period of approximately twenty years, in 1917 and 1935, for two very different public figures. The first was the funeral of Sheng Xuanhuai, a major reformer, high civil servant, and businessman who passed away on 27 April 1916. His family organized Sheng’s funeral in November 1917, eighteen months after his death.62 The second figure was the actress Ruan

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Lingyu, who committed suicide on 8 March 1935 and was buried six days later.63 The funeral of Sheng Xuanhuai was probably the largest funeral procession in modern Shanghai. It set a precedent that actually few people ever matched, not in terms of “audience,” as later funerals like Ruan Lingyu’s may have attracted a larger public, but in the unbelievable scale and amount of money spent.64 It was technically a private funeral, but Sheng Xuanhuai, a retired minister and grade one official, received a quasi-state funeral at a time when the Qing dynasty had crumbled, its funeral etiquette and protocol fully stamped out, and the Republican regime already in shambles. The hybrid nature of the funeral reflected the social and political limbo that befell China, as much as the very hybridity of the city where the funeral took place. A second aspect that made the funeral exceptional was that it spread over two locations, Shanghai, where Sheng had died, and Suzhou, where he was buried in a family property. There were in fact two funeral processions over four days, with a carefully staged slow boat trip between the two cities despite the availability of rail transport.65 Finally, it was the object of the first Chinese documentary film, The grand funeral of Sheng Xuanhuai (Sheng Xinsun dachusang), produced by the Commercial Press, a visual record probably lost in the fire that destroyed the building of the press during the 1932 Battle of Shanghai. The family of Sheng Xuanhuai planned the funeral over a long period of time, which had less to do with the appropriate day than to set in motion the production of the funeral artifacts and the coordination between all the participants, both individuals and institutions. Newspapers carried announcements well in advance of the upcoming funeral. The “funeral announcement” ran for three weeks from 2 November to 22 November 1917.66 Although it was designed to allow those who planned to attend to make the proper arrangements, the early and prolonged announcement was aimed as well at making the population at large aware of the upcoming funeral procession to attract a large attendance at the funeral. Their expectations were met well beyond any conceivable ambition. The news of the funeral circulated not just within the city but way beyond into the neighboring provinces. Prospective viewers streamed to the city by boat and train to attend the event. Hotels were fully booked in advance, with rates going up sharply, especially for those located along the streets the procession would follow. The Shenbao viewed this frenzy as a pure waste of money.67 Yet most people saw the funeral as a huge street show they were eager to see whatever the cost. Teahouses, amusement centers, and restaurants that owned premises that overlooked the procession invariably rented their space at premium prices, especially on the upper floor windows and balconies.68 At ground level, shops and workshop shut down,

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but they also offered advantageous viewpoints, which they rented out as well. People shunned all the shows (opera, music, etc.) to watch the funeral procession. By late morning on 18 November, the streets were packed with expectant watchers.69 The exceptionality of the funeral involved a major compromise by the Shanghai Municipal Council over the itinerary of the procession. The leaders of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce negotiated on behalf of the family the right of passage over thoroughfares from which funerals were normally banned, for example, Nanking Road and the Bund. Even the tramway companies allowed their streetcars to slow down or stop altogether for some time.70 The funeral procession left Sheng Xuanhuai’s mansion at 110 Bubbling Well Road at 1 p.m. and proceeded eastward over Nanking Road until it reached Honan Road. It moved south to Foochow Road until it crossed Edward VII Avenue, which it followed westward until Thibet Road. From there, the procession progressed northward and turned into Foochow Road to almost retrace its pace in an eastward direction to reach the Bund. The final stretch took the procession southward into the French Concession to the Jinliyuan Wharf where the boats that would take Sheng Xuanhuai’s remains to Suzhou awaited the catafalque. As Map 7.1 shows, the coffin of Sheng Xuanhuai passed three times through almost the whole length of the Central District of the International Settlement. Sheng’s family made a forceful display of Sheng’s status with a funeral procession that marked the most essential part of the settlement, and hence Shanghai. Sheng Xuanhuai epitomized exactly what Westerners had longed for in China, an open-minded and visionary reformer who “sided” with their own view of China’s future. Yet the funeral could also be read as a glaring though posthumous assertion of Sheng’s national sentiments and claim over the city’s Chineseness. It would take pages to describe in detail the funeral procession of Sheng Xuanhuai.71 At its longest, the funeral procession extended over almost 2 miles, yet it reached its final destination within the two imparted hours. The funeral procession opened with the prescribed “Road Opening God,” followed by a group of ten Sikh horsemen. On the military side, there were two units of unidentified guards (weidui), each with more than 100 men and several horsemen. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company and the Ministry of Railways each sent 100 workers and guards. Yet all the railway companies, steel companies, and so on, were represented with men carrying large banners. Altogether, there were about 500 Buddhist monks in two groups as well a large group of Daoist priests. Industrial ventures sent several hundred men with “commemorative parasols” (jiniansan), while shipping companies contributed several tens of “commemorative hanging scrolls” (dianzhang). In brief, the world of industry, railway, and

RES IDENCE

INTE RNATIONAL F UNERAL DIRE CTORS

J INLIYUAN WHARF

S HANGHAI NORTH S TATION

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map 7.1. Four funeral processions in Shanghai. Source: Virtual Shanghai

J ES S FIELD FUNERAL PARLOR

International Settlement French Concession

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shipping to which Sheng Xuanhuai’s name was closely associated—Sheng started an amazing range of new enterprises in business and education during his lifetime—paid a tribute to one of the founders of modern Chinese industry. There were also a significant number of children and youth from schools, universities, and the Shanghai Orphanage. Finally, no less than twelve bands and musical groups were interspersed in the long procession: six military and police bands, two groups (Guangdong and Tianjin) of gongs and drums, the Shanghai Orphanage Band, the band of Moutrie and Company, and two unidentified bands. A crude assessment based on the Shenbao report placed the number of participants in the 1,000–1,400 range, only for Shanghai. Although of a lesser scale, the funeral procession in Suzhou involved the same process of official monitoring and suspension of all activities along the streets where the procession followed. The Sheng family compensated all the shops with gifts of money.72 Gu Jiegang recalled that it was the most extravagant funeral ever witnessed in Suzhou.73 The family was said to have spent 300,000 taels on the funeral.74 By comparison, the annual combined revenue from the land and housing tax in the French Concession in 1917 amounted to 410,000 taels.75 Sheng Xuanhuai’s funeral may also have been one of the last huge traditional funerals, even if it displayed a high degree of hybridity. Above all, it was the funeral of a respected high official dead in old age. The funeral of the famous actress Ruan Lingyu presented a fully different profile, with only one point in common with Sheng Xuanhuai, namely the massive number of people who lined the streets to watch the funeral procession. Although figures diverge depending on sources, it is estimated that at least 100,000 people were in attendance. There was no precise count, but Ruan Lingyu may have outranked Sheng Xuanhuai on this regard. Her funeral, however, did not display any of the characteristics of a conventional Chinese funeral. Ruan’s suicide on 8 March 1935 generated a huge outpouring of sympathy, both because she was an established movie star and because of her tragic ending, which many interpreted as the curse of the modern woman in a male-dominated oppressive society, even in a progressive city like Shanghai.76 Despite her celebrity, however, Ruan Lingyu did not enjoy the same status as prominent political leaders or businessmen. Her fortune probably did not amount to much. The Lianhua Film Company must have paid for the funeral, while the motorcade that made up her funeral procession included mostly the cars of friends, colleagues, and devotees. In the few days during which her body was exposed at the International Directors Parlor, more than 25,000 people came to pay their respects. A brief ceremony was held on the day of burial, with about 300 people from

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the world of cinema in attendance. At 1 p.m. a Daoist priest officiated, following which Ruan’s coffin was carried onto the hearse by a group of twelve pallbearers from the Lianhua Film Company. The music band of the Shanghai Orphanage sent off the hearse on its way to the cemetery. A car carrying a huge portrait of the actress opened the procession. The pretty face of Ruan Lingyu replaced the Road Opening God. The sixty-car motorcade moved slowly through the densely packed streets and reached its final destination only at 4 p.m., even if the itinerary followed peripheral streets from the funeral parlor on Kiaochow Road in the Western District (see Map 7.1). Finally, Ruan’s coffin was put to rest in the Lianyi Cemetery, one of the Cantonese charity burial grounds.77 Put in crude words, one could say that Ruan Lingyu was simply cast away, not just by comparison with Sheng Xuanhuai, but also in view of the elaborate funeral and “memorial assemblies” held for Zheng Zhengqiu, a forty-seven-year old fellow Cantonese actor and film director who passed away a few months later. The Chaozhou Guild held a large memorial assembly on its premises and buried Zheng in the cemetery of the guild.78 Both Ruan and Zheng followed a “modern” pattern, which set them apart from the hybrid but customs-based funeral of Sheng Xuanhuai. Yet the issue was less one of time than one of social status. Ruan Lingyu’s celebrity and tragic death generated a powerful moment of compassion, but it did not fundamentally alter the course of Ruan’s fate. The flowery funeral only masked her stark exclusion from the upper echelons of society. Ten years after her burial, there was yet no gravestone or funeral monument.79 Yet, at least, Ruan Lingyu had the benefit of a dignified funeral beyond the reach of most Shanghai residents. The massive funeral processions of the elite overshadowed the funerals of the common people who had to content themselves with what they could afford, for example, one papermoney scatterer, a simple pavilion to carry the tablet, a few musicians, four coffin bearers, and a few mourners in the rear. A Western resident reported in 1938 that “two funerals were held with full brass bands plus Chinese music and crowds of wailing women [. . .]. Besides these two processions scores of other coffins were brought in with less noise, evidently poorer classes who cannot afford more than a few Chinese flutes, and a few paid mourners to wail.” This report sheds some light on the funerals of commoners.80 The coffin itself was carried with a rafter tied lengthwise over the lid by ropes passing underneath the bottom of the coffin, with some pieces of coarse drapery carelessly thrown over it.81 A direct visual record of the funerals of common people in Shanghai could not be located, but two photographs, one from Beijing (see Figure 7.8), the other from the countryside around 1902 (see Figure 7.9), highlight the huge discrepancy with elite funerals.

figure 7.8. Funeral of a commoner in Beijing (1920s). Source: Sydney D. Gamble Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University

figure 7.9. Funeral procession in the countryside around Shanghai. Source: Historical Photographs of China, Ruxton Collection. Courtesy Historical Photographs of China project, University of Bristol

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Western funeral processions in Shanghai were generally low-key events, with the body quietly moved from the home to a funeral parlor. For decades, Thomas MacDonald was the sole undertaker who took care of all Western burials in the city. In the beginning of the twentieth century, another firm, A. Olsen and Company, took over.82 From the premises of the parlor, the encoffined body was taken to one of the cemeteries in a horsepowered hearse, later replaced by an automobile. The first formal funeral parlor that opened in the city in 1924, the International Funeral Directors, introduced the first automobile hearse, a customized Chrysler car still on display at the Funerals Museum (Binyi Bowuguan) in Shanghai. Yet Westerners also organized funeral processions on special occasions. Mostly, these were the funerals of military or police officers, especially those killed in the line of duty, and a few other eminent figures. Reporters and photographers usually covered such events for which we have a wealth of photographic materials. Both the Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Municipal Council had rules about the funeral arrangement of their police officers based on rank. Hierarchy determined the scale of the funeral and the amount of money paid to the family.83 High-ranking officers were given the privilege of a military parade and, in later days, of a motorcade. The death of Admiral Protet, the commander-in-chief of the French troops in China, during a battle with the Taiping in May 1862 probably initiated the first instance of full-scale military honors to a foreign military officer in Shanghai. Yet there was little public display as the French Concession only had a small population and most of the funeral took place among foreign dignitaries and military and a few Chinese officials. The most central event was the mass held in the chapel of the Navy hospital before Protet’s remains were buried in the grounds of the French consulate. Various military units, both British and French, attended the ceremony, then marched to the consulate, a distance of not more than a few hundred yards. Both at the beginning and at the end of the ceremony, the battery of marine artillery fired a salute, while the Shanghai Volunteers Corps and French sailors fired two volleys when the coffin was lowered into the ground. While very formal, the scale of the event was small and probably failed to attract much attention among the Chinese population. Even when official funerals presented a higher degree of publicity later in the twentieth century, they remained events disconnected from the everyday life of the Chinese. On 19 March 1928, the Shanghai Municipal Police held a large funeral for Sub-Inspector John Crowley, who had died in an accident. Crowley was buried with full honors as the photographic reportage (twenty-five pictures) shows.84 His coffin, covered with a large flag with the motto of the Shanghai Municipal Council, was carried part of the way in an automobile

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hearse, part on a gun barrel as was customary for military officers. Most of the pictures were taken at the same spot on Medhurst Road, probably on the way to the Bubbling Well Cemetery. A full official parade, including the various sections of the SMP (Sikhs), the Shanghai Volunteers Corps, and the Shanghai Municipal Band, accompanied the hearse to the cemetery. At its point of arrival, eight pallbearers in full uniform carried the coffin. Although the event attracted onlookers who happened to be on the scene, there was none of the massive crowds that gathered at Chinese funerals. We also have a similar visual record, though without any name, for a Chinese police officer in the French Concession.85 His rank must have been significant as the high-ranking French officers and a full military parade accompanied the hearse to the cemetery. As in the case of the Crowley funeral, however, it did not attract much interest beyond those who happened to be on the itinerary of the parade. More than seventy years after Protet’s untimely death, Vice-Admiral Eugène Descottes-Genon, commander-in-chief of the French Far East Naval Group, died unexpectedly on board his flagship, the Primauguet, on 17 April 1934, just before reaching Shanghai. Descottes-Genon had started his military career in China in 1901 and had come back in 1911–1912. He took his third trip to China right after his appointment as commanderin-chief on 28 March. His funeral was celebrated on 20 April in a scale commensurate with his rank, with representatives of the municipal, diplomatic, and military authorities as well as units from all the local and stationed military forces in Shanghai, except the Chinese military (although two Chinese officers were present). The bishop of Ningbo celebrated the mass in the chapel with only a few people. Then the coffin was taken to a catafalque in the garden of Saint Mary Hospital where the troops paid their tribute. Three military bands played the Marseillaise, then joined the motorcade that took the vice-admiral to the Lokawei Cemetery.86 It was an imposing procession for which we have a detailed photographic record.87 The bishop, two attendants, and nine priests opened the way ahead of the coffin carried by sailors. A group of six choirboys with candlesticks followed right behind. Next came the highest ranking French military and police officers in full regalia. It was a display of military uniform and, indirectly, military power. Guards in full gear were posted every 5 yards on both sides of the street along the itinerary. As the procession moved away from the main thoroughfares, the crowd thinned out, though there was a larger group of Westerners around the cemetery. Chinese official funerals in the twentieth century took up many aspects of Western military ceremonies. The tendency toward the secularization of death, at least for public figures, reflected in part the official posture of the state authorities and the adoption of a protocol patterned after Western

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usage.88 This was especially true with the advent of the Nationalist regime after 1927 as it strove to introduce, with various degrees of success, a new civic culture.89 It professed a hostile stance toward “superstition” that included fighting many rituals performed during funerals. The funeral of Duan Qirui in 1936 followed this new civic pattern. Duan had been one of the successors of Yuan Shikai who battled with other warlords to retain his grip on the central government in Beijing. Despite his ambiguous role, the Nationalist government decided to dignify his death with a state funeral.90 Duan died on 2 November 1936 in Shanghai. On 7 December, his coffin was carried from his home in the French Concession to the North Station in Zhabei, from where a train took his remains to Beijing for burial. Huge crowds gathered in the streets to watch the funeral (see Map 7.1). From the visual record we have, all the elements of “superstition” had been cleared. There was no “Road Opening God” and no banner, lanterns, or parasols. The coffin was carried in a hearse powered by six horses. As befit an official funeral, there were large groups of soldiers, while the French police stood guard with men in full uniform placed every 25 yards along the procession. Three military brass bands—Shanghai City Government, Longhua Military Headquarters, and French police—were the sole music performers during the funeral. Religion, however, still played a role with 240 Daoist and Buddhist priests accompanying the body to the train station.91 Death struck another prominent figure, Mayor Fu Xiao’an, who was murdered in his sleep on 11 October 1940, his throat slit by a servant. Fu was a well-known and wealthy merchant who had accepted the mayoralty of Shanghai under Japanese occupation. Murder counted as a “bad death” and called for particular rituals. Yet we do not know anything about Fu’s funeral within the private realm. His murder caused a shock among Westerners, as well as Fu’s associates and Japanese supporters, but the news was muted in the Chinese press. The Shenbao published a long article more to warn its readers about the roads to be closed during the funeral than on the funeral itself, which it covered in only a few lines.92 The Japanese imposed martial law in the occupied area, while the police of the two settlements were placed on high alert during the sensitive funeral procession. On the day of the funeral, on 27 October, all the roads leading to the main thoroughfares the procession followed were sealed off ahead of time, while barbed wire barricades sprang up on the Bund. The funeral was a private affair meant to take the remains of Fu Xiao’an from his home in Zhabei to the Jessfield Funeral Parlor in the western part of the city (see Map 7.1). On its way, it went over Nanking Road, Edward VII, and Joffre Avenue. We have a substantial visual record of the procession, from its entry into the International Settlement to its final destination.93 Obviously, issues of security prevailed in the conduct of the procession as all

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participants, including the brass band, were carried on trucks. There was no parade on foot as in Duan’s funeral. Although Fu’s funeral procession went through highly central and commercial streets, it was met by almost no one.94 The streets were fully deserted, a sign of Shanghai’s population reluctance to show sympathy to a collaborationist figure.

Regulating Funerals Funerals, even in the case of more minor figures, were events that could indeed cause some nuisance, either due to the wailing of the mourners and the music played along the procession or of course because they hindered or even blocked traffic. The crowds attracted to large funerals also caused a challenge in terms of public order and security, especially when there was a political dimension. The authorities always feared some activists might seize the opportunity of such mass meetings to stir up trouble. In the International Settlement as in the French Concession, all processions—weddings, funerals, religious festivals—came under the traffic regulations. It is not clear when the foreign authorities started to regulate these events. At the turn of the century, the Shanghai Municipal Council had not yet introduced a formal requirement, although it complained about the nuisance processions caused for both traffic and peace of mind: “Funeral and other processions cause the very greatest inconvenience, and block our crowded roads; they should be prohibited. Another serious nuisance which requires to be greatly limited, if not entirely stopped, is the beating of gongs in the streets.”95 Despite these complaints, however, the Shanghai Municipal Police authorized funeral processions on a regular basis. The Shanghai Municipal Council was very assertive of its authority in this matter. In 1903 it expressed its displeasure when the senior consul issued a permit for a large official Chinese funeral. The council claimed that there was no precedent for the senior consul to issue such a permit, especially as this resulted in “considerable inconvenience” in the settlement. With 800 soldiers and 2,000 servants, it must indeed have had an impact on traffic.96 The revised traffic regulations in 1923 reasserted that “no person shall organise, lead or otherwise take part in any Chinese wedding, funeral, or other procession, or processional assembly, on a highway, unless a permit therefore has first been obtained from the Police.” Most of the time, the funeral processions were small events that left no trace in the archives. We have a record of the larger ones, as discussed below, but these large-scale processions represented a tiny percentage of the regular processions in the city. The Shanghai Municipal Council reported on the number of processions for a few years during the war. It is a narrow

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its initial position on its legal powers and to introduce a limited regulation. The Public Health Department prepared a plan to show the most suitable areas for coffin repositories, but it was more an incentive than strict zoning. In June 1938, a municipal notification stated that “coffin repositories close to residences will not be permitted.” This was one more step in the direction of a more stringent monitoring, although it fell short of a genuine regulation.48 The North China Daily News criticized the new regulation (“the mountain has conceived and brought forth a mouse”) but it came too late as a large number of coffin repositories were already in place.49 Yet, despite the harsh criticisms, the Bureau of Public Health actively implemented the regulation to discourage the erection of new coffin repositories in the settlement itself. It turned down seventeen new applications and removed a coffin repository established without authorization.50 The Public Health Department faced another unexpected process that contributed substantially to increase the coffin population. In June 1939, one of the chief health inspectors wrote the first report on the corpses that entered the International Settlement from the neighboring French Concession.51 There was no regulation that prohibited the entry of such corpses, although permission from the Public Health Department needed to be obtained. The funeral companies most often proceeded without seeking any approval. Eight funeral companies argued in a letter that the local residents had no means of encoffining and depositing their dead in the French Concession. The Public Health Department estimated that, by September 1939, about one-third of the stored coffins in the settlement had come from the French Concession.52 The chief health inspector upheld the view that the companies and the residents should petition the French Municipal Council to loosen its policy. Since the situation in the coffin repositories was becoming tense, he also suggested imposing restrictions on the transport of corpses from the French Concession.53 The Public Health Department complained bitterly about the selfishness of the French Municipal Council as the French Concession had more open space suitable for coffin repositories.54 After a lengthy discussion between the various departments of the council, M. Philips, the secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Council, met his counterpart on 28 July 1938.55 Yet the French council refused to budge on the prohibition of coffin repositories in its territory and even in the “military zone”—this designated the area around Xujiahui that the French commanded militarily although it was not part of their territory—with the argument that all vacant land would be turned into burial grounds and repositories. It only offered to suspend new transfer permits to the settlement and to encourage the removal of coffins to Pudong.56 Yet several hundred corpses continued to

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November 1934 of natural causes. His funeral was expected to be a major event due to the political ramification of Pan’s action. Although he was jailed, many groups had written letters on his behalf pleading for mercy.103 The major Chinese merchant organizations held memorial assemblies. To prevent potential disturbances, the Shanghai Municipal Council refused the right of passage through the settlement. Yet people crowded on Thibet Road in the expectation that the procession would still come. The police closed all the gates on the streets leading into the settlements, while all officers were called on duty. The Shenbao described the area near the Great World and along the border with Nanshi as in full emergency. Although more than 10,000 people attended the funeral, it unfolded without any incident. The procession mostly followed the Zhonghua and Minguo roads, around the former walled city, and proceeded to the seat of the Suzhou Guild where the coffin was deposited.104

The Wandering Ghosts Festival Individual funerals were not the only form of funeral procession. Nothing was less abhorrent in Chinese society than the idea of an unattended death as the soul of the deceased would seek revenge and haunt the living. It was believed that after death, the soul (linghun) of the deceased left the body and continued to exist until it found its final resting place. The funeral rites that followed a death, aside from honoring the deceased, also served the crucial purposes of assuaging the pain of the soul, ensuring its passage into the afterlife, and providing it with all necessities in this new existence. If a death occurred as a result of violence (suicide, murder, etc.), the descendants would have to perform additional rites, but still the soul of the deceased would find peace. When people died alone, whether because they had no descendants to take care of them or they died away from home or, in a worst-case situation, they died from a violent act, their soul was considered as a “lone soul” (guhun) or a “wandering ghost” (ligui) that would haunt the living forever. Thus it was the responsibility of society to make sure that all the wandering ghosts were properly attended to. The belief originated in the ceremonies organized for people who had died in wars, natural disasters, vendettas, accidents, crimes, or wrongfully (yuanqu).105 At all times there was potentially a large population of lone souls in need of attention. We have seen that in practice many bodies were not buried after death—the coffin repositories were a typical counterexample, but it was not unusual for people with large homes to keep a coffin indoors until the right time had come to repatriate it or to bury it—but in these cases the living exercised utmost care through ceremonies, devotions,

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and sacrifices to put these souls at rest. There was also the population of aboveground coffins around the city. The authorities and charities dutifully buried them twice a year in the course of seasonal sweeps for moral and sanitary reasons, but the issue of wandering ghosts was probably not absent from their motivation. Finally, there were all the exposed bodies of infants, children, and adults in the streets and alleys of the city. Two major charities devoted a large part of their energy and resources to collect and bury them, regardless of the circumstances (war, epidemics) and number of bodies. Nevertheless, the collection of dead bodies could never be complete. The “presence” of these wandering souls was taken so seriously as to warrant a special sacrifice in the form of a collective procession under the aegis of the City God.106 To ensure a thorough cleansing of the city, the ritual was performed three times a year. The purpose of the three annual processions was to gather the wandering souls and summon them to the Altar for Unworshipped Ghosts (litan). Up to 1877, the altar was located outside the Northern Gate, on the northern bank of Yangjingbang Creek. The establishment of the French Concession forced the relocation of the altar. It was moved to the south, outside the Western Gate on hardly developed land that became muddy on rainy days. Eventually, the organizers of the festival had the path paved with stones.107 In 1890, the Shenbao mentioned that the Zhongyuan procession went to the altar outside the Northern Gate, but this must have been an exception as all other reports referred to the Western Gate location.108 There was a second relocation of the altar in the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1908, a group of charities proposed to reinstall the altar (shejitan) within the city wall on a small plot of land, near the Small Southern Gate. The xian magistrate, however, did not allow the transfer within the city wall.109 Eventually it was erected in 1909 outside the Western Gate in a charity graveyard owned by the Tongren Fuyuantang.110 The active agent in the gathering of the souls was the City God, who had the power and authority to call upon all the lost souls and lead them to the altar where they were presented with a sacrifice. In Shanghai, besides the City God, four other deities took part in the ceremony, each represented by a statue. The ritual was intended not for the penance of the wandering ghosts but to bring them relief (zhen) and peace. The festival for wandering souls was not unique to Shanghai. It was a much larger practice in the Jiangnan area. In Suzhou it was a major event since the Ming dynasty. It attracted thousands of onlookers and participants.111 Around Shanghai, Qingpu, Jiadong, Xitang, Xixinchang, and Zhenjiang all had their own Wandering Ghosts Festival and processions.112 In Shanghai, the event took place on the date of the Qingming festival (April), the

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Zhongyuan festival, and the Xiayuan festival.113 The Qingming procession was definitely the most important and elaborate event. There were more news about it and the procession was described in greater details.114 The Zhongyuan and Xiayuan processions received much less coverage.115 Like many public rituals in China, the sanxunhui were noisy events, with music bands and firecrackers. The wandering souls could not miss the fray. The main objective was to rid the city of any wandering soul. The participants wore colorful light cotton dresses, with a dominance of bright red and yellow with paper hats painted in black and adorned with feathers. They also carried banners with the name of fictitious criminals whose execution could be remanded by buying one of the banners and burning it at the altar.116 The point of departure as well as the final return destination was the Temple of the City God, but the procession of the wandering ghosts followed a different route on each occasion (see Maps 7.2 and 7.3). From data on twenty-five processions between 1886 and 1937, there was no discernable pattern, except for the fact that one after the other the processions

H U A N G

1896

P U

RI VE R

Street Waterway International Settlement French Concession Former city wall City wall (before 1912)

Procession To altar From altar City God Temple Altar 500 m

map 7.2. Itinerary of the Wandering Ghosts Festival in 1896. Source: Virtual Shanghai

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¯ H U A N G

1937

P U

RI VE R

Street Waterway International Settlement French Concession Former city wall City wall (before 1912)

Procession To altar From altar City God Temple Altar 500 m

map 7.3. Itinerary of the Wandering Ghosts Festival in 1937. Source: Virtual Shanghai

covered the entire walled city and part of its suburbs, even after the demolition of the wall. Usually, the event unfolded within a single day, but there were years when the statue of the City God made a stop at another temple before returning to its permanent location. In 1886, for instance, the procession made a stop at the Gaochang Temple, south of the city wall, after the ritual at the altar. The following day, the statue returned to the Temple of the City God. The festival attracted many and was a cause of concern for the authorities. A major challenge was the mixing together of men and women, especially the presence of prostitutes, who were accused of patrolling the streets and openly soliciting patrons. The presence of prostitutes did not seem to be appropriate to some participants. In August 1875 a man threw a stone through the window of a small boat hosting a group of young men and five prostitutes.117 In 1878, the xian magistrate banned prostitutes from the processions and the Temple of the City God. The order was repeated in August 1890, which may point to the persisting presence of prostitutes.118 The repetition of incidents led the xian magistrate to restrict the

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scope and movement of the procession. In April 1890, processions were strictly prohibited to go through the foreign settlements. In August, for the second procession of the year, the xian magistrate prohibited the use of large gongs and the performance of music by women (prostitutes). The same orders were issued for the last procession of the year in November.119 Yet, despite threats to sanction disobedience, all attempts to curb the excesses of the processions failed to stifle the prodigious energy and exuberance of the festival. Even adverse weather failed to stifle the enthusiasm of the organizers, participants, and onlookers.120 A persistent issue during the festival was the general security of traffic. More than once, collisions between the procession and other vehicles (carriages, rickshaws) created a commotion. In April 1875, as the enormous mass of people that accompanied the City God passed through the Western Gate, a horse cart with eight passengers, including courtesans, came rushing by and ran into the City God. The crowd, incensed by the carelessness of the driver, hurled stones at the carriage, breaking its glass windows.121 The potential of a confrontation to degenerate into a violent event made the police wary of even a small incident. In 1885, two guards tried to push away an actor who blocked the way of the procession. The actor was taken screaming and kicking, copiously insulting the two guards, who then roughed him up very badly.122 Sometimes, simple disputes about “right of way” degenerated into brawls.123 There were also “loafers” (wulaizi) who caused trouble, as in 1893, when a group started cursing the horse guards who maintained order along the procession. When the guards charged the troublemakers, three people ended up in Lujiabang Creek. The guards also intervened to disperse loitering groups at the altar, though with a heavy hand. Several people were injured.124 Pickpockets took advantage of the massive number of people who crowded the streets to steal money and jewels from onlookers. The festive atmosphere, the rumbling of drums and gongs, and the explosion of firecrackers all around created favorable conditions for thieves to operate with near impunity. Despite repeated attempts by the authorities to curb or even ban the Wandering Ghosts Festival, the event enjoyed immense popularity and attracted large crowds each year.125 In 1898, the Shenbao described the cheering crowds that followed the walking deities as human “waves.”126 The day before the newspaper published the route the procession would follow.127 The first challenge to the festival came from the General Office of Public Works in the walled city. In 1910, it banned the procession with a view to reforming social customs on the same moral grounds as the xian magistrate: undesirable sexual mixing, indecent exhibition, theft, and so on.128 The 1911 Revolution, which propelled the same reforming elites to power, presented another opportunity to promote social reforms. With the

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wall went the festival. For three years, the new authorities were able to enforce the ban. Yet, by 1915, they gave in to public pressure.129 The attempts to eliminate a custom assimilated through superstition did not relent, however, and on the heels of the May Fourth Movement, the Police Department for Shanghai-Wusong ordered the suspension of the festival in November 1919.130 But, once again, social pressure managed to beat the reformist zeal of the authorities. In 1920, the procession was held in April and November.131 Thereafter, despite the reluctance of the authorities, the City God made its three rounds of the city every year until the Japanese attack in 1937.132 The war derailed the logistics behind the festival as it required resources that the merchant organizations could not gather in wartime.133 There was a brief restoration in August 1947, but although “human waves” crowded the event, according to the Shenbao, there was no other edition of the event.134

The Price of Death Throughout history, inequality prevailed in the disposal of the dead in China, as in most cultures. The nature, scale, and degree of public visibility of funerals reflected closely the social and economic hierarchy. Yet funerals were themselves the product of historical constructions. Both the cemetery and the individual grave were fairly modern forms of burial that emerged in the Middle Ages in Western Europe.135 The extravagant funerals of the elites in Victorian England were also an episode before the adoption of less expensive processions by the end of the nineteenth century and definitely after World War I.136 By and large, in Western Europe, funerals came to be fairly standardized, with little variation between social groups. Although the poorest classes in the nineteenth century often ended up in mass graves, the progressive rise of income in society as well as the maintenance of minimum prices for funeral artifacts by manufacturers made a funeral affordable to the majority of the population.137 The belief system also played a role as funeral processions by Catholics or Protestant never included the wide range of participants to be found in Chinese funerals. In Chinese cities there was little incentive for a transformation of practices that placed a major emphasis on the social dimension of a funeral and a deep concern for the proper disposal of the soul of the dead. Each family would spend the most it could afford, sometimes incurring debts, to organize a proper funeral.138 Assessing the “price of death” in Shanghai is a challenging exercise. On the one hand, prices and even currencies changed drastically over time, especially with inflation and hyperinflation from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. On the other hand, the price of death depended on the type of

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services available, from the traditional funeral shops or guild repositories to the modern funeral parlors.

The Rates of Funeral Parlors The funeral parlors had the most complex and elaborate sets of rates. Their services included picking up the body at home, washing and dressing the corpse, providing the coffin, organizing the funeral ceremony and procession, and transporting the coffin to its final or temporary resting place. There were therefore many opportunities to charge fees which themselves varied according to the quality of the products selected for the corpse and the whole funeral. The Bureau of Public Health collated the data on these fees in great detail from a group of ten funeral parlors in 1954.139 It is impossible to make sense of most of the items as they varied from parlor to parlor. What the data reveal, however, is the amazing range of artifacts that the funeral parlors offered. There were no less than seventy-one items and a complete opacity of the pricing structure. It is probable that the family contracted with a funeral master to negotiate a lump sum based on a predefined plan. Yet the complex price structure may have reflected a wartime or postwar development. It may also just reflect the detailed itemization that resulted from the price survey as the authorities sought to have a full understanding of what the funeral parlors charged the families. Funeral parlors actually proposed standard packages, but they could accommodate any request and expand their range of service upon demand. Nevertheless, the use of a funeral parlor did not come cheap. In 1933, the China Funeral Home (Zhongguo Binyiguan) proposed five standard packages of funeral service from first class to economic, priced at 350, 300, 200, and 140 yuan and a child package at 150 yuan. Table 7.1 summarizes the services and the differences for each level. Basically, the price structure reflected a difference in quantity (mourning garb, offerings, length of time) and quality (embalming, type of hearse, ceremony hall). For instance, the “economic” package included cleaning and coffining the dead body but the coffin had to leave the premises the same day after a short ritual in the smallest ceremony hall. Conversely, the first-class package allowed the display of the body for seven days, a full day for the rituals in the largest ceremony hall, and another seven days of storing the coffin. The packages did not include the major funeral artifacts, the cost of the funeral itself, and, of course, the burial lot. During the war, in October 1943, the municipal government surveyed the cost of services and goods provided by the funeral companies. The rates had increased in May and August 1943, but the Bureau of Economics

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table 7.1. Funeral service packages offered by the China Funeral Home in 1933 Funeral package Service

First class

Second class

Third class

Economic

Child

Body pickup Pickup hearse Funeral cleaning Embalming Body display Ceremony hall

Yes Regular Yes Yes 7 days Great Hall, full day 7 days Dragon hearse 20 pieces Yes 2 pounds 1 pair 1 4 7 dishes 350

Yes Regular Yes Yes 5 days Great Hall, half day 5 days Flowery hearse 15 pieces No 1 pound 1 pair 1 3 5 dishes 300

Yes Regular Yes Yes 3 days South Hall

Yes Regular Yes

Yes Regular Yes Yes

Small hall

South Hall

3 days Regular

1 day Regular

3 days Regular

10 pieces No 1 pound 1 pair 1 2 3 dishes 200

5 pieces No 1 pound 1 pair 1 2

No Half pound 1 pair 1 2

140

150

Repository room Hearse Mourning garb Lanterns Candle Incense Tin ingot Box Offerings Total

Source: “Zhongguo binyiguan yiji gufen youxian gongsi gaiyao,” n.d. [1933], Q400-1-3910, SMA.

in the First District (former International Settlement) confirmed there was no abuse.140 In January 1944, the municipal government reinforced its monitoring and imposed official approval through the FBTA before any price increase.141 The issue of cost did not appear again until after the Japanese defeat. As inflation further eroded the income of ordinary people, the cost of funeral services became a source of worry and even protest among the population. The Bureau of Public Health received regular complaints from residents about the high fees charged by the funeral parlors.142 The protests triggered a new wave of investigation. There were indeed excessive price hikes, as when the Jing’an Funeral Parlor doubled its six-month rate from 10,000 to 20,000 yuan over a period of ten days in June 1946.143 Yet the Bureau of Public Health found that most companies just stayed within the curve of inflation. Many complainants made false accusations about price simply because they were behind in their payment and faced a mounting debt.144 Nevertheless, this set in motion a closer attention to the rates charged by the funeral companies and a decision to bring them under a system of price control.145 The Bureau of Public Health convened two meetings with the representatives of the FBTA on 1 August and 18 September 1947 to discuss the issue of increasing rates. The representatives of the FBTA argued convincingly that the price increases were strictly based on the official price index. The association presented a rate list with the highest price set

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at 1.75 million yuan to demonstrate that the highest price during the war was 50 yuan or 4.5 million in current converted currency. Eventually, the FBTA produced a unified charter and list of rates that applied to all companies.146 It also attempted to fight back the assertions made in the press, but this failed to stop the flow of private complaints in newspapers.147 From 1948 onward, hyperinflation brought the rates to new heights. In September 1948, the national government introduced the golden yuan in a last-ditch attempt to put an end to the spiraling inflation.148 The change of currency, however, failed to curb the frantic pace of inflation. The FBTA met regularly to fix new rates for the whole profession, but on 13 November, it finally gave up trying to keep rates up with inflation and left it to its members to adjust their rate.149 We can examine the price structure for funeral services in the period of hyperinflation with the rate list of the Nanshi Funeral Parlor, a middlegrade establishment (see Table 7.2). Its basic services started at 4,400 yuan for the “economic class,” increasing to 6,250, 11,840, and 20,980 yuan for the third, second, and first class, respectively. For this price, the parlor only took care of transporting the corpse, cleaning and dressing it, and placing the coffin on display in a ceremony hall. The FBTA remained under the control of the authorities after the takeover of the city by the Communist Party.150 As inflation continued unabated, the main trend, however, was one of increasing pressure by the Bureau of Public Health to keep prices low and reduce the cost of funerals. In part, this was a reaction to the propensity of most people to spend a lot of money on funerals for the sake of the reputation of the family, even table 7.2. Price list of the Nanshi Funeral Parlor in August 1948 Funeral package

Ceremony hall Automobile Driver Pedicab Body pickup Body cleaning Tea Parlor regulations Lanterns Subtotal (automobile) Subtotal (pedicab) Moving fee Transfer Total (with car)

First class

Second class

Third class

Economic

4,800 1,500 600 500 600 2,400 1,200 2,000 600 13,700 12,100 6,000 1,280 20,980

2,400 1,500 450 500 450 1,500 900 1,500 450 9,150 7,700 2,000 690 11,840

1,200 1,500 300 500 300 1,200 600 900 250 6,250 4,950

800 1,500 200 500 200 800 400 500

6,250

4,400

Source: “Nanshi binyiguan jiamubiao,” 1 August 1948, S440-1-15, SMA. Note: Prices are given in yuan.

 

Service

4,400 3,200

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119

the state of the stored coffins. Although the major guilds passed the examination without any trouble, some presented defects. In February 1942, the Nanshi office of the Bureau of Public Health reported that the premises of three guilds (Hongfang Gongsuo, Piaoshui Shuilu Gongsuo, and Chonghai Guild) were in bad shape, with the majority of coffins being stored over one year.81 Some commercial repositories stored coffins way beyond the capacity of their premises. The Anping Repository held 2,750 coffins in January 1942 but 3,400 nine months later with an official capacity of 3,000.82 Finally, the bureau decided to adopt the same policy as the Shanghai Municipal Council to levy an inspection fee to force the coffin repositories to ship their stored coffins outside of the city.83 In August 1942, two new regulations imposed more stringent prescriptions on the operation of coffin repositories. They prohibited repositories in densely populated areas, imposed walled premises, and limited the duration of storage to one year.84 The Bureau of Public Health stated explicitly that there were too many coffins in the city, which posed a challenge in terms of public health and city appearance (shirong). The novelty, however, was the attempt to compel the reluctant guilds and commercial companies to action by levying a tax on each stored coffin.85 The Chinese municipality introduced a multiscale rate that made it increasingly expensive for the repositories to store coffins for a long time.86 Coffins stored under one year since August 1942 were charged a monthly fee of 0.50 yuan, and those stored above one year were charged 1.0 yuan. The amount doubled for each additional year with a maximum of 16 yuan for all those stored above five years.87 The decision to levy a tax on stored coffins was bound to make a dent in the income of the commercial companies as a large percentage of the families were in arrears on their payments. Some repositories adopted a waitand-see attitude, but the Bureau of Public Health sent a stern reminder to the delinquent companies in early October to pay their fees within two days.88 The inspection fee garnered a substantial revenue to the municipality. In February 1944, the Bureau of Public Health reported the payment made by four coffin repositories for the past month. The Taiping (12,816 coffins), Da’an (9,009 coffins), New Pu’an (13,851 coffins), and Old Pu’an (11,331 coffins) had paid respectively 7,380, 3,042, 11,439, and 7,641 yuan. Altogether they held 47,007 coffins, for which they paid a total of 32,544 yuan.89 Over a whole year, this would represent close to 400,000 yuan. The tax substantially increased the operational cost of repositories, but it failed to deter them from accepting more coffins or working seriously to remove the stored coffins from the city. They passed the cost onto their customers. The establishment of the Funeral Business Trade Association (FBTA) in June 1942 was probably in part a response to the more determined policy

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Funerals and the Price of Death table 7.3. Storage fee and number of coffins per rate level of four coffin repositories in 1941 Storage fee per rate level (in yuan) Coffin repository

A

Zhonghua Funeral Parlor Happy Garden Funeral Directors Wan’an Coffin Repository Dahua Coffin Repository

400 600 720

B

C

D

E

F

360

240 240 240

120 120 120 120

60 60 60

36 36 36

360

Number of coffins per rate level Coffin repository

A

Zhonghua Funeral Parlor Happy Garden Funeral Directors Wan’an Coffin Repository Dahua Coffin Repository Total

1 4 1 6

B

C

D

E

31 12

35 16 24

43

75

115 22 155 16 308

240 193 2 435

F

Total

181 1,417 1,696 408 796 485 504 2,310 3,177

Source: “Memorandum by Deputy-Treasurer-Revenue on Revenue from Coffin Repositories,” 21 February 1941, U1-16-2471, SMA.

table 7.4. Coffin storage rates in August 1946 Coffin storage level Repository

First class

Second class

Third class

Fourth class

Fifth class

Wan’an Baigong Zhongguo Leyuan Shijie Anle Shanghai Guotai Dazhong Wanguo Guoji Yong’an Liyuan

66,000 40,000 40,000 30,000 30,000 24,000 20,000 20,000 17,000 15,000 13,000 10,000 10,000

44,000 5,000 24,000 15,000 12,000 16,000 12,000

22,000 3,000 15,000 50,000 5,400 80,000 10,000 3,000 8,000 3,500 1,000 2,500 3,000

11,000

6,600

12,000 10,000 3,300 5,000 6,000

9,000

6,000 6,000

3,000

Source: “Yingye paizhao shenqing shu,” August 1946, Q400-1-3959 (Leyuan); Q400-1-3960 (Anle); Q400-1-3961 (Wanguo); Q400-1-3962 (Yong’an); Q400-1-3963 (Guoji); Q400-1-3864 (Liyuan); Q400-1-3867 (Wan’an); Q400-1-3868 (Dazhong); Q400-1-3869 (Baigong); Q400-1-3870 (Zhongguo, Guotai, Shijie); Q400-1-3871 (Shanghai), SMA. Note: Rates are given in yuan.

period, prices increased sharply, as can be seen in Table 7.4. The Guoji Funeral Parlor offered a low monthly rate of 1,000 yuan, although most parlors started at 2,500–3,000 yuan. The most prestigious companies, such as Wan’an or Baigong, charged considerable rates for their first-class coffin cells, two to four times more than the other establishments. In 1947, the Guoji Funeral Parlor proposed two special rates for one-coffin cells, one for two-coffin cells, two for four-coffin cells, and a rate for the regular

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(collective) room. The range went from 320,000 to 50,000 yuan for six months.157 In August 1948, the monthly rent at the Wan’an Coffin Repository for first-, second-, third-, and fourth-class space amounted to 105,000, 70,000, 35,000 and 17,500 yuan. There was an economic rate at 10,500 yuan. At the same period, the Jianghuai Funeral Parlor offered three grades at 3 million, 1.5 million, and 1.25 million yuan. In addition to the rent, the repositories and parlors charged an admission fee and a departure fee, which also varied according to class. At the Wan’an Coffin Repository, admission cost 25,000–45,000 yuan, while the charge for removal of a coffin was 45,000–90,000 yuan. The minimum cost for storing a coffin, therefore, amounted to 133,000 yuan in economic class to 765,000 yuan in first class.158 The archives hold a vast quantity of documents on rates that document above all the impact of inflation more than a change in actual rates or practices. We shall examine these rates later in the light of people’s income.

Burying the Body The price of a burial lot depended on various factors. The first was the location of the cemetery and its distance from the city center. Yet distance could also mean a higher price if the cemetery was located in an attractive location. The second factor was the degree of sophistication and the investment made in the cemetery. Burial lots at beautifully laid out cemeteries with abundant vegetation and trees, a monumental entrance, buildings for the convenience of the visitors, and a solid wall all around sold at a higher price than the barely laid out burial grounds with a bamboo fence to enclose them. Although municipal regulations made a brick wall mandatory, not even the municipal cemeteries applied this rule. The third factor in the categorization of burial lots was their orientation. The lots oriented south sold at a much higher price than those turned toward other directions. Finally, the price depended also on the location of the burial lot inside the cemetery, with higher rates for those placed along the main alleys, then along the secondary alleys, and finally inside a block. Both municipal and private cemeteries played on these elements of feng shui and status to define a whole hierarchy of rates. In the municipal cemeteries of the International Settlement, the main difference in the price of a burial lot depended on residency. To count as a “resident,” one had to have lived in the settlement for at least six months. In the 1920s, rates were very stable, with first-class graves for residents at 20 taels and second-class graves at 10 taels in 1923. By 1929, they had

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increased to 15 and 40 taels, respectively. The next price adjustment took place in 1932 to channel new burials to the Hongjao and Baxianqiao cemeteries and make Bubbling Well less affordable. The new rates were set at 90 taels (Bubbling Well), 60 taels (Hungjao), and 50 taels (Pahsienjao). There was a special fee for paupers under consulate approval at 25 taels and even a lower charge for indigents at 5 taels on the recommendation of a charitable society.159 War had a major impact on prices due to inflation (see Table 7.5). An adult vault cost 112 yuan in October 1938. In January 1943, a first-class lot cost 430 yuan for a resident and 600 yuan for a nonresident, while a second-class lot cost respectively 200 and 400 yuan. Yet the cemeteries also charged a fee for digging the grave and constructing the vault. Altogether, the burial of an adult coffin in a municipal cemetery amounted to 315 yuan in August 1940, 805 yuan in August 1941, and 2,700 yuan in April 1943. The price reached 4,200 yuan in September 1943, 14,000 yuan in April 1944, and 18,000 yuan in June 1944. In the cemeteries of the French Concession, there was no categorization in various classes until 1938. People paid a price that depended on the length of time for which the lot was purchased. The cemeteries offered perpetual and fifteen-year graves. Up to the end of 1937, an adult burial lot cost 80 yuan for a fifteen-year lease, while a perpetual lot was charged 290 yuan. Probably because of the pressure on burial space, the French Municipal Council introduced two classes for adult lots in 1939, then three classes for all groups (adults, children above one year, infants below one table 7.5. Rates for burial space and vaults in SMC cemeteries (1938–1943) Burial space Date

August 1940 August 1941 January 1943 April 1943

Bubbling Well

Pahsienjao

Hungjao First

Hungjao Second

180 300–430 430 600

150 250–335 430 430

180 250–335 430 430

110 150–200 200 200

Vault type Date

Regular

Chinese

Child

October 1938 November 1938 April 1940 August 1941 January 1942 April 1943 September 1943

49 84 135 375 970 2,100 4,200

73.5 135 180 435 1,115 2,670 5,100

24.5 50 77 180 430 1,370 2,700

Source: Letter, Secretary to Jordan (PHD), approved proposal, 24 November 1938; Letter, Jordan (PHD) to Superintendent of cemeteries, 9 December 1940; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 20 August 1941; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 9 December 1941; “Notification,” January 1943; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 6 September 1943, U1-16-2426, SMA. Note: Rates are given in fabi.

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year) in 1941. Adult lots increased from 400 yuan in 1940 to 1,000 yuan in 1941 and 1,200 yuan in 1942. Thereafter, there was an acceleration of inflation that translated into the doubling of the rate to 2,400 yuan in April 1943 and another increase to 3,000 yuan in July 1943.160 There was no end to the process. In the Chinese municipality, the First Municipal Cemetery charged a unique rate at 60 yuan in 1935, although one-third of the lots were free of charge.161 In 1942, the Bureau of Public Health sent a letter to all funeral parlors informing them of the new rate (300 yuan) in the International Cemetery.162 In the postwar period, the inflationary spiral made it necessary for the Shanghai Municipal Government to adjust its rates. In January 1946, the Bureau of Public Health proposed to raise the rates two or three times the current rate.163 By March, however, inflation had made the previous increase obsolete. The municipal rates failed to catch up with inflation. By September, the municipal rates were a mere 10 percent of those in private cemeteries.164 The bureau sought various means to increase its income. In October 1946, it closed the Bubbling Well and Pahsienjao cemeteries, but for the families that had reservations, the rate was increased to 500,000 yuan. Even for those who had paid at the time of reservation, the bureau charged a supplement of 275,000 yuan for the burial. In the Hongqiao, International, and First cemeteries burial lots sold at 300,000 yuan.165 Yet, in all cemeteries, the rates for grave lots followed the pace of inflation. In the summer of 1948 the bureau started to adjust the rates monthly. Up to May 1949, the bureau made periodic adjustments almost every week.166 In the commercial sector, there was no large discrepancy, although the gap widened over time. The cost of a burial lot in the China Cemetery in 1928 was 50 yuan.167 An advertisement by the Chang’an Cemetery in November 1930 showed a similar rate of 40 yuan, with vaults priced at 60 yuan, transportation at 10 yuan, tombstones at 16 yuan, and miscellaneous fees at 11 yuan. The total cost for a burial in the cemetery amounted to 137 yuan. In August 1937, the burial lots still sold at the same price.168 In the postwar period, the rates in private cemeteries presented a wider range of possibilities. In December 1946, the Xiyuan Cemetery (Hong qiao) proposed two rates, 290,000 and 230,000 yuan.169 In March 1947, the Taiping Cemetery (Dachang) planned to charge 300,000 and 140,000 yuan for its burial lots, while the Xianle Cemetery (Nanxiang) planned to sell them at 700,000, 500,000, and 300,000 yuan.170 The Bao’an Cemetery charged 120,000 yuan in its best sector.171 In fact, commercial cemeteries usually offered a broader spectrum of rates. In April 1948, the Chang’an Cemetery had four classes: 36 million (special), 14 million (first class), 9 million (second class), and 2.9 million yuan (third class).172 It is not

299

Funerals and the Price of Death table 7.6. Rates for burial lots in the Jiating Cemetery (1947–1948) Type of burial lot Date

Special

First class

March 1947 January 1948 15 August 1948 20 August 1948 30 August 1948 31 December 1948

1.6 12 450 700 233 7,200

0.6 4.5 150 300 100 3,000

Second class

0.4 3 90 180 60 1,800

Third class

30 700

Source: Shenbao, 9 March 1947, 25 January 1948, 15 August 1948, 30 August 1948, 31 December 1948. Note: Rates are in million fabi, March 1947–20 August 1948, and in golden yuan, 30 August 1948–31 December 1948.

obvious how these high figures make sense, but I shall relate them later to people’s income. The price curve of the Jiating Cemetery is a good example of the galloping prices from its opening in March 1947 to the last day of 1948 (see the last two rows of Table 7.6). The municipal government attempted to enforce regulated prices pegged to the official index of living. Yet the high demand for burial space during this period made it impossible to fully control prices. The competition for burial lots was such that there even emerged a black market of burial lot reservations. Before 1945, there was no restriction on the number of burial lots an individual or a family could purchase in a municipal cemetery in either the foreign concessions or the Chinese municipality. People who owned burial lots that would not be used—families or individuals had moved out of Shanghai, died in another location, and so on—sold their lots at ten times the official rate.173 By comparison, the guild cemeteries sold burial lots that were much more affordable, but they catered only to their members. The Guang-Zhao Guild owned the largest guild cemetery in Shanghai before 1949. With hyperinflation, the guild increased the cost of burial sites, but they were still far below commercial rates. In May 1949, the price of a “model” burial lot was 700 yuan, with the lower grade lots at 30, 20, and 3 yuan, respectively.174 Since the value of money dropped fast and made the adjustment of rates impractical, the guild finally established its rates in rice, respectively, 10 dan (1,080 pounds) for a model burial lot, 6 dan (648 pounds), 3 dan (324 pounds), and 2 dan (216 pounds).175 It is unclear whether the family was expected to deliver this amount of rice or to make it available at a rice shop, but it was the last resort for the guild to protect itself from inflation.176 By the summer, when the Communist authorities introduced a “unit of account” (danwei), the use of rice as a means of payment was

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discontinued. The price range went from 650 units (1.7 million yuan) for a model grave to 40 units (106,000 yuan) for the lowest grade.177 In December 1949, the new Bureau of Public Health tried to come up with a fair price for graves in private cemeteries to meet the demand of the population and to control the profit made by the cemetery companies. It based its calculation on the model of a 10-mu cemetery that it wanted to impose to avoid the constitution of large cemeteries.178 The expenses included only the costs of investment and operations, but not the cost of land acquisition. The bureau assessed the land tax and various compensations to peasants at 13 million yuan, the construction costs for walls, alleys, ground leveling, and so on, at 49 million yuan, and staff wages— four workers on site, three employees and one worker for management— for a period of three years at 110.6 million yuan. Altogether, the cost would represent 173.6 million yuan, or an average of 173,600 yuan per grave. Since the cost of land was not included, the bureau considered that profit would be cut by one-half and proposed to fix the average price of graves at 261,366 yuan. Yet to take into account other criteria like the location according to feng shui, it suggested a scale with three to four rates for each group of one hundred graves: ten at 250 units, twenty at 120 units, sixty-five at 70 units, ten at 35 units, and five free graves (see Table 7.7). According to this projection, a cemetery company would receive a total income of 26.1 million yuan, which should leave a profit of 4.4 million yuan if the price of land was included.179 With prices at 300,000 yuan per mu as in Zhenru, the total profit could even be higher, but even at the rate fixed by the Bureau of Public Health it represented a return of 25 percent on the total investment. Since this was a theoretical calculation, the bureau eventually proposed a more elaborate scale that also took into account the degree of sophistication of the cemeteries. Interestingly, the bureau did not challenge the notion of a hierarchy in death with various categories of cemeteries and varying rates according to location within the cemetery. The 1950 regulation on the management of private cemeteries (Shanghai shi sili gongmu guanli guize) categorized cemeteries in three levels and burial lots table 7.7. Proposed rates for private cemeteries (1949) Grave/cemetery

First-class lot Second-class lot Third-class lot Economic lot

Third class

Second class

First class

100 60 50 20

200 100 60 40

300 160 80 50

Source: “Heding sili gongmu shoujia jisuanbiao,” 6 December 1949, B242-1-226, SMA. Note: Half-price graves were based on the cost of third-class graves. Rates are quoted in yuan.

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301

in four grades.180 Actually, a report on grave rates in 1951 showed a wider range of up to five classes of grave space. Basically, the rate for first-class grave spaces went from 100 to 300 units (danwei), while third class lots sold from 35 to 160 units.181 The pressure on cemetery land compelled the People’s Government to seek alternatives to ground burial and to use prices to deter people from choosing burial. Moreover, the People’s Government sought to balance its expenses for cemeteries. In April 1954, the gap was quite considerable with total expenses at 5 billion yuan for revenues that stood at barely 1.8 billion yuan. The fundamental issue was to convince the population of the benefits of cremation, as Liu Jiping, vice-mayor, had instructed. A municipal document stated that the rates at the new Longhua Cemetery were at par with the private cemeteries, but those of the Jiangwan and Dachang municipal cemeteries were 50 and 60 percent lower, respectively. The People’s Government proposed to double the rates in municipal cemeteries and even to quadruple the price in Jiangwan (800,000 yuan). The Bureau of Civil Affairs cautioned against such a huge price hike.182 Despite this warning, however, the People’s Government implemented its policy of rate increase to steer people toward cremation. In September, the rate for graves in the Jiangwan Cemetery increased to 1 million yuan for a large site, 600,000 yuan for a midsized grave, and 450,000 yuan for a Muslim grave. In the new cemeteries, the opening of new graves was limited to small- and midsized graves to save land.183 The system of preferential rates established in the postwar period by the previous administration remained in place, but it applied only to cremation. A reduced rate applied to individuals who belonged to government units, official organizations (tuanti), and schools, based on their economic condition, with a maximum discount of 50 percent of the regular price. The family members of a revolutionary martyr paid only 30 percent of the regular rate.184 The policy of fixed rates by the authorities failed to deter municipal funeral companies from seeking a maximization of their profit, even after their socialization in the late 1950s. A report on the Longhua Center in 1960—it included the Longhua Crematorium and the Longhua Cemetery opened in 1953—revealed cases of abuse and fraud. The workers who built the vaults charged the families for six bags of cement when only four were necessary. For soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, they charged sixteen bags, even if they used only six. There was also an illegal recycling of old tombstones polished and sold as new.185 This can be considered as minor fraud, but it shows that below the veneer of formal political rule and discourse the legacy of the past lingered. It also highlights the fact that the mourning families were left with little recourse when it came to burying their dead.

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Shipping the Body Data on shipping rates are available only for the later years of the Republic of China and the early years of the People’s Republic of China. The Bureau of Public Health of the Shanghai Municipal Council collected the first list of rates through one funeral parlor, the White Palace Funeral Parlor (Baigong Binyiguan), in 1939. The second systematic price list came from the Shanghai Municipal Police in November 1942 (see Table 7.8). It was an attempt to gather basic information on the cost of coffin shipping. The authorities were pushing for a removal of the stored coffins, though unsuccessfully, in the International Settlement, and prices were a decisive factor in the shipping out of coffins. The rates for 1939 and 1942 are compiled in Table 7.8. The 1939 list recorded eighteen destinations in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which was much less than the 1942 list of seventy destinations. There were two grades of transportation, although it is unclear what the difference between the first and second class implied. The rate scale was not consistent in the two lists. The same observation can be made about the rates in 1942 and 1954. Up to the adoption of fixed standard rates after 1952, the shipping companies had much room to determine how much they charged. A glaring example is the rate for Chongming, an island in the middle of the Yangzi River near Shanghai, with the highest rate in 1939 and the lowest

table 7.8. Shipping rates for coffins in 1939 and 1942 Destination

Province

Changzhou Chongming Danyang Funing Huai’an Rugao Songjiang Suzhou Taizhou Wuxi Yancheng Yangzhou Zhenjiang Fengjing Haimen Haining Hangzhou Jiaxing

Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangsu Zhejiang Zhejiang Zhejiang Zhejiang Zhejiang

1939 (first class)

1939 (second class)

1942

12 30 12 12 15 16 12 11 10 11 10 12 12 12 26 24 30 14

10 22 10 10 13 12 9 9 9 9 9 10 10 10 22 22 26 12

80 30 90 220 160 80 30 40 120 60 180 100 180 30 50 70 100 50

Source: “Cost of Transportation of Coffins,” 31 July 1939, U1-14-3177; “List of Charges in C.R.B. for Transporting Coffins by Native Boat from Shanghai,” 1943, U1-16-2534, SMA. Note: 1939 rates are quoted in fabi; 1942 rates are quoted in C.R.B. (Central Reserve Bank).

Funerals and the Price of Death

303

­

one in 1942. Since we have a large number of destinations in 1942, we can assess more clearly the amount of money coffin shipping required. Within Jiangsu, the first group—between 20 and 50 yuan—included thirteen destinations. A second group of nine destinations cost 50–100 yuan. Above this amount, there were thirteen destinations at 110–140 yuan and a smaller group of seven at 150–220 yuan. In Zhejiang, among the twentyfive recorded destinations, one-half cost more than 100 yuan, with one destination at 250 yuan, and close to one-half at 60–100 yuan. Only three destinations were charged less than 50 yuan. In November 1954, the People’s Government conducted an accounting survey of the rate structure for shipping coffins inland. It listed three modes of transportation, seafaring, automobile, and river shipping, for thirty-eight destinations. River shipping accounted for twenty-four destinations, seafaring and automobile for seven each. The main destinations by sea were Wenzhou, the most expensive one, at 950,000 yuan and Haimen at 750,000 yuan. By automobile, the most expensive destinations were Huangyan and Linhai at 1 million yuan each. The price range for river shipping was as low as 150,000 yuan for Hangzhou, with a maximum at 800,000 yuan for Dongyang. Fenghua, the birthplace of Jiang Jieshi in Zhejiang, cost 440,000 yuan, Ningbo 320,000 yuan, and Shao xing 270,000 yuan.186

Who Could Afford a Funeral? There is ample evidence that a large part of the population could not afford the cost of a simple funeral, not even that of a coffin, and much less the price of a resting place. The abundance of figures in the previous sections provides general indications about the cost of the various services. There was always a broad spectrum of rates to accommodate the level of income of different groups, but even the lowest prices excluded large sections of the population. The multiple layers of service and related prices also make it difficult to outline what a funeral actually cost at any given time. Another issue is the absence of data for the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century, before the rise of private commercial companies that advertised their services and rates. The involvement of the municipal authorities, foreign as well as Chinese, eventually produced a lot of information, but this started only with the wartime period. Finally, the successive changes of currency and the onset of inflation, especially after 1948, make our data hardly comparable and useful for historical interpretation. One way around this difficulty is to relate the cost of funeral services to the cost of living and the salaries of workers and employees in various

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periods. I focus mostly on ordinary people with a regular income. In 1908, a third-class constable in the Shanghai Municipal Police earned 70 taels per month, while a first-class sergeant garnered 100 taels.187 In 1906, a burial space in the Pahsienjao Cemetery cost 17 taels, while the vault was charged 18 taels.188 Although most of the income of the lower income groups went into rent and food, the total cost for burial was equivalent to a half-month wage for a third-class constable. Funeral expenses would have to be added, but a burial lot in a municipal cemetery represented a moderate expense, except for the fact that, most constables being Chinese, they were excluded from the municipal cemeteries. A memorandum by the Public Works Department listed the average salary for foreign and Chinese surveyors in the Cadastral and Survey Office in 1927 at 600 and 141 yuan, respectively.189 These represented a high level of income compared to other employees in trade or workers in factories. In 1933, a bureau director (juzhang) in the Shanghai Municipal Government received 450 yuan, while a first-class employee earned 130 yuan and a simple clerk 44 yuan. Ordinary policemen must have earned close to 40 yuan as a patrol chief (duizhang) received 50 yuan.190 Although the period is not exactly the same, Gu Jiegang’s accounts for the funeral of his grandmother in Suzhou in the early 1920s showed a total expense of 450 yuan. If we relate this to the wage level of municipal executives, this does not appear particularly high. For an ordinary clerk, however, this amounted to ten months’ salary. In 1928, the cost of a burial lot, including vault, in the Chan’an Cemetery amounted to 137 yuan. The funeral packages of the China Funeral Home ran from 140 yuan (economic) to 350 yuan. Once again, this would have required saving for several years, as the total cost was equivalent to two months’ salary for a Chinese surveyor in the Shanghai Municipal Council. If this was for the funeral of a father or mother, the expenses may be split among the sons, as was the rule in the countryside. If it was for a wife, the husband could probably support this level of expense, but for a wife this could represent a challenge unless she could rely on an extended family.191 The next level of comparison is the earnings of ordinary factory workers. In 1928, the range of average wages in the textile industry was 15–21 yuan. It was similar in most sectors, except in printing or shipbuilding, where it fluctuated between 33 and 40 yuan.192 There was hardly any change during the Nanjing Decade, with even a slight decrease from an average of 33 yuan in 1930 to 28 yuan in 1936.193 If we refer again to the cost of a burial place in the Chang’an Cemetery and an “economic” package by a funeral parlor, 280 yuan represented a considerable amount for people whose salary hardly allowed them to live in Shanghai. In fact, unless they lived in dormitories, workers could not afford proper housing,

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even with two or three wage earners in the family. Workers devoted on average more than half their income to food, while rent, fuel, and so on, took another 37 percent.194 The price of 1 dan of rice (about 200 pounds) fluctuated between 10 and 18 yuan before the war. One dan of rice could feed a family of 4.6 members for two months.195 Over a year, a worker family required 60–108 yuan to cover just the purchase of rice. There was no money to pay for a burial lot or a funeral that would have represented practically a full year of earnings by one worker in the higher levels of wage, twice as much for workers in the textile industry. In the postwar period, the situation worsened for a larger part of the population, not just because of hyperinflation, but also because companies and administrations delayed the payment of wages or suspended it altogether. Here we compare various sets of wage data to the rates charged for funeral services. In December 1946, workers in factories earned on average 27–63 yuan in textile, 12–115 yuan in tobacco, and 31–123 yuan in public utilities. In June 1947, the range for the same categories stood at 18–40, 10–105, and 13–110 yuan. These figures represent the lowest and highest wage in each industrial branch. At the same period, a burial lot in the First Municipal Cemetery sold at 300,000 yuan, with the cheapest rate in the Gaomiao Cemetery at 140,000 yuan. In commercial cemeteries, the Bao’an Cemetery offered the lowest rate, at 120,000 yuan. Xianle sold its lots at 300,000–700,000 yuan. The storage fee for coffins stood at 3,000, 6,600, and 9,000 yuan monthly in the cheapest repositories. Obviously, from the prewar period, through the war, to the postwar period prices evolved in such a way that ordinary people could not afford the high fees charged for a funeral. Hyperinflation not only pushed prices to new heights, but it widened the gap between the rates charged for funeral services and wages. For example, consider the packages offered by a group of cemeteries (see Table 7.9). Aside from burial space, these cemeteries also proposed to arrange the funeral, from the pickup of the body to its coffining and transportation to the cemetery. The cemeteries did not provide the service themselves. They subcontracted with a funeral parlor. With the cost of burial space and the funeral, the total amount started at 0.8 million yuan and reached 3 million yuan in March 1947. On 15 August 1948, the same packages cost 340 million yuan for the lowest rate and 1.050 billion yuan for the highest rate. In January 1948, a mason earned 85,000 yuan per day, or 2.55 million a month if he worked every day. In May, workers in the wood industry made 5.46 million a month, while in August bus drivers earned 30 million yuan.196 Even if these wages do not match exactly the price levels in August, it is obvious that the gap between the salary of ordinary workers and the price of funeral services

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table 7.9. Funeral packages offered by a group of cemeteries (1947–1948) Funeral package Cemetery

First class

Bao’an Jiating Jiating Chang’an Jiating Jiating Jiating

1.3 10 350 28 600 200 4,200

Second class

Third class

Fourth class

1 8 260 22 450 150 310

0.6 5 220 15 380 126 2,500

0.4 3 160 9 250 83 1,500

Date

9 March 1947 9 March 1947 25 January 1948 3 April 1948 15 August 1948 30 August 1948 31 December 1948  

Source: Shenbao, 9 March 1947, 25 January 1948, 3 April 1948, 15 August 1948, 30 August 1948, 31 December 1948. Note: Rates are in million fabi, 9 March 1947–15 August 1948, and in golden yuan, 30 August 1948– 31 December 1948.

had widened. The price for a funeral and burial place was colossal for ordinary people. Access to a burial space in a municipal cemetery was also way beyond the reach of the common people. Many people in Shanghai earned even less than factory workers. Unless they could rely on a guild to receive a proper burial, they were bound to end up in a cheap coffin in a desolate charity burial ground. After 1949, the cost of funerals decreased substantially. In December 1949, the workers and employees of cemetery companies earned 200,000 and 300,000 yuan, respectively. This was equivalent to 74 and 112 units (danwei). In 1953, the average salary across the thirty-five funeral companies stood at 114–140 units for the higher level and 84–104 units for the lower level.197 Burial spaces in a third-class commercial cemetery ranged from 20 to 100 units, up to a maximum of 300 units in a first-class cemetery. This made burial more affordable, even if it did not include the cost of the coffin and the funeral parlor. The total cost of disposing of a dead body was probably 60–200 units for an “economic” package. On this basis, a worker would need from one to three months full salary to cover the purchase of a third-class grave in a third-class cemetery. An employee could afford a first-class grave in a third-class cemetery.198 Yet few ordinary people could afford spending a full month’s salary on a funeral or had hardly any savings to prepare for this expense.

Conclusion Funerals were the most visible manifestation of death in the city. There were other less obvious markers, such as the variety of shops that catered to the needs of public processions—the same for both weddings and funerals—and the recurring consumption of funerary objects at the time of

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cemeteries and the coffin shipping companies, though with little success.110 The association also established a welfare fund for its members supported by a 5-yuan fee levied on each incoming or outbound coffin, then by a monthly fee based on the number of stored coffins.111 After the war, the Nationalist authorities required all existing associations to conform to its new regulations.112 The FBTA pronounced its dissolution and established a preparatory committee (choubeihui) in charge of registering members and writing a new charter.113 The scope of the association included the funeral parlors, coffin repositories, guild repositories, shipping companies, and cemeteries. In fact, few guild repositories joined the association.114 The association held its founding meeting on 1 March 1946 at the Cangzhou Music Hall (Cangzhou Shuchang).115 With a membership of fifty-five, the association again started to track all the existing companies to bring them into its fold.116 The FBTA became the main channel through which the local authorities and the funeral companies interacted. The municipal government entrusted the FBTA with increasing responsibilities beyond its role as a professional organization. The association became involved in the management of funeral companies on behalf of the municipality. This was particularly true in three important domains. After 1942, the municipal government entrusted the FBTA with the collection of its inspection fee on stored coffins, except in Western Shanghai (Huxi), where it remained under the local office of the Bureau of Finance.117 If the funeral companies failed to pay, the FBTA was held responsible.118 The association also collected the income tax from its members and transferred the collected funds to the municipal government.119 After the war, the government introduced a new business tax. The FBTA was entrusted with the responsibility of the initial assessment of the turnover of all its members.120 Its involvement in tax collection meant not only that the FBTA would play a central role in explaining to its members the procedures in detail but also gave it access to their accounts and business situation.121 The FBTA was responsible for issuing the certificates (huzhao) that allowed the shipping companies to move coffins out of Shanghai. This was an initiative by the association in November 1943 to facilitate the procedure for shipping coffins.122 One can find many such certificates in the papers of the association.123 Yet their number is not so large that they could represent all the required certificates. Only a few companies appeared in the documents and a full explanation for the missing documents could not be found. Since this was part of a regular routine, the FBTA clerks may have failed to register most applications. Another explanation may be simply that the shipping companies did not bother to get a certificate. During the war period, the issue was less one of credibility than one of security.

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social achievement. This was an ideal beyond the reach of the majority of the population. The role played by the dense network of native-place associations in providing funeral services, including a free or cheap coffin, burial ground, or transportation to the native place, should be read in the light of this obvious deprivation. The level of income of the urban workers was no match to the cost of the most basic commercial funeral arrangement. The poor and the low-income groups could only entrust their bodies to the care of guilds or charities. The latter bore a stamp of social failure. The existence of benevolent associations that devoted a large amount of money to collecting every exposed corpse, coffin, urn, and even every bit of bone reflected the deep concern to leave no soul unattended. The Wandering Ghosts Festival epitomized the anxieties death created in an urban environment where people died in large numbers, many in unexpected ways and alone. The ritualistic cleansing of the city under the aegis of the City God combined dimensions of both a genuine religious fervor and collective celebration. All official attempts to put an end to it failed miserably. The war, more than anything else, did away with a festival that had lost much of its significance in view of the traumatic experience the conflict brought upon people, with its silent trail of massive mortality.

The Cremated Body: From Social Curse to Political Rule  

8

Cremation in Shanghai was the result of the long and protracted effort, at times even struggle, that the successive authorities waged against a defiant population staunchly attached to earth burial. The nature of the policies in support of cremation and the degree of coercion involved varied greatly during the period under study. Nevertheless, it is a mode of disposal of dead bodies that was pressed upon the population until it became the norm after the mid-1960s. Cremation did not emerge as a real issue before the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. It was not unknown in the city since Westerners, Indians, and Japanese cremated their dead, though in varying numbers. Cremation was universal among the Sikhs, significant among the Japanese, but marginal among Westerners. After 1927, both the Nationalist government and the Shanghai Municipal Government started promoting cremation as a modern and hygienic way of disposal of the body. During wartime, cremation was imposed to certain segments of the population—the wretched and the destitute—which definitely tainted it as an undignified death. After 1945, the Nationalist, then the Communist, authorities used cremation as a threat, a quasi-form of punishment, to induce individuals and organizations (guild and commercial coffin repositories) to remove and bury the coffins accumulated during the war. It actually became a policy that unclaimed coffins, and later coffins excavated to remove cemeteries from the urban area, were cremated systematically. There was nothing positive associated with cremation that could make it acceptable to the population. In China there was no movement or initiative that challenged the dominant ideology about burial. The imperial state maintained the view and the norm that earth burial was the sole appropriate way to take care of a dead body. Even in practical terms, in sojourner cities such as Shanghai,

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there was lesser pressure on burial grounds due to the widespread practice of shipping coffins back to the native place. In other words, there was no questioning of the impurity and hazards to health that resulted from the increasingly overcrowded church cemeteries as happened in Europe from the drive for sanitary reform in the second half of the nineteenth century.1 In contrast, the Chinese had developed institutions that actually catered to the preservation and storage of dead bodies in the midst of the city. Although sources to detect a change in beliefs about or concepts of death are limited to the press, cremation hardly came up as a topic of discussion. In Europe, the two world wars destabilized the established notion that one would die and be buried in a local cemetery. Many combatants never came back and were buried away from home.2 Although China, and in fact Shanghai, experienced several episodes of extreme violence and destruction that left tens of thousands (Taiping Rebellion, Small Sword Society, 1932 Battle of Shanghai) to hundreds of thousands of victims (1937 SinoJapanese conflict), these traumatic events failed to influence the way people chose to dispose of the dead. The involvement of physicians in support of cremation, notably Wu Liande, the well-known “plague doctor,” appeared only belatedly, in 1935, in hand with official policy.

Cremation in China In modern Shanghai, the very idea of cremation was profoundly alien and perceived as an offence against one’s kin. When literati discussed the problem of unburied coffins, cremation never came up as a way to dispose of them. There were lengthy developments about the immorality of leaving bones aboveground, but the sole alternative was a proper burial. The city harbored large communities from Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and even Fujian, where cremation had been widely practiced in the past. Yet that past was long gone and erased from collective memory. There was no mention of this historical heritage at all, even if many literati or modern intellectuals went to great lengths to draw from the past to support policies that would eliminate the “distasteful practices” of the common people. When the Shenbao published news on cases of cremating bones, this was to report the strong official condemnation of such immoral behaviors.3 Yet these cases were extremely rare. Officials merely reiterated the long-standing position of the Chinese imperial state toward cremation. The acute reluctance of the Jiangnan Chinese toward cremation reflected the ideology and legal dispositions that the Ming and Qing dynasties had adopted to change what had become a widespread practice throughout China, more so in the Jiangnan and Fujian region, during the

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Tang and Song dynasties. Cremation was clearly associated with the penetration of Buddhism. Patricia Ebrey argued that “beginning in the tenth century, many people willingly gave up the long-established custom of burying bodies in coffins to follow the practice introduced by Buddhist monks of cremating bodies and either scattering the ashes over water, storing them in urns aboveground, or burying the urn in a small grave.”4 Ebrey convincingly demonstrates that “the most important institutional development in supporting cremation was the entry of Buddhist temples and monasteries into the funeral business: providing funeral services, storing coffins, and above all operating crematoria open to the public.”5 From the beginning, Confucians strongly objected to cremation as a “desecration of the corpse,” a practice branded as cruel, unfilial, and actually alien to China. The Song dynasty outlawed cremation as early as 962. Nevertheless, cremation became prevalent, especially in the large cities that developed in Song times. Almost all classes resorted to cremation, even if the poor more frequently chose this mode to save on funeral expenses, but also out of expediency as finding land for burial in the immediate environs of cities was impractical or impossible. The popularity of cremation in Song times was undeniable, and even if the imperial state officially banned the practice, many literati considered that this was unrealistic. Migrants—those who moved over long distances from northern China to the south as well as those who flocked to the cities—found it more complicated to dispose of the dead bodies of their relatives than in their native places. This was not the result of any form of official policy or proselytizing by Buddhist institutions. People chose cremation on their own, following the example of monks, because they incurred less expense and could dispose of the remains in a convenient manner. During the following dynasties, however, cremation underwent a serious decline. The Ming state enforced a general prohibition of cremation, with a strict regimen of regulations and penalties, including decapitation.6 The combination of moral condemnation and legal sanctions led to a rapid decline under the Ming.7 Timothy Brook has also argued that the rise of agnatic lineages, with strong engagement rituals based on Neo-Confucianism to reinforce the collective character of the kinship group, played a significant role in displacing Buddhist monopoly over funeral ceremonies.8 Yet there is also strong evidence that cremation persisted for several centuries, at least among the poor, despite repeated admonition and edicts to ban the practice. The policy of establishing free burial sites that the imperial state implemented throughout the country facilitated the transition back to earth burial.9 It did not deter people from continuing the practice, albeit perhaps in combination with the equally widespread practice of leaving coffins aboveground, as discussed in Chapter 4. Indeed, the

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Shenbao reported cases of cremating bones or even children in the late nineteenth century, which may have been a remnant of the past practice of cremation.10 The posture of Qing officials and literati about cremation emphasizes how deep and thorough the change in behavior and ideas about the disposal of dead bodies was by the end of the eighteenth century. Coercion and persuasion fostered a Weltanschauung in which the dead could only find peace in the earth. The belief became so entrenched that even the major dislocations caused by the traumatic Taiping Rebellion—it left about forty million dead in the course of protracted battles between the rebels and the imperial army—failed to trigger a change of idea about the disposal of the dead body. Bodies and bones were collected and buried.11

Cremation in Shanghai: An Alien Practice In Shanghai, the most direct factor in the emergence of cremation was the presence of Westerners. Any mention of cremation in and around Shanghai in the nineteenth century could not be found before the opening of the first crematorium in the Bubbling Well Cemetery in 1897. In the first article published on the issue of cremation, the Shenbao discussed briefly the “abhorrent” customs of India, including the cremation of widows.12 There were few articles in the years that followed, although in 1874 the newspaper again mentioned a new method for cremation in India.13 Usually, news about cremation was related to Buddhist monks, although they were relatively rare.14 Their number increased with the years, but only as funeral announcements (baosang). Even for the aboveground coffins that contravened filial duties and exposed the population to risks of infection, the local authorities explicitly forbade cremation to deal with the abandoned coffins. There was a news item about peasants in the Suzhou area who had burnt unburied coffins in their fields. In 1877 the Suzhou prefect strictly prohibited such practices.15 This triggered the Shenbao to publish an editorial that basically concurred with the idea that cremation was against filial duties.16 The Shanghai xian magistrate reiterated that aboveground coffins should be buried, not cremated.17 Yet the practice continued, as confirmed by a case in the Suzhou area in 1882 where a peasant lost his son and part of his house when burning the coffin of his parents.18 Even in the early part of the twentieth century there was not much discussion about cremation. The public debate concentrated mostly on cemeteries as cremation was thought of as impossible in China.19 The Shenbao reported on foreign countries, especially Europe, where cremation was on the increase just before World War I. Germany was presented as the most advanced country with twenty-two crematories.20 Cremation was an alien

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and almost quixotic form of body disposal.21 As mentioned above, there was only one facility in the city, which only Westerners used. Although access to the crematorium was not restricted to any religion, Chinese Buddhist monks were usually cremated in ad hoc sites. In 1917, the head master of a Buddhist group was cremated on a pyre on vacant land behind the Jianghuai Guild in Zhabei.22 It is not clear whether this was due to their reluctance to use the Bubbling Well Crematorium or the specific constraints that applied to the cremation of Buddhist monks, such as the use of a square box that maintained the body in a sitting position.23 In fact, it was assumed that the Bubbling Well Crematorium took care of Christian Westerners. In 1930 the Public Health Department received an application by a Chinese man to be cremated in the facility. The case had not arisen before. The Shanghai Municipal Council expressed no objection, provided the Chinese man was a Christian and had the proper documents from the Chinese authorities. It added that there was nothing that opposed cremating non-Christians. The Public Health Department realized that there was in fact no regulation on the use of the crematorium and proposed a code of rules based on the regulation in Edinburgh and Brookwood.24 The code of rules did not point to any conditions of ethnicity and religion.25 The Bubbling Well Crematorium was a modern facility patterned after those established in Great Britain, both at its initial construction and when it underwent a general overhaul in 1924, then again when the furnace was rebuilt in 1935.26 The number of cremations remained very low and never represented more than a small fraction of deaths among Westerners. There was no policy on the part of the Shanghai Municipal Council to encourage cremation. Its basic policy was to provide the burial grounds that were in much higher demand. Among the various communities that were present in Shanghai in significant numbers, cremation was far from common in the respective home countries. Great Britain was by far the place where modern cremation had developed earliest, since 1885 with the first private crematorium, although it was not officially legalized until 1902.27 From then onward, there was a regular but slow development until World War I, then again a second acceleration after World War II. Yet it was not until 1950 that the number of cremations reached a significant number (15 percent of all deaths).28 In the United States, the rate remained very low well into the 1960s, at a mere 4 percent of all burials. Among the Russians, cremation was rare. Most people left their country before cremation became a common practice. In the Soviet Union, cremation was introduced at the time of the typhus epidemic in 1918–1919 when the church cemeteries could no longer receive large number of dead bodies.29 The French and Germans frowned upon cremation, and the Catholic Church officially opposed it.30

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The Bubbling Well Crematorium was a small facility that consisted of a chapel and a separate chamber that contained the furnace. It also provided columbaria for the reception of the urns and memorial tablets inside and outside the main walls of the building. Mourners could assemble in retiring rooms in the back for prayers or to await the end of the cremation. It went into operation in August 1897.31 The crematorium was established with a single coal-fired furnace. The Public Health Department made experiments with Chinese coal, but eventually settled on English coke as it proved much more effective, which meant a higher price for each cremation, averaging 20 taels in 1906.32 The Public Health Department was already considering using other sources of heat, for example, gas or oil, but this did not happen for another twenty years. In part, this may have been due to the fact that the Japanese built their own crematorium, which decreased the number of cremations performed at the Bubbling Well Crematorium. The crematorium went through a complete overhaul in 1924 with the installation of a new gas furnace based on the model used at the South Metropolitan Cemetery at West Norwood.33 Ten years later, the furnace underwent full reconstruction.34 This was the last transformation until it was dismantled in the 1960s. Only foreigners used the Bubbling Well Crematorium. Yet cremation remained a minority practice among Westerners, while the cremation of Chinese started only during the Sino-Japanese War, as Table 8.1 shows. Although these figures reflect mostly the use of cremation among foreigners, they are biased because in the earlier period the Japanese also used the Bubbling Well Crematorium. Unfortunately, there was only passing mention of this but no actual figures. In 1906, the Public Health Department reported that the Japanese were the most frequent users of the crematorium.35 Table 8.1 also confirms that after August 1937 the Sikhs could no longer use their gurdwara, which was located in a war-torn area, and turned to the Bubbling Well facility. The wartime period saw the beginning of cremation by the Chinese, but the absence of figures after 1940 leaves us with no clear conclusion about its significance. In general terms, even if cremation remained a minority practice among Westerners, it reached a level that was far from insignificant. Cremation stood at an average ratio of 1 to 10 with earth burial. After 1926, the percentage hovered around 8–11 percent, and then it increased to an average of 18–19 percent in most years, except for the exceptional rate of nearly 32 percent in 1937. Even in Great Britain, where cremation developed earlier and faster than in any European country, such a rate was not reached before 1952.36 Yet one should not see this as a true reflection of the greater adoption of cremation among Shanghailanders. Cremation was also used to facilitate the repatriation of the remains back to the home country.

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costly and used only for shipping coffins to the more remote provinces like Guangdong and Fujian or to North China. According to a report by the Shanghai Municipal Police, individual boatmen were the main carriers of coffins before and during the war. Shipping companies were also involved, but they served mostly the needs of the native-place associations that sent shipments of several dozen or even hundreds of coffins at regular intervals. River boatmen had previously been involved in the transportation of goods and people between Shanghai and its hinterland. The development of modern means of transportation, however, especially steamship and railroad, had taken away a large share of this market.131 Boatmen found a new business niche in the transportation of coffins where time was a lesser constraint. Moreover, their boats could reach up to the very native village of the deceased (see Map. 3.5). The transportation of coffins became the main activity of many boatmen before and during the war.132 The police estimated that there were more than thirty boats engaged in the transportation of coffins from the International Settlement in 1938. They were organized in three main groups. Ten natives of Suzhou owned twenty boats, one-half berthed near the Chekiang Road Bridge and the other half at Markham Road. Three natives of Jiangbei managed eighteen boats berthed at the Penang Jetty near Markham Road. They ran three different lines—Nantong–Rugao, Zhenjiang–Yangzhou, and Yancheng– Yinghua–Taizhou—and had to use three boats at the same time. At the time of the survey, six boats had left with 120 coffins and another twelve were still berthed with 60 coffins among them. Another group of seven natives of Jiangbei ran boats from Markham Road. The Shanghai Municipal Police suggested arranging the loading of coffins by destination, one boat at a time, each for one destination: (a) Wuxi–Changzhou, (b) Suzhou, (c) Tongzhou, (d) Zhenjiang–Yangchou, and (e) Funing, Xinghua, Taizhou, Yancheng.133 This was the beginning of the Penang Shipping Station, a facility that aimed to address both the concern of the Shanghai Municipal Council about the growing number of stored coffins in its territory and the various limitations the Japanese military imposed that seriously hampered the circulation of boats. The boatmen were at the mercy of arbitrary decisions by the Japanese military, which suspected them of using coffins for smuggling. The Penang Shipping Station was initially a simple shed next to the Penang garbage incinerator that the guilds or the funeral companies could use as temporary storage before shipping. The inspectors of the Public Health Department oversaw the flow of coffins to guarantee that they contained only dead bodies and facilitate the speedy removal of coffins from the city. The use of coffins for smuggling was not a fiction. In June 1941, health inspectors discovered six empty coffins used for private business to smuggle

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news about the cremation of Sikhs in Shanghai. The Sikh community was not very large, with a majority of relatively young men. The Shanghai Municipal Council did not keep a systematic record of Sikh cremations. In a 1935 police memorandum in response to a dispute with the Chinese municipality (see below), we learn that there were thirty-four cremations in 1934. On average, up to April 1935, there were two to three cremations per month.41 When the population near the Sikh gurdwara increased, Chinese residents protested to force its removal from their neighborhood. The Public Health Department stated that the crematorium was located on a piece of vacant land with surrounding walls and placed under the management of the Sikh Police Gurdwara Committee. It also supported the view that the method used by the Sikhs was “more or less a model of efficiency and economy.” The local residents found it annoying when in use, but the Public Health Department argued there was no serious objection to it. The crematorium, in the form of a garden with the pyre erected at the center, was exceptionally clean. After cremation, the friends or relatives cast the ashes into the river at Wusong. Following renewed protests in 1935, there was a short trail of correspondence between the Chinese Bureau of Public Health and the Public Health Department on the same subject, which only led to the agreement by the Shanghai Municipal Council to raise the walls around the gurdwara.42 The second population group that used cremation was the Japanese community. It was the largest foreign group in Shanghai, with about 30,000 people in the 1930s and 103,968 at its peak in 1944.43 The earlier Japanese settlers established a small cemetery west of the International Settlement, but as they increasingly concentrated in the Hongkou area, they relocated their cemetery to northern Hongkou, in Chinese-administered territory. At the same time, however, they introduced cremation and eventually built the most modern facility in Shanghai. There was nothing that predisposed the Japanese to become the actual proponents of cremation in Shanghai. Although cremation started as early as the eighth century in Japan, mostly as a Buddhist merit-generating ritual, earth burial remained the norm, even for Buddhists. The Meiji government even chose to make cremation illegal in 1873, calling it an “evil custom of the past.” The decision, however, sparked a heated controversy and contributed to public support for the very act the government wanted to stop. After two years of campaigning, the Meiji government rescinded the prohibition on cremation. The public debate had a far larger impact and propelled the spread of the practice. Finally, in the twentieth century, a major shift occurred with the construction of modern crematories under government sanction

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in every Japanese municipality in the 1910s and 1920s.44 By the 1930s, more than one-half of the dead were cremated. The Japanese built their crematorium in 1908. It was the most advanced crematorium in the city with three furnaces versus only one at Bubbling Well. The Shenbao regularly published notices of cremations in the Bubbling Well Crematorium, but hardly so for the Japanese crematorium. As a result, as for the Sikhs, we have no record of the use of cremation among the Japanese community compared to full-body burial. The Japanese crematorium was a tightly knit entity run by the Japanese Residents Association. In the International Settlement, the Shanghai Municipal Council satisfied itself with a policy of no interference with the daily life of the Japanese under its administration.45 The Japanese crematorium remained in use until its takeover by the Nationalists in 1945 as an enemy property. Japanese civilians lost their access to the facility in the postwar period. In fact, the municipal government had a hard time getting the crematorium back from the Chinese army (see below).

Cremation: Aborted Official Policies

 

 

In the International Settlement, the Shanghai Municipal Council was never at the forefront of supporting cremation. At the turn of the century, after the crematorium had been in operation for a few years, the Public Health Department advocated the general use of cremation. In its 1903 report, it wrote “public health would be benefited were cremation more general [. . .] the clean ashes of a cremation can be contemplated with greater satisfaction than the sloughy putridity of the buried body.” It also claimed that it was much more economical as a cremation, including urn and niche, came to 95 taels versus 150 taels for a burial, not including tombstone and other accessories.46 In 1906, the Public Health Department reiterated its view that cremation was to be recommended and that “every endeavor has therefore been made to encourage its use.”47 The initial enthusiasm, however, subsided in the following years. There was no further discussion of cremation. The Public Health Department reports mentioned only technical issues and the number of cremations. Until the war with Japan broke out, the official involvement in cremation was limited to regulation. Even in the case of paupers’ graves, which the Public Health Department would exhume after fifteen years and reinter in small-sized graves, the Shanghai Municipal Council stated that it was prepared to cremate these remains at the council’s expenses “if the persons concerned so desired.”48 This fell short of a strong policy in favor of cremation.

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It was only with the coming to power of the Nationalists in 1927 that cremation became an object of official policy, albeit at a very slow pace. As discussed in Chapter 4, the main objective of the new administration was to convince the Chinese to give up individual graves in favor of burial in modern cemeteries. I could not find any trace of an official policy by the Nationalist government to promote cremation. In Shanghai, the Bureau of Social Affairs took up the issue of cremation in 1928 with a general plan to reform public welfare activities.49 In the months that followed, the municipal administration actively worked on the project of a municipal crematorium. The Bureau of Public Works selected a site near the Huangpu River south of the city’s Southern Gate to be used for cremation.50 It was a modest beginning, which made no difference from the past practice of cremating bodies on vacant land in temples or guilds. In July 1931, an instruction from the central government mandated the Shanghai Municipal Government to establish a charity cemetery and a crematorium to burn the coffins left aboveground. The municipal government selected Caohejing to establish both the cemetery and the crematorium. Yet archival documents proved it lacked the financial capacity to implement its plan.51 The beginning of an actual project surfaced again only in 1935 after the municipal government had returned to a more stable financial situation. The construction of a crematorium, however, required resources the municipality did not have. Although it was its duty to provide a municipal facility, it sought to mobilize private capital to contribute to the project. In April, the municipal government convened a general meeting to establish a preparatory committee and to collect financial contributions. The committee planned to establish two crematoriums, in the city and in Pudong.52 Eventually, the project evolved toward establishing one crematorium in Jiangwan next to the First Municipal Cemetery. The required investment of 40,000 yuan would be shared equally between the municipal government and the preparatory committee.53 To give more credit to its project, the municipal government enlisted the well-known physician Wu Liande in the committee. Wu Liande not only gave his full support to the project but also proposed to establish a Chinese Cremation Society (Zhongguo Huozang Xiehui) to promote cremation in the whole country and to link up with similar organizations abroad.54 The crematorium came very close to completion. In March 1937, the committee had secured a large budget of 60,000 yuan.55 On 26 March 1937, Li Ting’an, head of the Bureau of Public Health, convened a meeting of all the participants and potential contributors to the crematorium. Many benevolent associations and guilds sent representatives, altogether about twenty people. The major guilds, however, did not attend the meeting.56 Nevertheless, Li Ting’an hoped that an average of 300 yuan

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could be raised from the hundred or so guilds and charities in the city. A few guilds made substantial donations during the meeting (Huzhou, Chaohui, Chaozhou), but contacts would be made with the absentee organizations. The municipal government was confident it would have the funds ready to start the construction in June.57 It also persisted in its plan to have another crematorium in Pudong.58 By early July, the municipality had managed to raise one-half of the planned budget.59 The outbreak of SinoJapanese conflict in August 1937 put an end to the project. Besides the public crematoriums, two other kinds of private crematoriums also emerged. The first were crematoriums established in hospitals. These were probably not very widespread as only two cases were encountered in the research, although there may have been more. Both belonged to the same institution, the Lüren Hospital in Pudong and in Zhabei. These crematoriums served to incinerate the body and belongings of patients infected with a contagious disease. In 1939, at the crematorium of the Pudong Lüren Hospital, thieves took away the iron bars that supported the body during cremation. The crematorium was dealt a more severe blow when heavy rain caused the structure to collapse. Because it served for infectious diseases, the hospital was able to claim reimbursement from the Bureau of Public Health. The archives do not tell whether the hospital reinstalled its oven.60 The second type was made up of facilities established for religious purposes. The Buddhists established the first Buddhist crematorium in February 1941 in Nanshi on Xinqiao Road. The inauguration took place on 23 February 1941 in the presence of about a hundred people. Two bodies were cremated for the occasion. The small crematorium was simple, but it was equipped with three furnaces.61 The Haihui Temple also established a crematorium in 1950, but it ceased operation after the Communist takeover. Overall, cremation remained at the periphery of funeral practices and people’s concerns. One can find an echo of official policy in the press, but it is very limited. There was a short debate among the readers of the Shenbao with proposals that went beyond the intentions of the government. In reply to an article advocating modern cemeteries, one reader argued that this would not solve the issue of excessive land use and expenses. The reader contended that the government should make cremation compulsory and ban the practice of full-body burials. Offenders would not only be fined, but the grave would be opened by force and the remains cremated.62 There was no immediate response, except one that still supported cemeteries because cremation caused fumes in the atmosphere and it required firewood that was not truly economical.63 Ordinary Chinese viewed cremation with reluctance and would rather not see it happening in their midst. In April 1935, residents complained about the Bubbling Well Crematorium to the

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Bureau of Public Health of the Shanghai Municipal Government, but not directly to the Shanghai Municipal Council. Having investigated the conditions, the council wrote back stating it had found nothing wrong from a sanitary point of view. Yet the Bureau of Public Health repeated its demand to the council the following month, causing some displeasure among the foreign officials who abstained from replying. By September, the Bureau of Public Health reiterated its demand. To satisfy the Chinese municipality, the Shanghai Municipal Council confirmed that it would raise the walls around the crematorium, which seemed to have been at the heart of the petition.64 The protest by the residents and the action by the Bureau of Public Health happened the same year as another group of residents were protesting against the presence of the Sikh gurdwara near Hongkew Park.

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Cremation remained a minority practice for both foreigners and Chinese throughout the Republican period. As discussed above, the strong reluctance of the Chinese toward cremation and the absence of suitable facilities explain the lack of development. The Sino-Japanese conflict was a crucial watershed in installing cremation as a major way of disposing of dead bodies, even if this applied to a particular sector of the population. As if by premonition, the Public Health Department had initiated a move to push for cremation with the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery (SPBC) at the beginning of 1937. In an internal memorandum, the department argued that that the time was ripe to suggest to the SPBC to implement cremation, at least for infants.65 Health officials sought out members of the SPBC before taking up the issue formally in March 1937, when the charity applied for its annual grant from the Shanghai Municipal Council. The Public Health Department pointed out that it would be best to cremate the unclaimed bodies in a facility to be established by the three municipalities. The chairman of the SPBC replied that the Chinese municipal administration was considering the issue—as discussed above it had taken concrete steps—but the cost of investment was high. The SPBC would consider this suggestion.66 It was a diplomatic reply since the SPBC had no plan to introduce cremation in its practice. During the early phase of the hostilities, a large number of bodies of civilians and soldiers accumulated in the war-torn districts (Zhabei, Hong kou, and Yangshupu). When the troops moved outside by late October and after the Japanese accepted the return of the agents of the Shanghai Municipal Council, the first priority of the authorities was the removal of all the dead bodies. The Japanese army collected bodies in the areas under

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Chinese administration. The Public Health Department carried out a systematic house search in the Hongkou and Yangtsepoo districts.67 In view of the urgency to dispose of bodies in an advanced state of decomposition, the Public Health Department decided to cremate them all in situ. In the Eastern District, its staff built pyres with timber collected in the destroyed buildings and piled up bodies on top.68 The measure was implemented without making any distinction between civilians and soldiers (except for the Japanese soldiers, who were brought to the attention of the Japanese Navy).69 In the Western District, the municipal workers collected mostly encoffined corpses: “30 small coffins are sufficient for a good burning pyre [. . .] it is therefore an easy matter to build four or five pyres and burn up to over 1,000 coffins a day.” It took about four hours to reduce the corpses to ashes that were collected and buried.70 The Public Health Department figures show that in other parts of the settlement it seized all the bodies and coffins that were found abandoned and had them cremated on a site near the Hungjao Cemetery. 71 Yet if we include all the bodies collected in and around the International Settlement, especially in the Western District and beyond, the Public Health Department sent 52,267 bodies for cremation. The SPBC managed to bury the adult bodies, which totaled 14,688. Altogether with other forms of disposal of dead bodies, for the sole International Settlement and its vicinity up to the end of October 1937, 90,908 bodies had gone through the hands of the workers of the Public Health Department and the SPBC.72 The final tally spoke of the tremendous loss of lives during the early phase of the war, even if the total included people who had died before the war. The enforcement of cremation by the Public Health Department as a measure of emergency to prevent the spread of infectious diseases represented the first instance of mass cremation in Shanghai. After the acute phase of fighting receded, however, the number of dead bodies continued to increase. This was the result of a higher mortality among the poorer classes, especially infants and young children. As we have seen in Chapter 6, two charity organizations specialized in collecting and burying these bodies. In October–November 1938, the Tongren Fuyuantang collected 941 bodies in Nanshi and 3,048 in the French Concession. Even on the basis of an average of 3,500 bodies every two months, the final tally amounted to 21,000.73 In the same year the SPBC collected more than 60,000 bodies. The pace of removal during this period appeared too slow in the view of the Shanghai Municipal Council. In November 1937, the superintendent of health approached the SPBC again to seek its agreement on cremating bodies, especially those of children. The deputy chairman of the SPBC, Zhao Rongkang, raised no objection, according to the police report, but he cautioned that some members of the SPBC board

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might object to cremation. He also made it clear that the SPBC would not be held responsible in case of public criticism.74 After an exchange with the SPBC about 3,000 accumulated coffins on Brenan Road for which the SPBC had run out of space, the Public Health Department came to the conclusion that the SPBC gave its assent to the cremation of small bodies, provided it was not directly associated with the operation.75 The implementation of cremation, however, was protested by the SPBC. In early February, the superintendent of health reported on the cremation of the largest group of bodies since the beginning of the hostilities, 238 children and 50 adults. The cremation had gone well, but the SPBC voiced its opposition to a measure taken without its agreement. It requested the Shanghai Municipal Council to suspend all further cremation: “As cremation is a new practice in China, it may be regarded with abhorrence by the Chinese community.” The SPBC demanded that cremation be limited to the small coffins and bodies of children.76 The superintendent of health pointed out that, under the present circumstances, cremation was preferable to badly buried coffins.77 Basically, the Public Health Department maintained that all unclaimed bodies, regardless of age, should be cremated.78 Visual evidence points to the cremation of adult bodies. The Public Health Department and the SPBC eventually agreed on establishing a cremation site about 500 meters from the SPBC cemetery in Hongqiao.79 The site was not stable as one year later, in April 1939, the superintendent of health informed the Shanghai Municipal Council that a new site had been found close to a facility where the Public Works Department could store fuel.80 Thereafter, cremation became a routine procedure. Every four or five days, 400 coffins were brought to the cremation site. With the approach of the summer season, the Public Health Department required that small batches of coffins be sent daily or every two days to avoid prolonged storage.81 At the end of 1938, the health officials claimed that the cremation of bodies, “on occasions distinctly opposed by the [SPBC] Society, have resulted in the Society saving quite a large sum.” The Public Health Department argued that the money thus saved helped considerably the SPBC in acquiring additional land for burial and fund its operations.82 In spite of its initial opposition, the SPBC may also have come to realize that the burden was so high that maintaining burial for each exposed corpse was beyond its means, financially and logistically. Opposition to cremation also came from other quarters, not as a matter of principle, but because of sheer distaste and nuisance. On 7 March 1939, the Hungjao Area Association—an organization made up of Western residents in western Shanghai—protested with the Japanese about the cremations that took place in their neighborhood. As a result, the Japanese

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army restricted access to the area, which in turn caused a serious problem for the Public Health Department. The commissioner wrote a scathing note to the secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Council about “this type of little-minded person who seems to think that the prejudices or religious beliefs of the Chinese should be violated in order to spare their own exaggerated susceptibilities.” The chairman of the association, K. M. Cumming, eventually sent a letter of apology. The Japanese reopened the access but banned the entry of large coffins, which resulted in their being dumped in the settlement. Finally, the Public Health Department prevailed in regaining full access to the cremation site and resumed its action as a mass undertaker.83 There were other protests by local residents, as well as by the Club Hippique and the Star Dairy later during the war. The Public Health Department eventually decided to carry out cremation at night after 7 p.m.84 On average, the Public Health Department supervised the cremation of more than 3,000 bodies every month. In 1939 and 1940, the number of cremated bodies totaled 37,316 and 20,209, respectively.85 Cremation on the improvised site relied on a crude method by which coffins and bodies were piled up onto the wood pyre prepared by the Public Health Department coolies. In 1939, the department used 3.5 tons of fuel oil and 70 tons of wood. Since wood was in short supply, the Public Health Department used 40 tons of wood from the trees it felled in the cemeteries.86 The department even asked the Public Works Department to provide residue from filtering waste oil to substitute for regular combustibles.87 After December 1941 and the allied blockade, wood and fuel oil became increasingly rare materials. In October 1943, the Public Health Department reported difficulties due to the lack of firewood and the poor quality of the oil sludge supplied by the Public Works Department. The cremation process took as long as ten hours instead of four hours previously.88 All in all, it came down to a dreadful economy of death processing at the lowest cost possible. In the International Settlement in 1939, the total expense for cremating 37,316 bodies amounted to a mere 5,907 U.S. dollars or 15.8 cents per body.89 We have much less information on how the Chinese municipal authorities handled the issue of exposed bodies after they took over the foreign settlements in July 1943. Even for the Chen Gongbo administration, access to land outside the city remained a critical issue as the Japanese Army maintained a tight control. From a report made in the latter part of the war, we learn that the municipal services sent the exposed bodies to two collecting stations on Haimen Road and Wushen Road, from where they were taken to a cremation site of the SPBC on Harbin Road.90 The mention of a cremation site on Harbin Road points to an additional location

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for cremation. What actually matters here is that after the takeover of the foreign settlements the Chen Gongbo government did not reverse the policy of cremation for the exposed bodies of children. An exception was made for adults, which highlights the persisting attachment of the SPBC for burial. Cremation remained a second-choice alternative, one that was admissible only for children. Another factor played in favor of cremation, at least for the bodies of the paupers. After the conquest of the coast of Fujian and Zhejiang, it became more difficult to obtain wood to produce coffins, even of the cheapest quality. The price of wood multiplied five to six times in 1940 compared to the prewar period.91 Even the well-meaning conservative benevolent associations had to decide how best to use their money. Obviously, they could hardly persist in carrying out the systematic burial of all exposed bodies with shrinking resources. Grudgingly, they let go of the “small bodies,” those of infants and children, but they tried to resist in order to protect the integrity of the “large bodies.” A contribution by a reader in the Shenbao also came to the conclusion that in the present circumstances there was no alternative to cremating the bodies of the poor.92 This was an individual opinion, but it also revealed cremation was no longer taboo. Even the guilds had to accept the cremation of their coffins when the Public Health Department judged that they presented a potential danger to public health.93 In the Chinese municipality the Bureau of Public Health also forced the guilds to release their coffins for cremation unless the families or the guild buried them.94 Yet, despite the pressure and further exhortation by foreign and Chinese authorities to adopt cremation, the preference for burial or keeping the coffins in repositories prevailed during the war. One reader made this insightful comparison between the number of cremations in September 1940 (2,287) and the number of coffins in repositories (39,107) to conclude that Chinese society remained unmoved by the context of the war and the absurdity of the rise of a ghost city among the living.95 The main point, however, was that even under difficult circumstances those who could afford the expense made the preservation of the dead body their first priority. Articles in support of cremation raised the same arguments and quoted the same Chinese thinkers, to no avail.96 Cremation remained the mode of disposal of the Chinese paupers or Buddhist monks. By 1943, the Public Health Department became concerned with the rapid filling of the cemeteries and proposed cremating the remains of foreign paupers. The Public Health Department hoped that the foreign community would “see the wisdom and necessity of cremation.”97 Thus cremation became the cheap and efficient way to dispose of the poor, a view the Shenbao asserted again in August 1944.98

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Cremation in the Chinese Municipality (1941–1949) Cremation came up again on the agenda of the Chinese municipal government during the war. Yet its projects were marred with hesitation and half decisions, in part due to the lack of financial resources. In August 1941, the Bureau of Public Health sought the Bureau of Police of the Huxi District to locate the crematorium established by the previous administration in Caohejing. After investigating the issue, the police came to the conclusion that it had been a project that the war had prematurely terminated.99 In August 1942, a private entrepreneur proposed its collaboration to the Bureau of Public Health. Years ago, he had explored the idea of establishing a crematorium with foreign experts at a cost of 1 million yuan but had given up when he realized that the Chinese population was not yet ready. He took an interest in the municipal project of a crematorium in Shanghai.100 There must have been a serious interest since the entrepreneur drafted the charter of the Zhaiyi Crematorium Company to be located on Great Western Road in western Shanghai. The local police station gave its approval to the location.101 There was no further mention of this project and it never materialized. Nevertheless, the municipal government provided the first legal framework for the establishment of private crematoriums in December 1942 with a text that imposed fairly stringent measures.102 The 1942 municipal regulation set a time limit of ten years, after which the municipality would take it over. The entrepreneur behind the Zhaiyi Crematorium must have changed his mind after the promulgation of the municipal regulation. The municipality returned to the project of a municipal crematorium in April–May 1943. The Bureau of Public Health found a suitable location on Guangfulu in Dongjiadu, near the Jiangnan Arsenal, but the Japanese owner refused to release the property. Eventually, the bureau selected another location in Longhua on a piece of land previously used as a botanical garden. The project started in earnest as the file contains a map of the Bubbling Well Crematorium as well as a technical file from a Japanese ovenproducing company based in Kobe.103 Yet nothing concrete happened for lack of capital. In March 1944, the municipality introduced the project of a joint crematorium at a projected cost of 2 million yuan.104 Since the municipality lacked the financial resources for this investment, it convened a meeting with the Funeral Business Trade Association to discuss the project, with the hope of raising money among the funeral companies, even if the authorities were aware that most had little capital.105 Again, the project failed to materialize. Aside from the lack of suitable facilities, one of the major obstacles that made it difficult for the population to adopt cremation was the complex procedure that families had to go through. Cremation raised legal issues as

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the action implied the full disappearance of the body. In Great Britain, cremation was not just the decision of the family. The authorities had to give their assent for the cremation to proceed. Whereas the Shanghai Municipal Council had adopted a fairly simple procedure, after 1943 the power to authorize cremation shifted to the local court. The major hurdle was the lengthy administrative process. The applicant had to first file an application (huozang shenqingshu) with the Bureau of Public Health as well as obtain a death certificate from the same bureau. The next step was to produce these documents to the procurator of the local court to request an examination of the dead body by an official inspector who would sign the cremation application. Finally, the applicant had to return to the Bureau of Public Health with all the signed documents for final approval. Only then could the cremation take place. The complex regulation discouraged cremation in a society where burial could take place without any paperwork. There was an attempt by the municipal government in 1944 to simplify the procedure. The procurator general saw no objection to a simplification, but he raised the issue of who was empowered to revise the regulation that had resulted from the retrocession of the International Settlement when the Chinese courts were not allowed to examine the bodies of the deceased before cremation.106 In October 1945, the new municipal government took up the issue again with a new round of discussions with the local courts, but in July 1949 no progress had been made.107 In November 1946, the Bureau of Public Health met with journalists to press its message that, in the context where coffin repositories could no longer accept new coffins and cemeteries were running out of burial lots, cremation was the only sensible option. Yet the bureau partly contradicted itself by indicating that new cemeteries were opening in Pudong, Yang shupu, and south of the city.108 By and large, however, the main point was that coffin repositories reneged on the official prohibition to accept new coffins. As long as aboveground and underground burial space was available, cremation could hardly be an alternative. In November 1946, after another extension of the deadline to evacuate the stored coffins, the Bureau of Public Health took a more forceful stance in favor of cremation. With a new count of 150,000 stored coffins, the bureau threatened to cremate all the unclaimed coffins after April 1947.109 Yet the threat was empty as the bureau only had at its disposal the Jing’ansi Crematorium and the Hami Road cremation site. The available figures clearly established that they could only cremate 600–800 bodies a month. The Bureau of Public Health did not have the capacity to dispose of the stored coffins by cremation.110 The Funeral Business Trade Association steadfastly opposed cremation, except for exposed bodies in which its members had no economic interest. It even sought to challenge the authorities on legal grounds since there was

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no legal disposition that allowed the municipal government to seize the stored coffins and take them to the crematorium.111 In spring 1947, when the Bureau of Public Health threatened to cremate the unclaimed wartimestored coffins, the funeral companies mobilized public opinion to oppose the decision. The Municipal Senate eventually sided with the FBTA and against the Bureau of Public Health by requiring that the relatives be informed before removing coffins for cremation.112 It also stated that the decision to cremation should be left to the people. The municipal authorities could not impose this solution. The Municipal Senate, however, supported cremation for the abandoned corpses.113 Once again, cremation appeared as the mode of disposal for the lowest social groups, for the discarded bodies in the street. These tactics failed to deter the municipality from pushing for a prompt solution. In April 1948, the municipal government announced it would seize and burn all the unclaimed coffins beginning on 1 May 1948. There was a genuine panic among the private funeral parlors and coffin repositories that finally realized they had run out of time.114 The Bureau of Public Health published an announcement in the press about 2,125 unclaimed coffins found in several funeral parlors that would soon be sent for cremation unless the concerned relatives reported to the funeral parlors to retrieve the coffins.115 This announcement confirmed that three years after the war the authorities had become more impatient and less flexible about coffins stored for periods that often exceeded ten years. The most crucial issue in supporting cremation, however, was the lack of suitable facilities. The municipal government could rely only on the Bubbling Well Crematorium with a capacity of three coffins per day.116 The more modern Japanese-built crematorium on West Baoxing Road was occupied by a military unit. It had come under the control of the Office for the Processing of Enemy Properties after 1945. The office had attributed the crematorium to the First Health Transportation Unit of the Joint Command, despite a protest by the Bureau of Public Health to turn over the crematorium to civilian use.117 In June 1947, almost two years after the takeover of the city from the Japanese, the Bureau of Public Health expressed its frustration at having only one crematorium in a context where the municipality advocated cremation. Eventually, the municipal government sent a request to the Executive Yuan for the transfer of the crematorium.118 The office grudgingly gave its assent to the transfer, but it required the payment of 186.5 million yuan as compensation.119 Once again, the Shanghai Municipal Government sought the direct intervention of the central government, with the support of the Municipal Senate, to obtain the release of the crematorium.120 The central government gave its assent and withdrew the right to use the premises of the crematorium for military purposes.121 The hopes placed in a rapid takeover, however, proved

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short-lived. On its first visit to assess the situation, the Bureau of Public Health observed that a new military unit had moved in and was delaying evacuation. Worse, the crematorium was being dilapidated by the occupying troops. All the properties in the buildings had disappeared.122 It took a whole year of arm wrestling with the military to get the Xibaoxing Crematorium back on.123 In-between, the Bureau of Public Health had to use a cremation site with primitive installations on Hami Road. The Japanese had established the site during the war, probably to cremate the exposed corpses found in the areas under their occupation. The bureau continued to use it to cremate exposed bodies and damaged coffins.124 This was not without some concern among the population. In June 1946, the manager of a coffee shop located on Hami Road, opposite the cremation site, complained with the SPBC about the bad smells and the broken fence. Stray dogs roamed in the place and picked up the bones left over.125 In September, local residents protested against its use in a densely populated area. They contested its lack of appropriate installations and the use of oil “that made people vomit.” Crematoriums used scientific methods in foreign countries.126 Popular protest notwithstanding, the Bureau of Public Health continued to use the Hami site, even if its internal memoranda stated that the Hami site would be discontinued as soon as the Xibaoxing Crematorium became operational again. In August 1948, the Zhongyang Ribao published the letter of a reader protesting the deplorable use of open-air cremation, which highlighted the backwardness of China.127 By that time, the Bureau of Public Health had ordered the termination of the Hami site.128 Even if occasionally there were letters from readers in support of cremation, there was no genuine and sustained effort by the authorities to promote cremation.129 The Bureau of Public Health emphasized the low cost of cremation (200,000 yuan) to induce people to adopt this method, although it was unable to simplify the procedure, which remained a stumbling block, especially for the poorer sections of the population.130 They could not afford to keep a body at home for several days or have it placed in a funeral parlor.131 Nevertheless, the number of cremations followed an ascending curve. Economic pressure led some people to choose cremation as a more economic burial option.132 In 1949, a total of 488 Chinese and 43 foreigners chose cremation versus 910 and 54 earth burials in municipal cemeteries respectively.133 Of course, these figures do not include the vast majority of burials in private cemeteries. Yet, compared with the figures of the late 1930s, this was a significant progression. The unstable economic situation that prevailed at the end of the civil war further eroded the capacity of the authorities to sustain the use of cremation. In December 1948, the municipal government could not even finance the purchase of

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combustibles for the Xibaoxing Road crematorium. For the two months of September and October, the Bureau of Public Health managed to purchase only seven loads (dan) of firewood instead of the 357 loads the crematorium required.134 In November 1949, when the authorities started to actively encourage cremation, the capacity of the crematorium was clearly insufficient: at 10 coffins per day or 3,650 per year, cremation was not an alternative to burial.

The Official Push for Cremation after 1949 The People’s Government inherited both the limited installations and the cumbersome procedure established by the previous municipal administration. Although, like its predecessor, it wanted to promote cremation as an alternative to burials, this could only be achieved with increased capacities and a simplification of the application procedure. The new administration realized the necessity for reform almost as soon as it took over from the Nationalist administration, but it failed to take the appropriate measures until very late.135 In February 1952, the People’s Government adopted its first regulation on cremation, which however only defined the conditions under which crematoriums were required to operate. Its dispositions basically followed those of the previous administration.136 It was easier to adopt the principle of cremation than to turn it into social reality. Through a combination of propaganda and pressure, the People’s Government forced the hand of most organizations to acquiesce to cremation. The Federation of Guilds, Gongsuo and Charity Cemeteries, which the new authorities established to supervise, control, and eventually disband the native-place associations, concurred in its minutes in 1950 that cremation was the best way to save land, although it also added that people were not yet ready for it. As a temporary measure, the official policy was to concentrate cemeteries in certain areas and to reduce the number of private cemeteries (see Chapter 4).137 This was part of a more general move to regulate all the private institutions that managed death. At the end of 1951, the Office of Funeral Management (Binzang Guanlisuo) of the Bureau of Public Health published notices in the press to promote the Xibaoxing Crematorium, with little success.138 The authorities proceeded with utmost caution. All internal documents mentioned how this remained a sensitive issue among the population. Even when Vice-Mayor Liu Jiping suggested adopting cremation as a general policy in October 1953, the official instruction warned against excessive speed.139 In fact, all figures point to a low level of adoption of cremation. There were only 949 cremations in 1950, 3,104 in 1951, and 5,474 in January–September 1952. Progress

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was undeniable, but it paled with the number of burials and the cremation of exposed bodies. For the same period, the Bureau of Public Health cremated respectively 18,468, 14,272, and 27,324 street bodies.140 Obviously, cremation remained the curse of the poor. The People’s Government remained keen on promoting cremation. In April 1954, it emphasized the need to limit burials and to promote cremation though widespread propaganda. It also introduced a much higher rate for graves to induce the population to choose cremation. Economically, there was hardly any incentive for families to choose cremation. The price of a grave site in the Dachang and First Municipal cemeteries were lower than the rates charged for cremation. These low rates (50,000 yuan) had been fixed to encourage people to bury the stored coffins after 1950, but this was no longer useful and debased the policy in support of cremation (100,000 yuan in Xibaoxing, 200,000 in the Bubbling Well facility).141 In April 1954 the Bureau of Public Health proposed increasing the cost of graves and reducing the rate for cremation to its actual cost. It revised its guideline on grave applications to incorporate its proposals.142 The People’s Government was less enthusiastic about the proposed policy. Although it supported the idea of presenting cremation as economical and hygienic, it pointed out the need to educate the masses about the needs of national economic construction and modern urban construction.143 In an internal note, Wang Fang, an official of the Bureau of Civil Affairs, cautioned against the speedy enforcement of cremation as in the previous year, when a large campaign was launched for its promotion. His point was to avoid causing discontent in the population. He felt it was not advisable to rely on the rate policy to promote cremation and reduce the number of burials.144 Nevertheless, price increases continued to be used as a deterrent against burials as a revision of the rates confirmed in September 1954.145 Aside from economic incentives, the Office of Funeral Management initiated a policy of active propaganda with each mourning family, taking advantage of the time of funerals to advocate cremation. The office produced a small booklet about cremation (Huozang jieshao) in 200,000 copies.146 The following year, it printed another 150,000 copies. The booklet was distributed through police stations (registration of death), hospitals, neighborhood offices (jiedao banshichu), residents’ committees, funeral parlors, and charities. Movie theaters presented a slide show before films for a whole month, while large posters were placed at the major intersections in the city (People’s Square, Bund, etc.).147 Finally, the government realized that its own regulations contradicted its own policy and required a revision: for example, by the age of fifty, any widow or widower was required to reserve a burial site in a cemetery. The People’s Government observed that this was not rational and could only encourage burials. On

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23 June 1954, it finally canceled the compulsory inspection of the dead by an official from the local court. The families were only required to show the death certificate to proceed with cremation.148 Nevertheless, despite the emphasis on cremation, the People’s Government failed to make the required investment to modernize the existing facilities or establish new ones. In fact, it was not even able to maintain the existing crematoriums. In February 1952, the municipality still relied on three private facilities that operated nine furnaces, whereas the public crematoriums altogether had fifteen ovens, some not in operation. The private crematoriums also had a larger staff—forty-three employees—than the public crematoriums.149 In 1954, the People’s Government authorized the reconstruction of the Longhua Crematorium, while it also started the construction of two new facilities in the suburbs, the Xinlu and Lianxi crematoriums.150 By 1957, Shanghai had five crematoriums, one running on gas (Bubbling Well Crematorium) and four running on wood or coal.151 For reasons that were not explained in the document I had access to, the People’s Government even retracted its offer to take over the private Haihui Crematorium. The measure also applied to two private cemeteries, the Buddhist cemetery and the Xi’an Cemetery, both run by religious organizations.152 In fact, in the years that followed, even if an increasing number of people turned to cremation, the People’s Government made only limited investments in funeral facilities, especially in cremation facilities. Moreover, their operation suffered from the massive political upheavals that shook the city. The frenzy of production that seized the whole country during the Great Leap Forward had a direct impact on the operation of the funeral companies. The archives hold extraordinary documents that only Maoist China could have produced. Because of the obligation made to all units to become productive, reports discussed and documented in one neat narrative issues of cremation, pig raising, and the cultivation of vacant land in cemeteries. The report on the Longhua Crematorium was divided into three sections: business (yewu), raising pigs, and agricultural production.153 Only the section on business referred to regular funeral activities. Whether this was related to a general survey of units in the city or more particularly of the funeral companies, in February 1960, the Bureau of Public Health established a survey team (jiachazu) that visited and reported on crematoriums and their activities. The reports always started with a very positive assessment of the progress made by the funeral facilities, with a wealth of details on their achievements in production. Yet they usually also pointed out shortcomings that shed an incredible light on funeral practices under the Maoist regime. One can read through these reports the incredible disregard for the dead during the Great Leap Forward and the

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counterproductive impact of these erratic policies on the population, especially for cremation. The normal operation of the Longhua Crematorium, for instance, relied on only one-half its original staff. Four out of eight workers were assigned to production, namely pig raising and cultivation. In view of the extension of the administrative area that the crematorium serviced—Jinshan, Song jiang, and Qingpu came under the Shanghai municipality in 1959—the report extolled the extraordinary increase of work production (300 percent) of the workers. Despite the staff reduction, they processed 1,708 bodies, with peaks at 60 bodies a day. One can wonder how much consideration was given to the proper reception and processing of the dead in the facility. On the other hand, the Longhua Crematorium distinguished itself in the raising of pigs with a herd of 242 animals. The workers built fifty-five sheds to accommodate the pigs and turned the sixteen flower sheds into sheds for the sows to keep them separate with their piglets. The report praised one worker for taking care of 100 pigs and another one for handling 90 pigs between the two of them. For the New Year, the Longhua Crematorium supplied 11 pigs to the Shanghai population. In addition to pigs, the workers raised cattle and sheep. The workers also cultivated 11 mu of rice paddy, 9 mu of cabbage, and 8 mu of carrots (altogether 10 acres) with extraordinary levels of production.154 Yet there was a downside to this focus on production. The report pointed out the complete lack of propaganda to support cremation. The workers were said to consider that those who came to the crematorium or its cemetery were already in a coffin. Propaganda at this stage was not necessary. There were also remnants of “capitalist tendencies.” The staff of the crematorium applied rates above the officially determined prices for collecting a body, for the urns, and so on. Profit was made on the sale of flowers and plants. The finest example the report uncovered was the formidable capacity of the crematorium to dupe its customers. Between January and April 1959, it purchased 139,890 pounds of lime for 2,010 yuan but managed to sell 263,077 pounds for 6,646 yuan. It not only made money on nonexistent material, but it also made a 75 percent profit on each pound. There were other cases of abuse on prices and even one case of theft of all the belongings of a dead body. The staff also consumed some of its production without authorization. The report dutifully pointed out there was definitely a problem of political education. The cadres failed to supervise the workers, which led to a lack of discipline and even illegal actions. The situation in the other major crematorium on Xibaoxing Road was not very different.155 Its regular staff of four cadres and thirty-seven workers was cut down to three cadres and twenty-four workers due to

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reassignments to positions in Gansu, to xiafang (down to the village), and the elimination of counterrevolutionaries. Moreover, six workers worked outside raising pigs and cultivating land. The Office of Funeral Management had attributed wasteland in the Wanguo and Jiangyang cemeteries, which the workers cleared to plant vegetables. They also built sheds for the pigs with recycled materials. The report summarized the activity of the crematorium in 1959 in a single sentence: “this site cremated 5,661 [adult] bodies, 10,091 infant bodies, and raised twenty pigs, cultivated eighteen mu of agricultural land.” The Xibaoxing Crematorium received good marks for its work on propaganda and internal political life. Workers were said to seize each opportunity to promote cremation among onlookers each time they went to pick up a body. Nevertheless, some aspects left much to be desired. In the words of the report, the cadres and workers had not yet developed a sense of “serving the people” and considered cremation as a business. They charged varying rates for the same distance. When they picked up a body under the “free burial” program, they demanded payment of the 5-yuan fee for transportation or threatened to leave the body. The most interesting comment, however, was about the collection of infant bodies. The crematorium still used the former truck of the SPBC. When loading a body, not only did the tarpaulin that covered the collected bodies remain open, but also, since the tarpaulin was not large enough, one could see hands, feet, or heads protruding, a familiar complaint in the police archives of the former foreign settlements. The report noted, “this had a strong influence on the masses,” but no one cared despite repeated reprimands by the traffic police. Another report examined the case of the small Xinlu Crematorium located in Pudong in 1957.156 It was a small operation with only six workers that the survey team visited on 20 January 1960. The report found little to criticize. The staff worked earnestly, picking up bodies on a pedicab since their truck had broken down. They raised pigs and cultivated 2 mu of land with record-breaking results. The only negative points were a tendency to choose routes based on saving energy, not on responding to the needs of the grieving families. It could take a full day before a body was picked up. Yet this earnest thrift brought no clear profit since there was a lack of planning and haphazard management. The accountant had been arrested as a counterrevolutionary and left the crematorium without the required skills to hold the accounts. The cadres saw little interest in the official documents sent down by the Office of Funeral Management, which they were unable to retrieve. The number of cremations increased substantially after 1953, to reach about 50 percent of all deaths, but it fell again sharply, probably as a result of the disorganization of the Great Leap Forward. The largest share of

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cremation was done on two sites, the Longhua and Xibaoxing crematoriums. The Longhua Crematorium serviced the entire area south of the Suzhou River, while the Xibaoxing Crematorium addressed the needs of the districts, both rural and urban, north of the river. Up to 1957, there was also the Jing’ansi Crematorium, which must have serviced the urban districts, and the Haihui Crematorium, used by the Buddhist believers. In 1959 the Longhua Crematorium processed 1,708 coffins.157 In the same year, the Xibaoxing Crematorium handled a much higher number of bodies, with 5,661 adults and 10,091 infants and children. Basically, this represented about one-third of the total number of cremations—45,000—in the city.158 According to official statistics, cremation represented 25.8 percent of all deaths in 1954, 59.7 percent in 1957, and 60 percent in 1959, of which adults represented 20.4 percent. After October 1959, however, figures started to slide and dropped sharply in 1961. By 1963, cremation accounted for only 10 percent of all deaths.159 Even with the gradual disappearance of street bodies and decline of infant mortality in the 1960s, the sharp drop in cremations reflected a reversal of attitude in the population. At the end of 1963, the State Council made a general survey of cremation across the country to plan new crematoriums where necessary. The Shanghai municipality reported that it “actively promoted cremation and steadfastly repressed burials.”160 This was a rosy picture that failed to match reality. An internal January 1964 report indicated the number of burials and cremations were approximately equivalent. After ten years of official policy to encourage cremation and discourage burials, this could not be seen as a success. This report is an extremely rich source on the state of funeral facilities in Shanghai and the management of death by the People’s Government between 1950 and 1964. It highlights how limited the investments in actual facilities were. In fact, even in this report, the Bureau of Public Health stated that burials would continue and that the government needed to plan an extension of existing cemeteries. The report also pointed out that the government had failed to take the appropriate measures that would have encouraged cremation. The Bureau of Public Health admitted the existing facilities were fully inadequate. There were four locations in the urban districts: Xibaoxing, Jing’ansi, Longhua, and the private-run Haihui Crematorium. The Bureau of Public Health noted that both the Xibaoxing and Jing’ansi crematoriums were located in the heart of urban neighborhoods where cremation generated problems among the “masses” who feared for their health and for the general environment. The two crematoriums used the original furnaces built by the British and the Japanese decades before.161 At the Xibaoxing crematorium four of the twelve ovens were out of use. The remaining ovens frequently caused trouble and were highly inefficient.

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It took two to three hours to cremate a body.162 Yet the Bureau of Public Health concluded that there was no other option in the short term to continue using the two facilities, even if they should be closed in the future. The other public facility, the Longhua Crematorium, was built in 1954 to cremate infant and exposed bodies. During its early years, it did not provide service to the general population. After 1958, the workers remodeled the ovens to allow the cremation of individual bodies. Yet the Longhua Crematorium had nothing to attract the people. It had no hall to hold a ceremony, not even a room to receive the mourners. The Bureau of Public Health observed that this was not conducive to making cremation a suitable option. To make the two crematoriums more appealing to the population, the Bureau of Public Health proposed a large overhaul of both facilities, with the construction of new rooms and a hall at Longhua and in both the addition of two gas ovens.163 At the end of 1964, the People’s Government adopted again a proactive posture about cremation. It established a committee for the reform of funeral customs and the promotion of cremation (Yifeng Yisu Tuixing Huozang Gongzuo Weiyuanhui). It included representatives of the various municipal bureaus and branched out at all levels with local committees and cells throughout the city. The 1965 Qingming festival was the occasion of a whole month of propaganda in favor of cremation, including posters, ritual guidelines, forums, and visits to crematoriums. Party and government cadres were encouraged to sign up for cremation to set an example for the population at large. There was even a competition among funeral parlors to be the highest achiever and the best seller of cremation. The facilities for cremation were finally more or less in place with a total of six crematoriums in the city (Longhua, Xibaoxing, Datong) and the rural districts (Xinlu, Jiading, Chongming).164 The adoption of cremation, however, resulted mostly from political factors. During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards raided cemeteries as part of the “Destroy the Four Olds” movement and turned over the tombs, even those of protected families like Song Qingling. The attack on cemeteries caused a complete disruption of burials that left cremation as the only option to dispose of dead bodies. 165 As a result, Shanghai achieved the highest rate of cremation in the country, not because its people became convinced cremation was finally the best way to go, but because political violence robbed them of any alternative.

Conclusion Centuries of official sponsorship for earth burial left a deep imprint on the collective mind of the Chinese. Cremation was not unknown or unheard

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of in China, but only for the specific case of Buddhist monks. Yet famous monasteries where such cremations took place were usually located in remote places. In Shanghai, cremation was not part of the tangible world or the collective imaginary that related the dead and the living in the city. It was a curse that only happened by accident, such as when a house or a coffin repository caught fire. The arrival of foreign populations with alternative modes of disposing of dead bodies failed to change the dominant view of the desirability of burial. The cremation as practiced by the Sikhs never became an object of interest, even if the Shenbao reported on cremation in India. The installation of the Bubbling Well Crematorium, probably the first modern crematorium in China, did not attract any particular attention. Its regular use by the Japanese settlers, who later felt the need to establish their own facility, did not result in any form of public discussion of cremation as an alternative method of processing dead bodies. In the absence of an official discourse that could have triggered a debate, no civic group took up the challenge, as in Great Britain, to promote cremation as part of a broader program of urban and social reform. Among the foreign communities that used cremation, there was no attempt to reach out. It was just a personal decision. The Shanghai Municipal Council was not in a position to play the role of a promoter of cremation. It had no reason to attempt to change social mores as the disposal of the dead among the Chinese raised more sensitive issues such as the storage of coffins in the city. For the Chinese Nationalist authorities, cremation came to be part of a more general policy about sanitary reform and public health. Yet cremation was not high on the political agenda as convincing people to bury their dead in modern cemeteries was a more pressing issue. Cremation did not come as an alternative respectable way of disposing of dead bodies. It came as a measure of expediency, to get rid of the decaying bodies left by fighting, then to dispose of the exposed bodies and coffins picked up in the street in a city where neither the living not the dead could leave the confines of the foreign settlements. Mass cremation was not performed in a regular crematorium. Coffins and bodies were piled on a pyre and left to burn until there remained only ashes. Whatever the care taken to perform rituals for the cremated bodies, all identity and individuality were lost in the process. Viewed from the perspective of the authorities, it was an efficient and safe method. From the perspective of the Chinese population, cremation could only be viewed as the curse of the poor, of the discarded bodies of infants and children. After the war, in part as a result of economic pressures, cremation began to acquire a different image, even if again it was a solution for those who could not afford the cost of a funeral and a burial. The Chinese municipality made an attempt to promote cremation and to convince the population

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advertisement by the Chang’an Coffin Shipping Company used the argument that the guilds could no longer take coffins. The company proposed its services to “serve society” to ship coffins from the Chinese-administered districts.155 Five merchants from Anhui established a new company that shipped coffins only to destinations in this province.156 In June 1940, the Taishan Coffin Shipping Company ran a large advertisement in the press to offer its services to Ningbo residents. The company claimed to have chartered a large boat that guaranteed the safety of the coffins. It extolled the cost of burial lots in Shanghai and the threat of cremation by the authorities to induce people to ship their coffins.157 In June 1942, the shipping department of the Guohua Funeral Parlor even proposed its service to the Bureau of Public Health, although the bureau did not handle the removal of coffins directly.158 The shipping companies appeared in three successive waves. As discussed above, the first one happened in the later part of the war after the retrocession of the foreign settlements. The conditions looked more stable and there was genuine pressure by the municipal government to start removing the stored coffins. By the summer of 1944, the Bureau of Public Health identified twenty-one shipping companies.159 The second wave took place during the civil war period. Eight more companies were established between 1945 and 1947. Only one, Zhuqingxiang Yunjiusuo, was identified as dating from 1930. The companies catered mostly to the private coffin repositories and funeral parlors and the smaller guilds. A few more companies appeared in 1950–1951, when the new Communist regime implemented a much stricter policy on the removal of all unclaimed coffins. Most of the transportation companies, however, disappeared in 1955 under the double impact of a market crunch and political reform.

Cleaning Up the “City of the Dead” The rise of a necropolis in the central areas of Shanghai—even the most peripheral coffin repositories were located within the railway line to the West—was a genuine concern to the successive local authorities. While most accepted the concept of a coffin repository, they viewed it as a temporary abode pending burial or shipping to the native place. Even if coffins had remained for several years in the past, the outflow of coffins was regular and caused no anxiety to the Chinese local officials. Even the Western authorities, despite their dislike, had come to terms with this practice. During the war, the Shanghai Municipal Council abstained from preventing the development of coffin repositories in its territory. Eventually, however, the accumulation of tens of thousands of coffins became a subject

9

The Management of Death under Socialism

The takeover of the city by the People’s Liberation Army in May 1949 marked the beginning of a process of transformation of all commercial and industrial companies in Shanghai. The funeral business companies represented a small specialized sector, yet one that had great significance in everyday life. Despite the adoption of new and more stringent regulations, it took several years for the new authorities to sort out the legacy of the previous period and to change the customs people adhered to when it came to death. The process of transformation followed several successive steps, first under the supervision of the Bureau of Public Health and then under the Bureau of Civil Affairs after the funeral companies had been thoroughly reorganized.1 A decisive factor in the process was the decision to keep the community organizations (guilds, charities) and the commercial funeral companies apart. The guilds and charities had been major actors in the management of death in the city, but their transformation also followed a very different path. The revision of regulations, however, was not an end in itself. The new authorities envisioned a more radical transformation of the whole funeral industry. From a commercial service that had thrived under the special conditions of war, including during the civil war period, the new regime planned to turn this activity into a form of community or public service. It was very critical of the profits made from people in need of facilities to dispose of the dead, especially when the quality of service did not match the price extracted from the bereaved families.2 Although the criticisms were unfair, the commercial funeral companies catered only to the needs of the upper middle classes and above. Most of the population relied on the guilds or charities to take care of the dead. With the planned demise of the guilds and the reorientation of the field of action of charities, the

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management of death would become the exclusive realm of the commercial companies, though under a thorough transformation. The CCP proceeded in the same way as for other institutions or commercial sectors. It established committees that would bring under their umbrella all the companies involved in funeral services. Yet it drew the line between the commercial ventures and the charity-based institutions. The modalities the CCP implemented in Shanghai followed the same pattern as in other cities, but with Shanghai the CCP also needed to adapt to the challenge of managing a large and complex metropolis.3 The CCP successfully enlisted the trade associations to implement its policy through means of ideological dominance, persuasion techniques, threat, and sheer coercion. The Funeral Business Trade Association (FBTA) became the privileged and knowledgeable instrument of political dominance and socialist transformation. The authorities implemented various measures to circumscribe the realm of private funeral companies, including the sale of government bonds and taxation to extract increasing resources and to force some of the companies into bankruptcy or reconversion. Eventually, the process of “socialist transformation” led to the complete elimination of the private sector in the management of death and a drastic reduction of the number of companies. The CCP sought to control the private funeral companies almost as soon as it took over the city. Although the initial measures (control of rates) followed in the steps of the previous administration, the CCP enforced them for good. One of its main concerns was to have a grip over who lived and died in the city. While the new authorities exhibited remarkable efficiency in conducting the process of progressive elimination of many companies and of placing the whole funeral industry under strict guidance, the socialist transformation resulted in a system riddled with inefficiency, mismanagement, and mistrust. The smooth and unopposed transformation as heralded in the press and even in the official documents of the FBTA was no more than a thin veneer cast over a process based on political pressure and coercion, the political elimination of managers, and the implementation of an economic organization based on administrative principles. The short but strong protest of the former managers of companies during the Hundred Flowers Movement made visible the powerful political machine that drove their companies into private-public joint management, then full socialization.

The Transformation of the Funeral Business Trade Association The FBTA was dissolved, as in 1945, and again re-created on a new basis after 1949. The commercial funeral companies included five sectors:

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of increasingly restrictive policies to deal with this unusual legacy and to return to the prewar situation. Nevertheless, due to persisting political and military instability, it took more than a decade to deal with this issue. What actually saved most of the guilds or commercial repositories from the drastic measures of the municipal administrations and enabled them to postpone the removal of coffins was political instability: there were three successive Chinese municipal administrations, two successive takeovers of the Shanghai Municipal Council (1941 and 1943), and a change of administration in the French Concession after 1943. Then again a new municipal administration took over the whole city in 1945 for a short four-year period. Whether private or run by guilds, the coffin repositories were aware that there was a good chance they could weather a temporary restriction or taxation and still be able to keep their coffins as long as they could draw or expect a profit for the private repositories or as long as they felt the general environment outside Shanghai was insecure for the guild repositories. The same concern for safety held true for the commercial coffin repositories, even if the decision to remove the coffins remained with the surviving family members. In the latter part of the war, the Chinese municipality made an earnest effort to encourage the removal of the stored coffins from their premises, yet with a limited success. There was a continued pressure by the Bureau of Public Health to force the hand of the guilds to remove or bury the unclaimed coffins, especially those where the premises had suffered from the war. In 1940, the Huzhou Guild tried to placate the Bureau of Public Health by arguing about the difficulty to locate the relatives and find transportation back to Huzhou. Eventually the guild gave in and buried all the remaining coffins in its Zhabei repository in the Puyi Cemetery in Dachang.160 The Yizhuang Gongsuo received similar instructions, but its more remote location allowed it to weather the pressure. In 1942, it was still resisting the evacuation if contact with the family proved impossible.161 In July 1941, the Hunan Guild announced in the press that 200 unclaimed coffins would soon be buried in the guild cemetery in Qingpu.162 The actual transfer and burial of the coffins took place in October, followed by a second shipment of 107 coffins in November. The guild established a register for those who would come later to retrieve the remains of their relatives.163 In February 1942, a health inspector reported that the Piaoshui Shuilu Gongsuo had a large number of overdue coffins in its 1,520-strong inventory.164 These examples are representative of the reluctance of the guilds to part with their coffins under the troubled conditions of the wartime period. The traffic of coffins increased in the latter part of the war, but it fell short of making a dent in the stock of coffins. In the twelve-month period

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as a sequel to the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the FBTA was required to root out rightists in positions of responsibility from its ranks. In its report to the Federation of Trade and Industry on 15 September 1958, the FBTA fully complied and claimed to have identified two people, Chen Zizhen (Leyuan Funeral Parlor), a regular member, and Chen Zhaoquan, a member of the executive group (zhuren weiyuan). Both were stripped of their positions in the FBTA.12 The FBTA served the same purpose and function as before, namely as the intermediate body between the People’s Government and the funeral companies. To a certain extent, the trade association also assumed the same responsibilities it was entrusted with under the Nationalist administration, for example, collecting data and raising taxes. There was a major difference, however, as under the Communist regime the authorities turned the FBTA into a compliant organization that no longer represented and defended the interests of its members. On the contrary, the authorities skillfully used the FBTA to achieve their goal of incremental transformation of the funeral industry. The People’s Government did not have the resources and competence to exercise direct control and make sure the funeral companies followed its injunctions or policies. Victory had come too soon to give the CCP a chance to recruit new cadres in sufficient numbers.13 There was no alternative to using the people in place in most organizations, but by making them accountable to the CCP—the arrest of a few members drove the point home—it succeeded in harnessing key organizations for its purpose.14 The FBTA became the strong arm of the government precisely because the trade association had a solid knowledge of how the funeral companies operated. The key to the successful implementation of the reform policy was simply to make those most knowledgeable about a given field—here the funeral industry—the actors in charge of its transformation. The decisive key element of official policy was to keep a tight control on the FBTA and to co-opt into its governing body leaders who were willing to go along with the tide. The trade association was under the dual supervision of the Shanghai Federation of Trade and Industry and the Bureau of Public Health, especially its Office of Funeral Management (Weishengju Binyi Guanlisuo). As time went by, the FBTA rewrote its history and couched it in the new political jargon of the regime, even if this contradicted its actual experience. Thus, in a 1954 report, it argued that before the war funeral practices and institutions were basically in the hands of the guilds. The few existing private companies were beyond the means of ordinary residents. Even cemeteries, those of a commercial nature, were linked to the arrival of Westerners. Private funeral parlors and coffin repositories emerged during the war when the number of deaths increased dramatically and left the

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common people with no alternative but to perform postmortem service in the back alleys. Interestingly, this is word for word what the FBTA had written in its correspondence with the Nationalist administration when it battled against the removal of stored coffins and the threat of cremation. According to the trade association, “some people” started establishing “economic” (jingji) funeral parlors and coffin repositories to provide convenient and affordable service to the bereaved families.15 The FBTA painted a rosy picture of selfless merchants keen on helping out the common people of Shanghai, whereas this had been mostly a commercial development. The FBTA incorporated the standard political language about the “feudal thoughts” that encumbered people’s minds, in part due to the existence of “feudal institutions” such as the guilds. It was a cheap shot against a long-time competitor.16 In the immediate aftermath of the Communist takeover, the FBTA expanded. On the one hand, the People’s Government made it compulsory, and effective, for all funeral companies to join the trade association (see Table 9.1). On the other hand, the FBTA included a whole new sector with the inclusion of the private cemeteries, especially with the rise of new cemeteries after 1950, both within and outside the Shanghai municipality. Thereafter, the FBTA was organized into five sections—funeral parlors, coffin repositories, coffin shipping companies, cemeteries, and crematoriums—that met separately as need arose to address specific topics. The increase in the number of companies, however, masked a steady decline. The workforce involved in the funeral industry shrank from more than 800 people in 1950 to fewer than 500 three years later. Management and staff respectively totaled 65 and 422 people.17 This was the result of a natural process of attrition with the continued and inevitable loss of business that resulted both from more stringent regulations on the handling of coffins and, more fundamentally, from the return to a pattern of burying table 9.1. Membership and income of the funeral industry (1949–1955)

Year 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955

Coffin Funeral Coffin shipping Members Workforce parlors repositories Cemeteries companies Crematoriums 40 55 60 50 53 50 45

800 487 411 408 230

15 10 11

3 4

28 27 28

8 8

2 2 2

Total income (yuan) 12.7 billion 18.1 billion 15.1 billion 17.8 billion

Source: 1949–1953, Report, FBTA, 13 April 1954, S440-4-2; 1954, Report, FBTA, 12 August 1954, S440-4-2; Annual report, FBTA, 1954, S440-4-2-18; Work report, FBTA, July 1955, S440-4-21; Minutes, FBTA, 24 December 1955, S440-4-8, SMA.

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or shipping the coffins outside the city shortly after death. The Anle Company, for example, closed down its three operations—funeral parlor, coffin repository, and cemetery—in September 1950. It turned over its properties to the municipal government.18 Moreover, the membership of the FBTA shrank further as members closed down or came under state ownership.19 In December 1952, the Bureau of Public Health enacted a new version of its regulations on coffin repositories with new stricter rules. It not only banned them from the city area but also required them to relocate to one of the cemetery zones defined by the municipality. There were three areas: Dachang (Miaohang), Pusong (Gaogenglang), and Pudong (Zhangjiazhai). The second major constraint was the duration of storage. It was strictly limited to one year. Beyond this deadline, if nobody claimed the coffin, it had to be cremated within a month. Coffin repositories had to get prior approval from the Bureau of Public Health for all new admissions.20 The coffin repositories were phased out. The People’s Government was reluctant to maintain facilities that had resulted in a huge inventory of unclaimed coffins during the war.21 In view of the persisting custom of repatriation for burial among the population, it allowed only a small number of coffin repositories to stay in business, provided they were located in the outskirts of the city, but basically with the return to a stable situation across the country the exceptional situation that had nurtured the rise of commercial coffin repositories no longer existed. The coffin storage business quickly came to a halt. In August 1954, there remained only three private repositories.22 The funeral companies met with increasing financial difficulties, which led many to default on paying their membership fees. The FBTA tried to accommodate those in real difficulties, but nonetheless its accounts dipped into the red as the flow of income began to dry up. In July 1955, after the coffin shipping companies closed, twenty-five companies remained on the register of the trade association.23 In December, the FBTA received successive letters from several companies that requested waiving their membership fees. Four cemeteries (Zhongguo, Xianle, Guanyu, Tonghai) and one crematorium (Haihui) were in arrears of seven to twenty-one months. The Liyuan and Hunan funeral parlors had not paid for the previous twelve months. The three remaining coffin repositories (Hongqiao, Fu’an, Tonghai) had debts running from eight to forty months. The FBTA had no alternative but to write off their fees, even if it asked them to resume payment from December 1955.24 The trade association’s budget fell short of its projected income by one-half. The most direct consequence was a reduction of its staff.25 The FBTA was more and more an empty shell that would soon face its complete demise. The decline of the trade association is perceptible even in the documentary trail it left behind. Whereas its minutes had been kept rigorously, with

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a full transcription from the original verbatim notes, from the end of 1955 to 1957 only the original notes remained. If the minutes do not always make for an easy read for the historian, the notes taken in the course of discussion are a real challenge to the eye. In July 1956, when the various funeral parlors merged and left a very small group of companies under joint management, the FBTA lost a significant chunk of its membership. When the private cemeteries became municipal cemeteries, the main remaining component of the trade association was written off. 26 From this point it is safe to assume that the FBTA lost its last members and simply faded away.27 It had served the purpose of the CCP and was no longer needed.

The Demise of Guilds and Charities The same process of supervision and attrition applied to the charity-based organizations. Until the end of 1950, according to an official survey, eighty-two charities, including cemeteries, and forty-one guilds were active in the city. Each operated separately, which the new authorities viewed as a dispersal of resources. In the first six months of 1950, these organizations had distributed relief to 167,890 people. In the specific field of funeral services, they had contributed 1,357 free coffins and 839 free shipments of coffins. They had also collected a total of 16,073 exposed corpses in the street. The leaders of all these institutions were required to study materials prepared by the CCP and to examine how they could improve their action. Eventually, according to the same report, they realized that the nature of relief work in New China had changed. It was much more efficient to join forces and establish a joint organization.28 The new regime grouped the guilds (huiguan), the corporations (gongsuo), and the charity cemeteries (shanzhuang) under one organization, the Federation of Corporations, Guilds, and Cemeteries (Gongsuo Huiguan Shanzhuang Lianhehui).29 It also established another committee to supervise three charities, one of which, the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery, was a major actor in the collection of exposed corpses. It is not clear why the Tongren Fuyuantang was not included in this committee or in the Federation of Corporations, Guilds, and Cemeteries. The committee was placed under the supervision of the Federation of Trade Unions.30 All the other charities came under the Chinese People’s Relief Association (Shanghai Renjiu Fenhui).31 A review of the minutes of the Federation of Corporations, Guilds, and Cemeteries for 1951 identified only thirty-seven organizations: twenty-seven guilds (huiguan or gongsuo), seven guild charity cemeteries, and three guildbased charities (see Table 9.2).32 This count, however, reflects the number

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Guilds

Guilds

Guilds

Cemeteries and charities

Zhe-Shao Huiguan Yongxitang Sanshan Guoju Huiguan Chaozhou Huiguan Sanshan Funing Huiguan Dongting Dongshan Huiguan Huai’an Huiguan Taizhou Huiguan

Shandong Huiguan Yanping Huiguan Xing’an Huiguan Piaoshui Huiguan Huining Huiguan Siming Gongsuo Yangzhou Gongsuo Guang-Zhao Gongsuo Zhening Hongbang Muye Gongsuo

Dinghai Shanchang Gongsuo Xijin Gongsuo Hubei Huiguan Jiangning Gongsuo Pingjiang Gongsuo Jianghuai Gongsuo Huaiyang Gongsuo Doumi Gongsuo Jingjiang Gongsuo Jingyin Gongsuo

Minqiao Shanzhuang Chaohui Shanzhuang Wanbei Shanzhuang Wushan Guoju Hong kou Shanzhuang Xima Shanzhuang Xi’an Shanzhuang Yanxu Shanzhuang Yiji Shanhui Dapuheng Shanhui Yihai Shanhui

Source: Minutes, 10 February 1951–20 June 1952, Q115-22-40, SMA.

of guilds that remained involved in providing funeral services to their communities. The basic policy of the People’s Government was to eliminate the involvement of guilds and charities in the management of death. It was part of a broader strategy that aimed at stifling organizations that represented the potential nexus of power and symbolized a type of parochial solidarity that the new authorities planned to eradicate. The guilds were reduced to merely charity organizations. Their prerogatives and functions as associations that regulated trade, handled conflicts, and negotiated taxes and other matters with the authorities were wiped away. Of course, their role as political bodies, which made them the prime movers in local politics in the Republican era, all but disappeared. The chart the newly founded federation adopted in July 1950 made it explicit that its main purpose was charity work in general, although it listed more specifically five areas, for example, the supply of free coffins, the shipping of coffins, and burials. The federation would be funded by contributions from the guild members.33 The process was repeated with the regular charity organizations, although it was more uneven than with the funeral companies. The Shanghai branch of the Chinese People’s Relief Association incorporated forty-one charity cemeteries and eighty-one charity organizations. Most of the meetings failed to bring together the whole membership. The minutes of the meetings show how the regime operated, with the Shanghai branch serving as a drive belt for the instructions coming from the authorities. Another standard trope of the regime was to place the former charity associations and guilds in the position of “things of the past.” The new regime emphasized the unorganized character of their action, hence a lack of efficiency. In the early phase of the takeover, some organizations failed to send in

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table 9.2. Members of the Federation of Corporations, Guilds, and Cemeteries in 1951

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their report. Nevertheless, in view of the total number, the return was quite impressive. By June 1951, thirty-six charity cemeteries and fifty-one associations had turned in their report.34 This confirms how fast and how systematic the new power managed to invest the various forms of social organization and tame them to its priorities. The government also enforced a radical tax policy on native-place associations with the clear objective of undermining their capacity to sustain their activities. Its main tool was the land tax.35 Since the native-place associations often owned land and buildings in the city that served mostly to fund their operations through the revenues that accrued from rentals, they were ideal targets for the new fiscal policy. With very few exceptions, the previous municipal administration recognized their role as nonprofit organizations and exempted them from commercial and land taxes. The Communist Party held the exact opposite view. The native-place associations represented a form of social organization beyond the reach of the party. The more influential native-place associations, such as the Ningbo Guild or the Cantonese associations, had in the past successfully challenged both the foreign and Chinese local authorities. The new authorities were determined to get rid of them as fast as possible. The report of the GuangZhao Guild for March–May 1950 revealed that, while the guild garnered an income of 116,681,982 yuan from its rentals, the land tax skimmed 153,382,888 yuan. The guild could only go bankrupt.36 The once powerful guilds were reduced to mere appendages of the municipal services in the fields of education, health, and relief. The minutes of the Federation of Corporations, Guilds, and Cemeteries establish that the Ningbo Guild and the Guang-Zhao Guild lost most of their properties. In November 1952, they were still running a hospital, but even for this limited enterprise they had run out of resources and applied for government support. The authorities took over the management and the properties.37 By the end of 1953, the Federation of Corporations, Guilds, and Cemeteries had run its course. The individual members of the federation had stopped all activity by the summer of 1952, including relief work.38 On 22 September 1953, the executive committee decided to disband the federation and entrust all its documents and funds to the municipal government.39 The public sphere of charity and community services, in particular its central role in the management of death, had finally come to an end.

The Funeral Industry in the Claws of Reform The policy of the People’s Government in the funeral industry was to turn the commercial services into a form of public service. Before the socialist

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deadline for the removal of stored coffins at the end of the year but within ten days for the funeral parlors. The commercial repositories had to evacuate their coffins by all means, but no coffin above one year should remain on their premises. The bureau prohibited the funeral parlors and coffin repositories to accept new coffins.168 The municipal edicts, however, made little impression. The demands were unrealistic: the last count pushed the total number of stored coffins to 150,000.169 At the end of the year, the Bureau of Public Health issued a press release that extended the deadline to the end of March 1947.170 To encourage the removal of the stored coffins, the bureau explicitly threatened the funeral parlors that it would enforce the cremation of the coffins that remained after the deadline.171 The commercial funeral parlors and repositories were caught by surprise by the decision. The FBTA called an emergency meeting of its members to discuss how to respond to the municipal edict.172 The initial reaction of the FBTA was one of forceful opposition to the arbitrary cremation of the unclaimed coffins. It claimed that arbitrary cremation would cause a lot of disputes. Although it admitted cremation was a modern way, it argued the Chinese had a tradition of burial dating back thousands of years and that people’s minds could not change so rapidly.173 To support its case, the FBTA wrote to the Municipal Senate (Shicanyihui). The association was prepared to accept cremation in only three cases: bodies found in the street, bodies without an identified owner, and people willing to be cremated.174 To increase the pressure on the authorities, the FBTA convened a press conference on 22 December 1946 at the Xindu Music Hall to defend its position.175 Mostly, however, this was about keeping their stock of coffins as long as possible and preempting an arbitrary measure by the municipal government. The April deadline went by and most of the stored coffins remained in place. As the Shenbao noted, the issue was the lack of burial lots in cemeteries or cremation facilities (see Chapter 4).176 The Bureau of Public Health extended the deadline by six months.177 Yet both the Bureau of Public Health and the Bureau of Social Affairs (BAS) questioned the motives of the funeral companies. The BAS expressed a strong criticism of a funeral industry that had no clear guidelines on prices and used the stored coffins as a certificate of debt against impoverished families.178 In its reply, the FBTA admitted that the families in arrears represented about 60 percent of the total number of stored coffins. On the issue of rates, it defended the necessity of a price range that reflected the variety of services and the quality of premises (see Chapter 8). Any change of price was communicated in writing to the families, who had a delay of two weeks to withdraw their coffin if they did not agree with the new rate.179 In September, the Bureau of Public Health and the FBTA came to an agreement to reduce the

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The second and most lethal instrument was taxation. Yet the authorities could achieve their objective only if they managed to get a good grasp of the internal operations, revenue, and expenses of the private companies. Under the Nationalist administration, the FBTA had served as the main channel to fix price ranges and to assess and collect taxes. It continued to play this role, but the new administration was not satisfied with the existing setup, in which it basically depended on the efficiency of the FBTA and the good faith of the funeral companies. In the early years of the Communist regime, most companies still did their own tax reporting to the trade association. Most kept two different account books, one for official reporting, which served to hide revenue and assets, and one that served the internal management of the business.44 In May 1950, the FBTA held a general meeting of its members in the presence of a representative from the Federation of Trade and Industry. The delegate’s address focused on tax evasion, which the government hoped to eliminate through voluntary reports by the companies. The process was defined as “democratic assessment” (minzhu pingyi) of the tax base. If companies made mistakes, they would have the opportunity to correct them at a later stage. The discourse of the delegate was clearly tainted by the new vocabulary of the regime, from “correcting mistakes” to “criticism and self-criticism” for the funeral companies and to co-opt “enthusiastic and loyal advanced elements” into the FBTA.45 In a subsequent meeting, the chairman of the trade association, Mao Jing’an, endorsed the new tax system, arguing that the new government now served the people instead of cheating companies and ruining tax work. Therefore, it was the responsibility of each to support the government to build a new China and to liberate Taiwan.46 Yet this was just the beginning of a clever approach by the authorities. Once the first phase of tax reporting was completed, the municipal government added one more layer of control by introducing the employees into the tax assessment process.47 The move was designed to offset the temptation by the private companies to underreport their business turnover. Even if only a minority was still cheating, it was time to correct these mistakes, which would be done by “accounts examination teams” (chazhangdui) that included both management and employees.48 What is truly impressive in the approach the People’s Government implemented to acquire knowledge and to reform the economy is its extremely apt choice to have the job done by those most knowledgeable in the trade. Basically, the FBTA was entrusted with running a process based on its complete grasp of the issues and business practices but also of the tricks of the trade. It could side with its members and try to shield them from government interference, but in the new political context this could expose the FBTA and its

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leaders to serious backlash. The second ploy was to involve the staff under the guidance of their trade union in supervising the management of companies. This placed the managers under the threat of sanctions if they did not come clean with the government. In May 1953 the FBTA had 48 members under three different legal statuses: fourteen companies (gongsi), twenty partnerships (hehuo), and fourteen sole proprietorships (duzi). Altogether, 40 different people had invested in companies and partnerships that had 147 employees and 335 workers on their payroll. There were also 57 people who belonged to management and actually worked, as well as another 10 family members. Altogether, this represented a group of 559 people.49 This was of course a minor sector compared to the main industrial or trade sectors. The twentythree funeral parlors and coffin repositories represented a total capitalization of 3.95 billion yuan, while the twenty-three cemeteries and the two crematoriums owned an equal amount of capital at 3.58 billion yuan. The funeral parlors and coffin repositories, however, generated a much higher income—4.127 billion vs. 2.14 billion yuan—even if the level of profit was almost identical.50 The three largest funeral parlors, Anle, Xieqiao, and Guohua, represented 75 percent of the total capitalization of the funeral parlors and coffin repositories. By May 1953, seventeen companies had come under the new system of democratic assessment.51 Nevertheless, the Tax Bureau did not fail to observe persistent tax evasion or a lack of enthusiasm to comply with the demands of the administration.52 On 22 January 1955, the FBTA and the Tax Bureau called a general assembly to discuss the implementation of the new tax reporting system. The speeches made by the representatives of both the trade association and the Tax Bureau exhibited a strong political rhetoric, but the real issue at stake was still tax evasion. Before the general assembly, the FBTA and the Tax Bureau had held seven meetings to define a set of best practices for tax reporting. These meetings had revealed that some companies—coffin shipping companies—did not even bother to keep account books. Whether this was specific to the coffin shipping companies or a deliberate attempt to circumvent official control is hard to know.53 In July 1955, it introduced a new scheme (chucun) to be tried by four funeral companies by which the companies paid their income tax on a monthly basis.54 The government hoped this would put a stop to tax evasion, for which the Xieqiao Funeral Parlor had just been caught and fined.55 The system was primarily meant to ensure a regular income to state coffers throughout the year. In fact, some companies were in such financial difficulties that they were no longer capable of meeting their income tax, let alone their business tax.56 The control of prices and tax, however, was not the only mode of operation. Politics dictated more straightforward measures to press the

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government’s message to the companies. In 1952, the owner of the Shangtian Funeral Parlor, Qian Zongfan, was accused of collaboration with Japan and branded a traitor (hanjian).57 Qian’s activities had been questioned right after the war, but at that time the FBTA had defended him and rejected all the accusations.58 Qian was charged with organizing gambling in the Badlands area (Huxi) during the war. There was no indication as to when the funeral parlor had come under the watch of the authorities. Qian was dealt with according to the regulation on counterrevolutionaries (fan geming fanzui caichan banfa). On 9 September 1952, the Bureau of Public Health took over the premises and confiscated all the account books from 1940. The staff was reassigned to other work units.59 More generally, the funeral companies went through the Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns. Among the three largest funeral parlors in Shanghai, Guohua was labeled “law-abiding” (jiben shoufa hu), while Xieqiao and Anle both received a lesser grade as “half law-abiding, half violating the law” (banshou banwei fa hu).60 Altogether, the People’s Government collected 13.87 million yuan worth of fines from the funeral companies during the Five-anti Campaign.61 It was definitely an instrument in the hands of the party to bring compliance among the private companies and their managers.62

The Socialist Transformation of the Funeral Companies In 1955, the municipal government started increasing its pressure to move away from private management.63 Already, by June 1955, the Bureau of Public Health had initiated discussions about the issue of socialization, even if nothing concrete came out of the first round of meetings. Each section of the FBTA was involved separately in these discussions and followed a different agenda.64 The first signal that the municipal government was serious about its plans came with the abrupt transformation of the coffin shipping companies. At the end of June 1955, the Bureau of Public Health called a meeting of the companies to instruct them to close down on 1 July. The managers were taken aback, but there was no room for negotiation. It was a clear and nonnegotiable order. The closing down came under the wide encompassing notion of “transformation” (gaizao). The FBTA was not even consulted.65 The eight companies merged into a single unit, the Coffin Dispatching Station (Guanjiu Wanyunzhan) on 1 July 1955.66 In July 1955, the delegate of the Tax Bureau stated plainly before the FBTA that the realm of the free economy was shrinking while that of the state-run economy was expanding. In this context—he argued that state-run companies represented 39 percent of the tax on income (suodeshui)—the commercial companies needed to adjust and to improve their

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management—which meant producing under better planning—or they were bound to meet with difficulties that in turn would affect the national economy. The planned objective of transforming the whole system of production meant making every effort to mobilize all resources in a timely manner to support the state’s effort to reach the targets of its five-year plan. It was a top-down decision throughout the country.67 The delegate made plain that the funeral companies were not well prepared, not even in the Songshan District, where they had experimented with the new fiscal scheme (chucun).68 The transformation of the funeral companies from private to joint management (gong-si heying) was initiated precisely at this moment. It followed a top-to-bottom pattern, with most of the political and technical preparatory work done within the trade association. By the end of July all the companies had been brought into the process of “socialist reform” (shehuizhuyi gaizao).69 The FBTA held ten meetings to design the assessment of property and assets that would provide the basis for the distribution of company income among the original managers/owners or stakeholders and the newly transformed company and its staff.70 On 11 August 1955, the chairman, Chen Zhaoquan, stated unambiguously that “today’s report is about the socialist transformation of private capitalism, how to love the country and respect the law, how to receive and embrace transformation, how to accept the control of the working class.” The assessment would be based on the situation of the companies in the first seven months of the year.71 In early December 1955, the funeral companies met to discuss the next stage of transformation. They all expressed their support for state-private joint management and merging (hebing).72 The companies met by section, with the funeral parlors and coffin repositories on one side and the cemeteries and crematoriums on the other. The two sections met for two days and came up with full acceptance of government policy, without exception.73 Each and every company expressed its full support. The cemetery section left each member to send a letter to the FBTA to convey its decision to the Federation of Trade and Industry. The funeral parlors adopted the more formal mode of writing a joint letter to the People’s Government to apply for their transformation into state-private joint companies. The chair of the section committee even took the letter himself to the federation and to the Municipal Party Committee (Shiweihui).74 All the companies applied their seal to confirm their assent.75 The People’s Government established the Joint Management Work Committee (Heying Gongzuo Weiyuanhui) to implement the evaluation of the properties, instruments, and capital of the funeral companies. In fact, the original owners were required to prepare their own assessment, which they submitted to the trade association and then to the Joint Management Committee for examination.76 In the course

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of the process, all the funeral companies again sent a letter stating that they “enthusiastically looked forward to the prospect of becoming joint companies.”77 The following year saw an acceleration of the pace toward socialization even if the FBTA initially failed in implementing the expected measures. The process of property evaluation did not even start as planned. At the beginning of March 1956, the Federation of Trade and Industry expressed strong criticisms for the lack of progress and lack of preparation by the trade association. This spurred the FBTA into action with a full spate of dispositions to instigate the evaluation process, in particular the selection of the cadres that would oversee the evaluation work. One month after the official reprimand, the FBTA had shaped up and was prepared to complete the evaluation process within a month.78 Despite detailed prescriptions about the method for evaluation, it proved to be a daunting task, not the least because of the massive amount of collected data.79 Moreover, there was the sensitive issue of how to treat the former managerial group, the “capitalist side” (zifang) in political jargon. The CCP defined three criteria to reassign people to jobs, with no clear hierarchy. One was the actual need of companies for staff. Another was the application made by each individual. The third was the examination of the résumé of the person, not so much to assess professional skills as to gauge political views.80 The other potentially sticky point about the former managerial group was of course the mode of calculation of profit sharing, even if this was by and large framed by decisions from the State Council and municipal regulations.81 The process of evaluation and transformation of the funeral companies took virtually a whole year, from January 1956 to February 1957.82 The transformation of the private funeral companies entailed as much a change in management, from private to state-private joint management, as a radical restructuring of the whole industry. Generally, the Bureau of Public Health reduced the number of funeral companies drastically by merging the smaller ones with the larger companies.83 Hence Liyuan, Lianhe, Jin’an, Tonghai, Hongqiao, Hong’an, and Hunan all merged with Anle, Xieqiao, and Datong.84 In January 1956, the Liuhe Machine Factory took over the premises of the Dazhong Funeral Parlor.85 The manager of the Leyuan Funeral Parlor made the unusual proposal to turn its business into a chemical plant, but the Bureau of Civil Affairs denied the proposal on the grounds that Leyuan was one of the best parlors in town.86 Eventually, there remained only two municipal funeral parlors (Wanguo and Xijin) and five mixed-management funeral parlors (Leyuan, Anle, Guohua, Xieqiao, and Yong’an) in the city.87 Cemeteries followed a different path. There was no point in finding suitable public partners to create joint management companies. It was not feasible to merge cemeteries that were

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made up of various plots of land around the city even if management could be merged. The course of action the authorities followed was one of a straightforward municipalization. The private cemeteries all came under public management on 1 July 1956, except for the Buddhist Cemetery. The Office of Funeral Management and the Bureau of Religious Affairs were unable to agree on which bureau should be responsible.88 Eventually, most cemeteries were bound to become inactive once they were filled up, owing to the ban on acquiring more land to expand.89 At the end of the reform process, while the committee eventually brought all the companies under a unified management under the control of the Office of Funeral Management, it left several issues unresolved. The quality of service did not improve as expected from the transformation of the funeral companies. Although they dealt with an increased workload, the funeral companies had to mobilize during the various campaigns. In the case of the “four pest eradication,” the challenge was to fight rats, which called for moving and sorting out the stored empty coffins. Each funeral parlor dutifully reported to the FBTA about its course of action and the number of coffins moved in and out.90 In some cases, difficulties resulted from the disconnection that the grouping of the companies under different trade unions produced. One of the issues was that of the quality of coffins, which the funeral parlors obtained from the workshops that produced them. In June 1955, the Bureau of Public Health sent a stern warning to two companies for selling coffins as new that were in fact made out of old wood. The funeral parlors blamed the producing company, which belonged to the Trade Association for Funeral Products (Shouqi Tongye Gonghui).91 In August, the Bureau of Public Health organized a meeting of the involved parties, producers, wood company, and representatives of the two trade associations. They discussed the different standards that should apply when using old or fresh wood in the production of coffins, but eventually all parties agreed that it was best to discontinue the production of coffins with old wood altogether. Thereafter, producers would use only fresh wood from the northeast.92 Yet this did not solve all the issues between the funeral parlors and the coffin providers. The Hunan Funeral Parlor entered into a dispute with its coffin provider about issues of quality. The rift was serious enough for the Office of Funeral Management to call a general meeting of the two parties and the two trade associations.93 Apart from the issue of quality, some companies complained about being overcharged for the coffins they ordered.94 Another annoying issue remained—one that would have been irrelevant in the past—that of purchasing varnish for the finishing of the coffins. After the body was placed inside, the staff of the funeral parlors needed varnish to add polish to the part that had been sealed. As the

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production of varnish had come under national planning, the funeral parlors were denied access to varnish because they did not belong to the Trade Association for Funeral Products. In September 1955, two funeral parlors, Yong’an and Hunan, complained to the FBTA and asked for its mediation.95 The absurd situation resulted from the rigidity the planned economy and bureaucratic procedures introduced into the economic system. The merger also caused tensions within the newly formed companies. It was especially acute between Liyuan and Xieqiao. Liyuan was forced into a merger with a company that both the managers and the staff considered as inferior. The Liyuan Funeral Parlor had a longer history and was larger than the Xieqiao Funeral Parlor, at least before the process of reform started. There was clearly strong resentment between the two groups across “social classes” as the whole personnel of Liyuan had not accepted the conditions of the merger. As one report put it, “big ships carry the small ships” (da chuan dai xiao chuan), whereas the merger had produced the opposite. The latent rivalry was compounded by an actual problem of physical communication. Even though the two parlors were located side by side, no gate had been opened in the wall that separated them, which caused real inconvenience to the families of the dead. There was also a dispute resulting from the time lag between the social merger and the merger of the financial affairs of the funeral parlors.96 The Bureau of Civil Affairs pointed out the dispersal and lack of coordination between the various companies involved in funeral services. There was a gap between the needs of the funeral parlors and the production of funeral materials, especially coffins. There were problems between funeral parlors and cemeteries that hampered burials. Funeral parlors complained that sometimes it was not possible to get a vehicle to pick up a body on the same day. The Coffin Shipping Station did not keep up with the flow of coffins, which accumulated for weeks and months in the open air. Delays of three to five months were not uncommon.97 Worse, the Coffin Shipping Station refused to ship coffins that violated the regulations of the Office of Funeral Management. The report did not say explicitly what constituted the violation. It seems it was because the coffins came in too late and the Coffin Shipping Station might be fined if it shipped coffins beyond the deadline set by the Office of Funeral Management. The report dutifully mentioned “thought problems” (sixiang wenti) that needed rectification, but the gist of the argument highlighted the fact that funeral parlors could no longer intervene as the Office of Funeral Management was in charge of both managing and directing all funeral activity.98 Yet the production of funeral artifacts remained extremely decentralized. A 1956 report by the Trade Association for Funeral Products mentioned the existence of more than 400 shops specializing in providing coffins, shrouds, and so on. A few

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funeral companies produced their own funeral gear, but the majority purchased their necessities from these small shops and provided it to customers at a premium. The lack of uniformity and the various layers between producer and customers produced unnecessary commissions (from 30 to 40 percent) and high prices.99 The socialist transformation of funeral companies appeared to have been a fairly smooth process, despite the dysfunctional relationships between sectors as discussed above. Such a view, however, does not reflect the actual course of action that resulted from the use of blatant force and political coercion. The minutes of the period of socialist transformation only recorded and reflected all that happened in correct political terms, such as the “enthusiastic embrace of socialism” by the funeral companies in 1956. The Hundred Flowers Movement in the first half of 1957, however, unleashed a powerful wave of criticisms from many sectors of the population and empowered those who felt they were victims of government abuse to denounce their fate and claim redress. The minutes of the FBTA between February and May 1957 report on a succession of meetings during which the representatives of various funeral companies, especially the shipping companies, expressed serious criticisms of the process of socialization and its main agent, the Office of Funeral Management. One recurrent claim was being denied the right to establish an industrial branch similar to other commercial sectors. Obviously, this was a ploy by the authorities to erase the funeral industry as a business sector and turn it into a service within the socialized economy. One of the major criticisms, however, was the loss of jobs and income during and after the process of socialization. Shi Huimin, the manager of the Xianle Cemetery, lost all income during January–September 1956. The Office of Funeral Management resumed payment in October, but Shi never recovered his loss.100 Other people, however, were simply left behind. The former management of the Andong and Anyun shipping companies lost all positions after the takeover of the company.101 Two members of the management at the Huaiyang Shipping Company remained without a job after the forced closure of their company in 1954.102 Previous requests and even mediation by the FBTA itself had failed to mollify the authorities into assigning them to new positions. They and their families ended up in dire straits.103 At the Huadong Shipping Company, part of the management was retained but some were left behind for no explicit reason.104 Hu Yuxiang expressed strong grievances about the unfair treatment of former managers. The shipping companies had been closed down for more than two years, but many people, those from management, remained without a job and had to endure serious difficulties. He also questioned the compensation procedure and requested that all people be given jobs and that

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the “production materials”—the confiscated property—be reevaluated correctly.105 Obviously, the takeover of companies by the state had led to the exclusion of some members of company management. There is no way of knowing why some people were targeted, but it is reasonable to assume that political factors played a part in the attitude of the authorities. The lack of adequate compensation for the property transferred to the new socialized companies was also a major source of discontent. Shen Maozhen complained bitterly about the arbitrary confiscation of several property items in the name of “takeover” (jieban). He claimed not to have received any salary after August 1956. All his cash was transferred to the authorities, while his car, typewriter, and other items were all taken over. He had an outstanding debt from Huadong Shipping that was never repaid. Shen tried to obtain redress from the Office of Funeral Management, but in vain.106 Wang Zhongliang protested against the ban on the activity of the shipping companies, especially the arbitrary power of the Office of Funeral Management to impose fines. He also felt he had not received proper compensation, adding that he had not fully understood the implications of the takeover.107 Xue Wencai also denounced the unfair and unequal treatment of the shipping companies. For his own company, the authorities seized 1,000 yuan of cash, to be distributed among the workers, but they never received anything.108 Xie Baohua, manager of the Anle Funeral Parlor, received notification to close down immediately on 18 June 1956, without any consideration of the hundred coffins stored on its premises. It took six months to organize the evacuation.109 The Haihui Crematorium denounced the pressure and even actual threats from the Office of Funeral Management to force the crematorium to part with its temple hall. The office qualified its reluctance as a “thought problem.” The crematorium stalled and even wrote twice to Mao Zedong, in December 1956 and February 1957, to obtain the payment of a rent on its temple building.110 The former managers of shipping companies criticized the operation of the unified Coffin Shipping Station. There were long delays and 80 percent of the coffins lay outside on the roadside.111 Another critic pointed out the delays, but also the overloading of ships. In one case, a ship even capsized in the Huangpu River.112 There were of course accusations of “bureaucratization,” with criticisms that explicitly targeted the role of the Office of Funeral Management. One cemetery representative complained that, although some cemeteries applied for joint management, the office decided to process the funeral parlors and coffin repositories first. When the time for cemeteries came, despite their request to follow the Tianjin model, the Office of Funeral Management chose another method and took over the cemeteries without prior assessment. Then, after the takeover, the office returned some money, but compensation was erratic. Several members

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of the FBTA criticized the lack of proper accounting methods at various stages. The office adopted the simple method of examining revenue versus expenses, but this did not take into account other issues, for example, the welfare of workers, which led to lack of motivation and sloppy work, or the crucial issue of debts among the various companies. They also pointed out the disconnection between the funeral companies and producers of funeral apparel (shouqi shouyi tongye gonghui), which in turn caused problems of supply, pricing, and coordination. Altogether, the criticisms expressed by many were devastating and shed a strong light on how the owners and managers of funeral companies experienced the forced transformation of their activity and its transfer to the state sector. The most severe and direct expression of dissatisfaction came from Shen Maozhen, who plainly stated that “the government cheated us, we fell in a trap.”113 Hu Yuxiang stated that socialist transformation was implemented through orders and cheating, not according to policy. Owners were told they would keep their salary and benefits, but as soon as the joint company was established everything was cut by half.114 The window for criticism was wide open for a few months, but then, after mid-June 1957, there was a reversal of the tide. During the meeting of 17 June 1957, while the same topics came up for discussion (job assignment, properties, etc.), the language was more guarded than in the previous meetings. Four days later, the chairman placed the emphasis on “dealing correctly with the contradictions among the people,” even if previous topics cropped up in the discussion. Finally, on 24 June the chairman made it clear that the meeting should discuss new topics and stop arguing about the “old problem of ships.” Thereafter, the FBTA returned to a conventional and politically correct language.115

Conclusion When the Communist Party took control of Shanghai in 1949, its organs had a clear idea of what they planned to do about death in the city, even if they did not have an equally clear idea of how they would be able to achieve their goals. The People’s Government and its bureaus had a limited knowledge of the actual operation of the various actors involved in the management of death in the city. The new authorities had two major concerns. The first one was to make funeral services affordable to the majority of the population. The second and probably more important concern was the transformation of funeral organizations, both commercial and community ventures, along with a desire to change funeral customs and practices. Of course, this transformation itself was part of a broader scheme to tame

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the private sector and to steer it step by step toward a state-dominated economic structure. Faced with a complex and opaque system of commercial practices, the People’s Government made the choice to deal only with the organizations that up to then had represented the individual companies. In the case of the native-place associations and the charities where no such organization existed, it imposed the establishment of an overarching organization in the form of a federation. Relying on these intermediate structures to collect information, circulate edicts and regulations, and collect tax was not a novelty in itself. The guilds, corporations, and trade associations had historically played the dual role of relaying the directives of the government and representing the interests of their constituency—not just representing but also promoting and defending their members. After 1949, the rules of the game changed radically as the organizations that structured the funeral companies became the instrument through which the People’s Government gathered the information it needed to have a better grasp of their operations, to monitor their management, and to implement its own policies. The FBTA was made up of representatives of the funeral companies who were thoroughly knowledgeable of the particulars of the funeral industry. As members of the trade association, however, they were accountable to the People’s Government more than to their members. The authorities did not need to coerce them all into an active engagement in its policies. The general political climate, the arrest of a few selected members (especially during the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Campaign), the inclusion into compulsory political education, and the involvement of the staff through the trade unions—a skillful way to obtain a “private eye” into the business and accounts of the funeral companies—combined to give pause to any temptation to go against the tide. The companies were not without resources and actually tried to get around official control, especially concerning their accounts, even after they became joint management ventures and sometimes even after they came under state management. Yet, as the People’s Government accumulated data and knowledge while it set the political tone, the companies and their managers had no alternative but to enter the new frame defined by the CCP. Due to its domination of the FBTA and stricter regulations, the CCP was capable of stifling the services it wanted gone, such as the coffin repositories. From an emphasis on extracting resources to stabilizing the economy, then to ensure revenue to support its five-year plan, the CCP moved quite abruptly into implementing the private-public joint management policy, in part because the funeral industry represented a small sector, yet one that had a great significance in everyday life. By 1956, the small number of companies that remained after the mergers all had socialist work

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original landowner pressed them to vacate and to restore the premises. In several cases, the funeral parlors resisted, either by offering to renew the contract or simply by staying beyond the end of the contract. There were several cases of legal action by landowners against funeral companies that refused to return the rented premises after the contract had expired. The China Funeral Home (Zhongguo Binyiguan) went to court for two years in successive appeals in an attempt to retain the premises which it had been renting for fourteen years.195 The White Palace Funeral Parlor (Baigong Binyiguan) and the Anle Funeral Parlor (Anle Binyiguan) faced the same dilemma at the end of 1945 and 1946, respectively, although the White Palace Parlor was still occupying its rented premises in October 1947.196 In both cases, the funeral parlors argued they could not leave because of their large inventory of coffins, while the landowners sought the backup of the municipal regulations prohibiting coffin repositories in the urban districts. Another major reason for the lack of action by the families was plainly economic. The stored coffins represented a “capital” on which the funeral companies received an interest in the form of “rent.” This was not the term used, of course, but the “coffin storage fee” (jijiufei) amounted to a form of rental. As long as a coffin remained on its premises, a funeral company received a steady income from the families who owned the coffin. Moreover, the funeral companies also charged for other services, such as renting out a hall for ceremonies when the coffin entered or left the premises or for a ritual celebration in the course of its stay. Each time the coffin was moved around, the funeral companies also charged a labor fee (kangfei). With the war, many families defaulted on their payment for months, sometimes for years. The excruciating inflation of the postwar period further eroded the revenue of most urbanites. Even if they had little hope to recover their fees, the funeral companies held onto their stock of coffins because it gave them a bargaining leverage on the families. They were correct in their analysis as most people would go to great lengths to ensure the proper burial of their relatives. The Bureau of Public Health probably underestimated this issue before 1949. Basically, since cremation was not feasible, the sole rational option was the creation of burial grounds. Yet the postwar Bureau of Public Health was caught in its own contradictions. Its own policy denied access to the municipal cemeteries to the coffins that had been stored for more than six months. This excluded the whole inventory of wartime-stored coffins. Exceptions were made only for people engaged in fighting against the Japanese, either because they had died in fighting or because their families had left Shanghai to fight in the rear. The Bureau of Public Health classified individuals according to a hierarchy of active and passive involvement in the war: those who had lost their life during fighting, those whose direct

Conclusion

Shanghai was a killer. Shanghai was deadly. The terms may sound brutal, but there is no way around the stark reality of a high urban mortality in the late imperial and Republican period. This was not about the city being a murderous place. Even in the worst of times, murders represented a very small percentage of all crimes committed in Shanghai. This was not because of civil or military violence, even if a great number of lives were sacrificed in the main episodes of war in the mid-nineteenth century and again in 1932 and 1937, then with the final coda of 1949. This was about everyday life and death. The city lived off the blood of the migrants who came wave after wave to seek a job, perhaps with a dream of making a fortune. Scythe cut short their lives and hopes. The sustained high level of mortality reflected the poor conditions under which large segments of the population lived. Poverty meant shabby housing, poor hygiene, scarce food, deficient water supply, overcrowding, and very often inadequate or exhausting working conditions. Several infectious diseases, notably tuberculosis, ran rampant and eventually affected large circles of the population. Children paid the highest price, especially newborn and infants. They died in the thousands, even in the tens of thousands. Shanghai society was literally bleeding out massively from the loss of its children. Although the city harbored the best medical infrastructure in the country and afforded the well-off and emerging middle classes with suitable medical care, these services were beyond the means of the majority of the population. This was one of the most glaring paradoxes of Shanghai modernity. Below the veneer of splendor, way behind the neon lights, hordes of workers toiled and labored with little hope of surviving to old age. The city absorbed vast numbers of migrants who returned home in a coffin, when they could afford the expense or benefited from the support

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of their guild. The less privileged were buried in local charity or guild cemeteries. Death presented a daunting challenge to local society. Chinese culture placed a very strong emphasis on the proper disposal of the dead. Confucianism and popular religion defined an ideological framework that commanded due respect to the dead, out of filial piety and to ensure the passage of the soul into the netherworld. Not a single soul should be left behind unattended; literally, yi ge bu neng shao (Not One Less), to paraphrase Zhang Yimou’s movie title. To ensure all dead were accounted for, community organizations developed a wide range of funeral services. They substituted for the state, or, as in Europe, the church, in organizing the disposal of the dead. Their role was central up to 1949, even if commercial companies emerged to serve the segment of the population that could afford the price of their services. The native-place associations were the most formidable actors for most of the period under study. They catered only to their respective constituencies, but taken together they encompassed a considerable part of the population. Over time, the guilds and related organizations built an extensive infrastructure to manage death, from doling out planks or coffins to erecting huge coffin repositories and arranging the shipping of the coffins back to the native place. Since many sojourners fell through the net due to poverty, a whole spectrum of benevolent associations served as “public undertakers” for the paupers and destitute. At no time during the late imperial or Republican era was the state capable of taking over the tasks these civic organizations performed. Despite arguable loopholes in their treatment of the dead paupers, Shanghai was a livable city precisely because of these remarkable civic institutions. Funeral practices changed considerably during the century this study has examined. Economic growth and the emergence of middle classes with a certain level of income provided a basis for the establishment of commercial alternatives to the services of civic organizations. The new commercial ventures, especially funeral parlors, stepped into the realm previously monopolized by the numerous funeral shops. The funeral parlors provided a complete array of services, starting from picking up the body right after death, dressing it, and accompanying it to its final resting place. Up to 1937, the demand for such services was limited due to the objective competition by the guilds for their own members and by the funeral shops. The war created an environment that propelled funeral companies to the forefront. People died in huge numbers, not just because mortality increased, but because more people died in the confined space of the foreign settlements. Moreover, the termination of all communications during fighting, then the concern for the safety of shipping coffins upriver, encouraged families to keep their coffins in a secure location—the International Settlement

Conclusion

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became host to a huge “refugee coffin” population—until such time when they could travel again to the native place. Because the guilds could no longer take in the uninterrupted flow of coffins, commercial funeral companies efficiently established an entrenched position as central actors in the management of death. After 1949, they eventually came out of the reforms engineered by the new regime as the sole actors, albeit no longer as private ventures. The whole space around Shanghai was littered with unburied coffins. Yet it was not unusual to find unburied coffins in the city proper, on vacant land, mostly for lack of resources to arrange a funeral. Neither the imperial administration nor the modern municipal governments were able to put an end to this practice. Local residents started to complain when they spotted unburied coffins in their vicinity, a sign that people were becoming much less tolerant of this materialization of death around them. The rise of modern cemeteries, mostly as private enterprises, offered an alternative to both the individual tombs scattered all over the countryside and to repatriation to the native place. Foreigners established cemeteries for themselves, but these cemeteries failed to have an impact on burial practices in the urban space. The development of Chinese cemeteries drew its inspiration from Western cities, but it occurred only when the initiative of a few enterprising businessmen met social demand. Cemeteries had long been associated with the burial grounds of the benevolent societies, places where the remains of the poor were cast away under a shroud of anonymity and disgrace. The private cemeteries provided a funeral space where the individual was no longer lost, where some basic though reinvented tenets of belief in feng shui were played up, and where social hierarchy was reenacted through the choice of cemetery and position of the tomb. Far from being an equalizer, death reaffirmed and even magnified the social order. The acceptance of the cemetery as the major funeral space was a significant departure from the ideal, the individual grave on an individual plot of land, which officials combated after 1927, with little success and fewer concrete measures. In Shanghai, modern cemeteries allowed the Chinese to conciliate their deeply engrained attachment to full body burial with the idea that their final resting place laid in the city where they had settled. Funerals, however, more than the final resting place, were the main social divider. They were the most explicit statement of difference and distinction, the affirmation of social status and achievement. Few families could afford the expense of a sumptuous and lavish funeral, especially one on a scale like Sheng Xuanhuai’s, but these large public events marked the collective psyche and set a standard that reminded all residents of their place along the social ladder. Not every family was obsessed with putting up a show. The primary concern was about providing the deceased

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with the best possible funeral. Thousands of funeral processions traveled through the urban space every year in Shanghai. Most probably, they did not involve more than a few dozen participants. These processions hardly left any trace, textual or visual, precisely because they were just common occurrences, banal events that did not attract much attention. Nevertheless, they were decent, even honorable funerals that satisfied the filial obligations of the family toward the dead. Yet it was a world apart from entrusting the mortal remains to a benevolent association. Death definitely came with a price. From purchasing a coffin to calling on a funeral shop, then to a funeral parlor, to acquiring a burial lot in a cemetery, the cumulative price excluded the vast majority of the population. Put in other words, most Shanghai commoners could not even afford a basic funeral and burial. The modernizing political elites advocated cremation as an alternative, to save land, to preserve public health, and to reduce funeral expenses. Except under duress—the cremation of exposed children’s bodies was the primary example—the Shanghai shimin were not prepared to adopt a way of disposal that obliterated the integrity of the body and destroyed the link with the native soil. Moreover, the association of cremation with the disposal of the unclaimed remains of the poor impressed an inescapable social stigma. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was much more successful in changing funeral practices than any of its Chinese or foreign predecessors in the city. The administrators of the Shanghai Municipal Council and the French Municipal Council may have loathed the abhorrent custom of storing unburied coffins, but although they successfully pressed for the removal of cemeteries and guild repositories outside the limits of the settlements, they refrained from intervening in the way the Chinese disposed of their dead. In fact, they even abstained from providing any form of infrastructure that could help with handling the thousands of people who died every year in their territory. The Nationalist administrations were more intrusive, at least on paper. Yet the adoption of regulations had a certain impact on the management of death by the civic organizations and the commercial companies and, eventually, on the people at large. The major obstacle in enforcing the regulations was the disruption that war and the change of regimes in quick succession caused. The lack of stability ruined each new attempt to maintain the pace of reform. After the seizure of power by the CCP in 1949, the political and institutional landscape changed drastically. Within a very short time, the new authorities were able to establish a firm grip on the various sectors of activity by monitoring the professional associations or creating committees that brought together the various civic organizations. In the field of funeral services, the CCP cut sharply through the civic and commercial

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realm. The guilds and native-place associations were separated from the benevolent associations, while the funeral companies remained affiliated to their reformed trade association. The CCP did away with the guilds and native-place associations, thereby crushing an essential part of the funeral infrastructure. The charities were barred from any involvement in managing death, except for the Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery and the Tongren Fuyuantang, which remained apart as quasi-public undertakers for the poor, until they faded away in the late 1950s. All that remained were the commercial funeral companies, which the CCP brought under state management and trimmed down to a small number. The impact on funeral practices was drastic because the state fully controlled the apparatus that provided funeral services. Slowly but steadily, the CCP pushed toward the adoption of cremation despite strong social reluctance. Over a century, the management of death in the city underwent a profound transformation. The massive urbanization and growth of population involved the emergence of a succession of actors, thereby creating distinctive layers of funeral services. By and large, the process developed sui generis in response to social needs more than as a result of state action, with the exception of the post-1949 period. The disposal of the dead followed an equally transformative path from the complex rituals celebrated upon death, the elaborate funeral processions, and the deep concern for repatriating the body to the native place to the near-universal cremation of the body after the Cultural Revolution. The CCP implemented a complete overhaul of the infrastructure that sustained past funeral practices. There was also an undisputable improvement in the standard of living and life expectancy that brought the management of death in Shanghai into the mainstream of modern societies. The greater freedom that the Chinese have been enjoying in post-Mao China and the affluence economic development has created are challenging the gains of past reforms. Major cities such as Shanghai still remain under tight control, but in areas with strong religious traditions, which the Communist regime failed to erase, there is a revival of past funeral practices as well as the rise of funeral stockholding companies. Death has found a new (commercial) future in China.

Abbreviations Used in the Notes

Bureau de l’Hygiène Publique et de l’Assistance (Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance), French Municipal Council Caizhengju (Bureau of Finance 財政局) CZJ DASM Directeur administratif des services municipaux (executive director of municipal services), French Municipal Council Directeur général (general director), French Municipal Council DG FBTA Funeral Business Trade Association (Shanghai Shi Binzang Jijiu Yunzang Shangye Tongye Gonghui 上海市殯葬寄柩運髒商業同業工會) FMC French Municipal Council Gongwuju (Bureau of Public Works 工務局) GWJ JCJ Jingchaju (Bureau of Police 警察局), Shanghai Municipal Government MZJ Minzhengju (Bureau of Civil Affairs 民政局) PHD Public Health Department, Shanghai Municipal Council Public Works Department, Shanghai Municipal Council PWD RMZF Renmin Zhengfu (Shanghai People’s Municipal Government 上海市人民政府) SHJ Shehuiju (Bureau of Social Affairs 社會局), Shanghai Municipal Government Shanghai Municipal Archives SMA SMC Shanghai Municipal Council Shanghai Municipal Police, Shanghai Municipal Council SMP SPBC Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery (Pushan Shanzhuang 普善山莊) SVC Shanghai Volunteers Corps (International Settlement) SZF Shizhengfu (Shanghai Municipal Government 上海市政府) TDJ Tudiju (Bureau of Land 土地局) TRFYT Tongren Fuyuantang (同仁輔元堂) WSJ Weishengju (Bureau of Public Health 衛生局), Shanghai Municipal Government 











































BHPA

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introduction 1. Maurice Agulhon and Pierre Nora, Essais d’ego-histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1987); Pierre Nora, “L’ego-histoire est-elle possible?” Historein 3 (2001): 19–26; Luisa Passerini and Alexander Geppert, eds., European Ego-Histoires: Historiography and the Self, 1970–2000 (Athens: Nefeli, 2001). 2. Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh, History in Images: Pictures and Public Space in Modern China (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2012); Barbara Mittler, “Imagined Communities Divided: Reading Visual Regimes in Shanghai’s Newspaper Advertising (1860s–1910s),” in Visualising China, 1845–1965: Moving and Still Images in Historical Narratives, ed. Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 267–378. 3. Christian Henriot, “Beyond Glory: Civilians, Combatants, and Society during the Battle of Shanghai,” War and Society 31, no. 2 (2012): 106–35. 4. For two very different perspectives on political violence in Shanghai, see Harold R. Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961); Frederic E. Wakeman, The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime, 1937–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 5. Di Wang, Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space, Urban Commoners, and Local Politics, 1870–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 6. See Kerrie L. Macpherson, A Wilderness of Marshes: The Origins of Public Health in Shanghai, 1843–1893 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1987); Anne Glaise, “L’évolution sanitaire et médicale de la Concession française de Shanghai entre 1850 et 1950” (Ph.D. diss., Université Lumière Lyon 2, 2005); Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in TreatyPort China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Zwia Lipkin, Useless to the State: “Social Problems” and Social Engineering in Nationalist Nanjing, 1927–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006). 7. For the contemporary period, there are two extensive anthropological studies on death in an urban context, one for the PRC and one for Singapore. William R. Jankowiak, Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Chee Kiong Tong, Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004). For a fuller presentation of anthropological works, see Chapter 8. 8. Ruby Watson, “Remembering the Dead: Graves and Politics in Southeastern China,” in Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 203.

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9. Mechthild Leutner, Geburt, Heirat und Tod in Peking: Volkskultur und Elitekultur vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin: Reimer, 1989). 10. Nianqun Yang, “The Establishment of Modern Health Demonstration Zones and the Regulation of Life and Death in Early Republican Beijing,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, no. 22 (1 January 2004): 69–95; Zhao Baoai, “Jindai chengshi fazhan yu yizhong, bingshe wenti: Yi shanghai wei ge’an” [The problem of coffin repositories and charity cemeteries in the development of modern cities: The case of Shanghai], Changsha Minzheng Zhiye Jishu Xueyuan Xuebao 12, no. 1 (2005): 11–14. 11. Liu Shiji and Wen Zhitai, Zhongguo zangsu [Chinese funeral customs] (Hong Kong: Huaxue Yanjiushe, 1976); Luo Kaiyu, Zhongguo sangzang yu wenhua [Funerals and culture in China] (Haikou: Hainan Renmin Chubanshe, 1988); Xu Jijun and He Yun’ao, Zhongguo sangzang lisu [Chinese funeral rituals] (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Renmin Chubanshe, 1991); Zhang Jiefu, Zhongguo sangzang shi [A history of Chinese funerals] (Taipei: Wenjin Chubanshe, 1995); Xu Jijun, Zhongguo sangzang shi [A history of Chinese funerals] (Nanchang: Jiangxi Gaoxiao Chubanshe, 1998); Chen Huawen, Sangzangshi [A history of funerals] (Shanghai: Shanghai Wenyi Chubanshe, 1999); Chen Shujun and Chen Huawen, Minjian sangzang xisu [Popular funeral customs] (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Chubanshe, 2006); Yang Xiaoyong and Xu Jijun, Zhongguo binzang shi [A history of Chinese funerals] (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Chubanshe, 2008); Wu Meiling, Sangzang wenhua [Funeral culture] (Changchun: Jilin Wenshi Chubanshe, 2012). 12. Guo Yuhua, Si de kunrao yu sheng de zhizhuo: Zhongguo minjian sangzang yili yu chuantong shengsiguan [The trouble of death and persistence of life: Chinese funeral rituals and traditional views of life and death] (Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 1992). 13. Huo Wei and Huang Wei, Sichuan sangzang wenhua [The funeral culture of Sichuan] (Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin Chubanshe, 1992); He Bin, Jiang-Zhe hanzu sangzang wenhua [The funeral culture of the Han in Jiangsu and Zhejiang] (Beijing: Zhongyang Minzu Daxue Chubanshe, 1995); Xu Jijun, Changjiang liuyu de sangzang [Funerals in the Yangzi Valley] (Wuhan: Hubei Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 2004). 14. There is a short superficial study of Beijing, but most of the work examines the post-1949 period. Li Shaonan, Dangdai beijing sangzang shihua [An anecdotal history of funerals in contemporary Beijing] (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo Chubanshe, 2009). 15. Jan Jakob Maria de Groot, The Religious System of China (Leyden [Leiden]: E. J. Brill, 1892); Justus Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese: A Daguerreotype of Daily Life in China (London: S. Low, Son, and Marston, 1868). 16. Bryna Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation: Regional Networks and Identities in Shanghai, 1853–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); William T. Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984); William T. Rowe, Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796–1895 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989). 17. On this topic, one should also read Hiroyuki Hokari, “Kindai shanhai ni okeru itai shori mondai to shimei kosho—Dokyo girudo to Chugoku no

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toshika” [The management of human remains in modern Shanghai and the Siming Gongsuo—Native-place guilds and China’s urbanization], Shigaku Zasshi 103 (1994): 67–93; Hiroyuki Hokari, “Shinmatsu shanhai shime ko¯sho¯ no ‘unkan nettwaku’ no keisei: Kindai chu¯goku shakai ni okeru do¯kyo¯ ketsugo ni tsuite” [The formation of the “coffin sending network” of the Siming Gongsuo in late-Qing Shanghai: A study of native-place ties in modern China], Shakai-Keizai Shigaku 59, no. 6 (1994): 1–32. 18. Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974); Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death (New York: Knopf, 1981). 19. Michel Vovelle’s works stand out as major and path-breaking studies. Michel Vovelle, Piété baroque et déchristianisation en Provence au XVIIIe siècle: Les attitudes devant la mort d’après les clauses des testaments (Paris: Plon, 1973); Michel Vovelle, La mort et l’Occident: De 1300 à nos jours (Paris: Gallimard, 1983); Michel Vovelle, Mourir autrefois: Attitudes collectives devant la mort aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Gallimard, 1974). 20. For a review of French historiography, see Régis Bertrand, “L’histoire de la mort, de l’histoire des mentalités à l’histoire religieuse,” Revue d’Histoire de l’Église de France 86, no. 217 (2000): 551–59. On the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Anne Carol, Les médecins et la mort XIXe–XXe siècles (Paris: Aubier, 2004). 21. Madeleine Lassère, Villes et cimetières en France de l’ancien régime à nos jours: Le territoire des morts (Paris: Harmattan, 1997); Jacqueline Thibaut-Payen, Les morts, l’Église et l’État: Recherches d’histoire administrative sur la sépulture et les cimetières dans le ressort du parlement de Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fernand Lanore, 1977); Michel Vovelle et al., La ville des morts: Essai sur l’imaginaire urbain contemporain d’après les cimetières provençaux (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1983); Annette Becker, La guerre et la foi: De la mort la mémoire, 1914–1930 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994); Régis Bertrand, Anne Carol, and Jean-Noël Pelen, eds., Les narrations de la mort (Aix-en-Provence, France: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2005). 22. Steven Bassett, ed., Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600 (Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1992); Peter C. Jupp and Glennys Howarth, The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997); Craig Koslofsky, The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450–1700 (London: Macmillan, 2000); Eleanor Townsend, Death and Art: Europe 1200–1530 (London: V&A Publishing, 2009); Eva Åhrén, Death, Modernity, and the Body: Sweden 1870–1940 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009); Vanessa Harding, “Burial Choice and Burial Location in Later Medieval London,” in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600, ed. Steven Bassett (Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1992), 119–35; Vanessa Harding, The Dead and the Living in Paris and London, 1500–1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); John Landers, Death and the Metropolis: Studies in the Demographic History of London, 1670–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

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23. James Stevens Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death (Detroit: Partridge, 1972); John McManners, Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981); John Morley, Death, Heaven, and the Victorians (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971); Ralph A. Houlbrooke and Ruth Richardson, “Why Was Death So Big in Victorian England?” in Death, Ritual, and Bereavement, ed. Ralph A. Houlbrooke (London: Routledge, 1989), 105–17. 24. Mark Jenner, “Death, Decomposition and Dechristianisation? Public Health and Church Burial in Eighteenth-Century England,” English Historical Review 120, no. 487 (2005): 615–32; Jupp and Howarth, Changing Face of Death; Brian Parsons, Committed to the Cleansing Flame: The Development of Cremation in Nineteenth-Century England (Reading, UK: Spire, 2005); Julie Rugg, “The Origins and Progress of Cemetery Establishment in Britain,” in The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal, ed. Peter C. Jupp and Glennys Howarth (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), 105–19. 25. Thomas W. Laqueur, “Bodies, Death, and Pauper Funerals,” Representations 1, no. 1 (1983): 109–31; Paul S. Fritz, “The Undertaking Trade in England: Its Origins and Early Development, 1660–1830,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 28, no. 2 (1994): 241–53. 26. Diana Dixon, “The Two Faces of Death: Children’s Magazines and Their Treatment of Death in the Nineteenth Century,” in Death, Ritual, and Bereavement, ed. Ralph A. Houlbrooke (London: Routledge, 1989), 136–50; Patricia Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Julie-Marie Strange, Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 27. I owe a special thank you to Thomas Laqueur (University of California, Berkeley), who generously shared his published and unpublished papers with me. Thomas W. Laqueur, “The Places of the Dead in Modernity,” in The Age of Cultural Revolutions: Britain and France, 1750–1820, ed. Colin Jones and Dror Wahr man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 17–32; Thomas W. Laqueur, “Cemeteries, Religion, and the Culture of Capitalism,” in Revival and Religion since 1700: Essays for John Walsh, ed. Jane Garnett and H. C. G. Matthew (London: Hambledon, 1993), 183–200. 28. Linda Cooke Johnson, Shanghai: From Market Town to Treaty Port, 1074– 1858 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995). 29. Jean-Pierre Bardet, Rouen aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Les mutations d’un espace social (Paris: Société d’Édition d’Enseignement Supérieur, 1983); Landers, Death and the Metropolis; Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Fertig, 1973); Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987). 30. Raymond Lum, “Philanthropy and Public Welfare in Late Imperial China (Canton, Kwangtung, Charity)” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1985); Fuma Susumu, Chu¯goku zenkai zendo¯shi kenkyu¯ [A study of the history of benevolent associations in China] (Kyoto: Do¯ho¯sha Shuppan, 1997); Angela Ki Che Leung, “To Chasten Society: The Development of Widow Homes in the Qing, 1773–1911,”

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Late Imperial China 14, no. 2 (1993): 1–32; Angela Ki Che Leung, “Organized Medicine in Ming-Qing China: State and Private Medical Institutions in the Lower Yangzi Region,” Late Imperial China 8, no. 1 (1987): 134–66. 31. I am not aware of anything close to any form of police-directed disease control or daotai police system in Shanghai as in Fengtian in the last decade of the Qing. The 1912–1926 period is a near vacuum, while the archives of the Shanghai Municipal Government (1927–1937) remain untraceable, despite thirty years on the lookout after my own doctoral dissertation. On Fengtian, see Carol Benedict, “Policing the Sick: Plague and the Origins of State Medicine in Late Imperial China,” Late Imperial China 14, no. 2 (1993): 64–72. 32. Ruby Watson, “Preface,” Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), xiii. 33. Chris Townsend, Art and Death (London: Tauris, 2008), 10. 34. Townsend, Art and Death; Townsend, Death and Art. 35. On the related topic of forensics, see Daniel Asen, “Dead Bodies and Forensic Science: Cultures of Expertise in China, 1800–1949” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2012). 36. Dominique Kalifa, “Crime Scenes: Criminal Topography and Social Imaginary in Nineteenth-Century Paris,” French Historical Studies 27, no. 1 (2004): 175–94. 37. Hou Yanxing, Shanghai nüxing zisha wenti yanjiu (1927–1937) [A study of women’s suicide in Shanghai (1927–1937)] (Shanghai: Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe, 2008); Bryna Goodman, “The New Woman Commits Suicide: The Press, Cultural Memory and the New Republic,” Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 1 (2005): 67–101; Bryna Goodman, “The Vocational Woman and the Elusiveness of ‘Personhood’ in Early Republican China,” in Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 265–86; see also Wang Hequn, “Ershi shiji er sanshi niandai shanghai zisha wenti de shehui toushi” [The social perspective on the problem of suicide in Shanghai in the 1920s–1930s], Shixue Yuankan, no. 5 (2001): 74–79; Jing Jun and Luo Jinwen, “Jing-Hu qingnian nüxing zai minguo shiqi de zisha wenti” [The problem of suicide of women in Beijing and Shanghai in the Republican era], Qingnian Yanjiu 28, no. 4 (2011): 38–45; Liu Xiyuan, “Shilun 20 shiji ersanshi niandai shanghai de zisha yufang yu jiuji jizhi” [An essay on the mechanisms of suicide prevention and relief in 1930s Shanghai], Xinyang Shifan Xueyuan Xuebao 28, no. 4 (2008): 146–49.

 

 

 

chapter 1. scythe and the city 1. Shanghai Shi Tongjiju, Shanghai tongji nianjian 1999 [Shanghai statistical yearbook] (Beijing: Zhongguo Tongji Chubanshe, 1999), 369. 2. Zou Yiren, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian de yanjiu [Population change in old Shanghai] (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1980). 3. Personal interview, May 1985. See also “Zou Yiren (1908–1993),” Shanghai Kexue Zhi, http://www.shtong.gov.cn/node2/node2245/node74288/node74304/ node74318/userobject1ai89369.html.

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in the private and public cemeteries, only 15 percent of the stored coffins could be disposed of. This left no other option than to extend public cemeteries.223 The lack of genuine progress led the health officials to convene a joint meeting of the FBTA and its members on 17 October 1949 to discuss a new regulation (banfa) on the removal of coffins.224 Under official pressure, the FBTA accepted that poor people could retrieve their coffins free of charge with a certificate from a baojia headman. Between the summer of 1949 and July 1950, 38,000 coffins left the city. Nevertheless there remained 71,159 dead bodies in the various repositories. An incomplete survey recorded 17,089 coffins that had been stored for more ten years, 20,693 for more than five years, 4,390 of unclear period, and many in decay.225 The figures above did not include the coffins stored in the suburbs in temples, along canals, or even in lilong. There were an estimated 300,000 scattered coffins in the rural areas, 100,000 of which close to inhabited areas. For the 1950 Qingming festival, the local authorities carried out a campaign of burial and cremation of all unclaimed coffins (10,033). The following year, they launched a new drive to clean or rebury some 121,078 tombs.226 In early 1950, the Bureau of Public Health eventually decided to deal for good with the problem of stored coffins. In February, it published a “supplementary regulation” (buchong banfa) about the evacuation of stored coffins, followed by the “Rule on the Cleaning Up of Stored Coffins in the Urban Districts” (Shanghai shi qingchu shiqu jigui buchong banfa) on 22 May 1950.227 The new texts proposed to phase out the coffins in three stages (May–December 1950, January–March 1951, April–June 1951), with a minimum reduction of 10 percent each month. The coffin repositories that planned to continue their service had to relocate in the “cemetery areas” (gongmuqu) defined by the municipality (Pudong, Dachang, Pusong) and to evacuate all their coffins before April 1951. The regulation applied to the guilds as well, including the obligation to relocate from the urban area. The Municipal People’s Government was clearly intent on not just removing the stored coffins but also facilitating the removal of the coffins by the families by making this business much less profitable for the commercial repositories. The threat of such drastic measures as forced cremation or burial at the expense of the repositories must have motivated the private establishments. Altogether, 58,687 coffins left the city in 1951.228 Yet it did not lead to a complete cleanup in the guild repositories. By the end of March 1951, the Bean and Rice Trade Corporation (Doumiye Gongsuo) still had 407 coffins on its premises. The once powerful Siming Gongsuo was caught in the same quandary, but it faced a much heavier burden with 16,000 coffins

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12. “Shanghai shi li ge gongmu ji huozangchang guanli guize,” Shizhenghui, 23rd session, n.d. [1946–1948], S440-1-16-11, SMA. 13. “Shengming tongji zong baogao,” July 1950–June 1951 (1), B242-1-255-1, SMA. 14. Zou, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian. 15. Linda Cooke Johnson, Shanghai: From Market Town to Treaty Port, 1074– 1858 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 55, 120–21. 16. Ch. L. Maxime Durand-Fardel, La Chine et les conditions sanitaires des ports ouverts au commerce étranger (Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1877), 106. 17. Kerrie L. Macpherson, A Wilderness of Marshes: The Origins of Public Health in Shanghai, 1843–1893 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1987), 156; Johnson, Shanghai, 343–44. 18. Shanghai tebie shi gong’anju yewu baogao 1928–1929 [Report of the Public Security Bureau of the Special Municipality of Shanghai] (Shanghai: Shanghai Tebie Shi Gong’anju, 1928), n.p. 19. “Shanghai shi renkou chusheng lü siwang lü ji xing bili,” 1947, Q400-11537, SMA. 20. Zou, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian, 91. 21. Janet Y. Chen, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 206–10. 22. “Shengming tongji zong baogao,” July 1950–June 1951, 21, B242-1-255-1, SMA. 23. Shanghai tongji nianjian 1986, 61 (Shanghai tongji nianjian 1999, 369). In the 1986 yearbook, the population in the rural districts was given as 3.3 million, but as 799,800 in the statistical yearbooks after 1959. All population figures before 1959, including the urban districts, were revised substantially downward. 24. Roy Porter, London: A Social History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 205. 25. Ira Klein, “Urban Development and Death: Bombay City, 1870–1914,” Modern Asian Studies 20, no. 4 (1986): 725–54. 26. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes, 59. 27. Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Fertig, 1973), 325. 28. Annual Report, 1926, 6. 29. Zou, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian, 138. 30. Ibid., 136–38. 31. Ibid., 139; “Shanghai shi renkou chusheng lü siwang lü ji xing bili,” 1947, Q400-1-1537, SMA. 32. “Shanghai shi renkou chusheng ji siwang shu tongjibiao,” 1946–1949, B242-1-74-61, SMA. 33. Zou, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian, 139; “Pushan shanzhuang jianshi,” Pushan shanzhuang boyin mukuan tekan, 26 July 1947, Q1-12-1502, SMA. 34. Margaret Jones, “Tuberculosis, Housing and the Colonial State: Hong Kong, 1900–1950,” Modern Asian Studies 37, no. 3 (2003): 661. 35. “Cadavres trouvés au cours de la journée du [date],” U38-5-1262, SMA.

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36. Philippa Mein Smith and Lionel Frost, “Suburbia and Infant Death in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Adelaide,” Urban History 21, no. 2 (1994): 251–72. 37. Rachel Ginnis Fuchs, Poor and Pregnant in Paris: Strategies for Survival in the Nineteenth Century (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 172; Ann-Louise Shapiro, Housing the Poor of Paris, 1850–1902 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 81. 38. Anthony S. Wohl, Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 39. 39. Emily Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986). 40. Ling-ling Lien, “Leisure, Patriotism, and Identity: The Chinese Career Women’s Club in Wartime Shanghai,” in Creating Chinese Modernity: Knowledge and Everyday Life, 1900–1940, ed. Peter Zarrow (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 213–40; Lien Ling-ling, “‘Zhuiqiu duli’ huo ‘chongshang modeng’? Jindai shanghai nüdianzhiyuan de chuxian ji qi xingxiang suzao” [“Seeking independence” or ’“coveting modernity”? The emergence of women clerks and the formation of their images in modern Shanghai], Jindai Zhongguo Funüshi Yanjiu, no. 14 (2006): 1–50. 41. “Shanghai shi renkou chusheng lü siwang lü ji xing bili,” 1947, Q400-11537, SMA. 42. Zou, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian, 122–25. 43. In California in 1990, only 10 percent of the population died before the age of 34, while 53.4 percent died after 65. “Deaths by Age and Age-Specific Death Rates, 1990–2005, California,” http://www.cdph.ca.gov/data/statistics/Documents/ VSC-2005-0502.pdf. 44. If children are discounted, the mean age at death among foreigners varied between forty and forty-two years. For the 1924–1926 period, 567 individuals (40 percent) died before their twentieth birthday, while less than 0.9 percent passed the age of sixty-five. Yet there is a bias in that many foreigners chose to retire in their home country. Annual Report, 1921, 9; 1922, 12; 1923, 8; 1924, 9; 1925, 9; 1926, 9; 1927, 8; 1928, 8; 1929, 10; 1930, 9. 45. Zou, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian, 139. 46. “Shengming tongji zong baogao, July 1950–June 1951,” 1950–1952, B242-1-255-1, SMA. 47. Zhang, Shanghai weisheng zhi. 48. “Shanghai shi weishengju yi nian lai gongzuo zongbao,” 1949–1950, B2421-271, SMA. 49. “Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu weishengju guanyu shanghai shi san nian lai weisheng gongzuo zongjie,” n.d. [1951], B242-1-381, SMA. 50. Ibid. 51. Although it came at a much later period, this attention to pregnant women and infants was not unlike the related movement to reduce infant mortality in England at the turn of the century. Carol Dyhouse, “Working Mothers and Infant Mortality in England, 1895–1914,” in Biology, Medicine and Society 1840–1940, ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 73–98.

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52. In 1949, the health rooms received 185,000 workers, but 300,000 three years later. “Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu weishengju guanyu shanghai shi san nian lai weisheng gongzuo zongjie,” n.d. [1951], B242-1-381, SMA. 53. “Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu weishengju tianbao huadongqu shanghai shi 1951 nian weisheng shiye chengguo baogaobiao,” 1951, B242-1-250-1, SMA. 54. Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet and David O. White, Natural History of Infectious Disease (New York: Cambridge University Press Archive, 1972), 1. 55. Similar factors produced the same deleterious effects in other areas. Milton Lewis and Roy MacLeod, “A Workingman’s Paradise? Reflections on Urban Mortality in Colonial Australia 1860–1900,” Medical History 31, no. 4 (1987): 387–402. 56. Zou, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian, 95–96. 57. Ibid., 93. 58. Ibid., 90, 94. 59. David C. Goodman and Colin Chant, European Cities and Technology: Industrial to Post-industrial City (London: Routledge, 1999), 201. 60. Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes, 194; Shapiro, Housing the Poor of Paris, 9. 61. Theodore C. Bestor, Neighborhood Tokyo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 60. 62. Zou, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian, 93. 63. James Henderson, Memorials of James Henderson, M.D.—Medical Missionary to China (London: J. Nisbet, 1867), 145. 64. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes. 65. Charles B. Maybon and Jean Fredet, Histoire de la Concession française de Changhai (Paris: Plon, 1929), 287. 66. Durand-Fardel, Chine et les conditions sanitaires, 111. 67. Ibid., 231, 238. Storing coffins at home, pending their shipping to the home village, remained a practice the foreign authorities, albeit grudgingly, had to accept under strict regulation. In the French Concession, 97 percent of the 1,052 temporarily stored coffins in 1941 were placed in a funeral parlor. Only a handful remained in individual houses. “Rapport de fin d’année,” BHPA, 1941, U38-51277, SMA. 68. Conseil d’Administration Municipale de la Concession Française, Compte rendu de la gestion pour l’exercice 1923 (Shanghai: Imprimerie Municipale, 1924), 302 (hereafter cited as Rapport de gestion, [year]). 69. “Rapport de fin d’année,” BHPA, 1941, U38-5-1277, SMA. 70. The path-breaking work on this issue remains Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes. 71. Ibid., 132. Yet in the International Settlement the health officer became employed full time only in 1898. 72. Anne Glaise, “L’évolution sanitaire et médicale de la Concession française de Shanghai entre 1850 et 1950” (Ph.D. diss., Université Lumière Lyon 2, 2005). 73. Ibid., 198. 74. Jackson, “Managing Shanghai,” 210. 75. Ibid., n.p.

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76. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes, 56–57. 77. Ibid., 62–64. 78. The list included smallpox, cholera, typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, cerebrospinal fever (meningitis), tuberculosis, plague, dysentery, influenza, beriberi, measles, and hydrophobia. Hydrophobia was deleted after 1922, although it remained in the list for foreign residents. Annual Report, 1922, 14. 79. Annual Report, 1928, 13. 80. “Number of Deaths from Infectious Diseases,” U1-16-4879, SMA. 81. “Rapport de fin d’année,” BHPA, 1941, U38-5-1277, SMA. 82. Annual Report, 1926, 6. 83. Rapport de gestion, 1923, 302. 84. Rapport de gestion, 1941, 134. 85. Eric Hopkins, Childhood Transformed: Working-Class Children in Nineteenth-Century England (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1994), 113–14. 86. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes, 46. 87. Ibid., 28. 88. Durand-Fardel, Chine et les conditions sanitaires, 115. 89. Ibid., 164–65. 90. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes, 167. 91. Rapport de gestion, 1923, 302. 92. Rapport de gestion, 1941, 134. 93. “Rapport de fin d’année,” BHPA, 1941, U38-5-1277, SMA. 94. Ibid. 95. “Shanghai shi renkou chusheng ji siwang shu tongjibiao,” 1946–1949, B242-1-74-61, SMA. 96. “Shanghai shi jingchaju sanshiwu nian du tongji nianbao,” 1946, Y3-1-58, SMA. 97. In the source I used, the exact nature of the diseases included under infectious diseases was not indicated. Shanghai Shi Tongjiju, Shanghai shi guomin jingji he shehui fazhan lishi tongji ziliao (1949–2000) [Historical statistical materials on the social and economic development of Shanghai municipality] (Beijing: Zhongguo Tongji Chubanshe, 2001), 364. 98. Ibid. 99. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes, 40–41. 100. Ibid., chaps. 4 and 5. 101. There is a vast historical literature on cholera epidemics across the globe in the nineteenth century. Donald B. Cooper, “The New ‘Black Death’: Cholera in Brazil, 1855–1856,” Social Science History 10, no. 4 (1986): 467–88. 102. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes, 29; Stephanie True Peters, Cholera: Curse of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2004); Patrice Bourdelais and Jean-Yves Raulot, Une peur bleue: Histoire du choléra en France, 1832–1854 (Paris: Payot, 1987); Frank Martin Snowden, Naples in the Time of Cholera, 1884–1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987).

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103. North China Herald, 3 August 1850, 3. 104. North China Herald, 19 July 1862. 105. Joseph Edkins, “The Chinese Treatment of Cholera,” in Modern China: Thirty-One Short Essays on Subjects Which Illustrate the Present Condition of the Country (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1891), 39–40. 106. Henderson, Memorials of James Henderson, 147. 107. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes, 31. 108. Gazette Médicale de Paris 3, no. 21 (1866), 408. 109. Added to the absence of Chinese newspapers before 1872, the absence of state records makes it impossible to study the impact of cholera on the social fabric. Charles E. Rosenberg, “Cholera in Nineteenth-Century Europe: A Tool for Social and Economic Analysis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 8, no. 4 (1966): 452–63. 110. Durand-Fardel, Chine et les conditions sanitaires, 194, 195. 111. “Shanghai shi huoluan liuxing tongji,” 1902–1945, U1-16-4879, SMA; Kerrie Macpherson indicates forty-six invasions of cholera between 1821 and 1932, even if most were minor outbreaks. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes, 30. 112. Ruth Bjorklund, Cholera (New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2010), 11. 113. “Rapport sur la situation sanitaire dans la Concession pour la journée du 16 novembre 1937,” 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes; “Shanghai shi huoluan liuxing tongji,” 1902–1945, U1-16-4879, SMA. 114. “Rapport sur la situation sanitaire de la Concession pour la journée du 15 novembre 1937,” Yves Palud, 16 November 1937, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 115. “Situation sanitaire,” Yves Palud, 5 October 1937, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 116. “Rapport—Epidémie de cholera,” Yves Palud, 18 October 1937, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 117. Report, Yves Palud, director of the BHPA, 6 May 1938, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 118. China Press, 15 June 1938. 119. Letter, Yves Palud, director of the BHPA, 21 May 1938, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 120. “Note sur le choléra dans la Concession française de Shanghai,” BHPA, 3 October 1938; “Shanghai shi huoluan liuxing tongji,” 1902–1945, U1-16-4879, SMA. 121. Telegram, Japanese consul general, 15 June 1938, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes; China Press, 15 June 1938; Circular, Japanese consul general, 4 June 1938; Letter, Yves Palud, director of the BHPA, 10 June 1938, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 122. “Certificates Required to Occupied Areas,” Domei local news and translation service, 8 June 1938. 123. Four incompetent inoculators were dismissed after a few serious accidents. Letter, Yves Palud, director of the BHPA, “Personnel auxiliaire chinois,” 24 June 1938, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 124. Letter, Yves Palud, director of the BHPA, 8 June 1938, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes.

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125. Letter, Consul general, 4 October 1938, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 126. Donald R. Hopkins, The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 127. Ian Glynn and Jenifer Glynn, The Life and Death of Smallpox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 123, 161. 128. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes, 64. 129. Jackson, “Managing Shanghai,” 210–11. 130. “Smallpox in the French Concession,” Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury, 18 November 1938. 131. “Renseignements au sujet de l’épidémie de variole,” 28 December 1938, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 132. Report, 16 December 1938, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. Messages were aired in French, English, Russian, Italian, Mandarin, Shanghainese, and Cantonese. 133. “Note sur l’épidémie de variole,” 9 January 1939; “Renseignements au sujet de l’épidémie de variole,” 28 December 1938, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 134. “Rapport de fin d’année,” 1939, U38-5-1274, SMA. 135. Macpherson, Wilderness of Marshes, 65. 136. Rapport de gestion, 1923, 302. 137. Rapport de gestion, 1939, 170. 138. “Rapport de fin d’année,” BHPA, 1941, U38-5-1277, SMA. 139. “Vaccination anti-choléra-typhoïdique,” 4 March 1939, U38-5-524, SMA. 140. Rapport de gestion, 1937, 134. 141. Chieko Nakajima, “Health and Hygiene in Mass Mobilization: Hygiene Campaigns in Shanghai, 1920–1945,” Twentieth-Century China 34, no. 1 (2008): 66–68. 142. Letter, Japanese consul general, 6 April 1939, 635PO/A/39, AD-Nantes. 143. “Rapport de fin d’année,” BHPA, 1941, U38-5-1277, SMA. 144. James Keith Colgrove, “Between Persuasion and Compulsion: Smallpox Control in Brooklyn and New York, 1894–1902,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 78, no. 2 (2004): 363. 145. Annual Report, 1921, 8; 1922, 11; 1923, 9–10; 1924, 8, 11; 1925, 8, 11; 1926, 8; 1927, 7, 9; 1928, 7, 9; 1929, 7, 11; 1930, 8, 10. 146. Annual Report, 1922, 14; 1924, 15; 1925, 14; 1926, 14; 1927, 13; 1928, 13; 1929, 15; 1930, 14. 147. Annual Report, 1921, 8; 1922, 11; 1923, 9–10; 1924, 8, 11; 1925, 8, 11; 1926, 8; 1927, 7, 9; 1928, 7, 9; 1929, 7, 11; 1930, 8, 10. 148. Annual Report, 1922, 14; 1924, 15; 1925, 14; 1926, 14; 1927, 13; 1928, 13; 1929, 15; 1930, 14. 149. Hong Kong presented the same situation. Jones, “Tuberculosis, Housing and the Colonial State,” 664. 150. Barbara Bates, Bargaining for Life: A Social History of Tuberculosis, 1876–1938 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992); Thomas Dormandy, The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis (London: Hambledon, 1999). 151. Rapport de gestion, 1937, 134.

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152. Crowded housing meant a greater risk of transmission of diseases, especially among children. Wohl, Endangered Lives, 288–89.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

chapter 2. guilds, charities, and the community management of death 1. Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013). 2. Linda Cooke Johnson, Shanghai: From Market Town to Treaty Port, 1074– 1858 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995). 3. Gungwu Wang and Chin-Keong Ng, Maritime China in Transition 1750– 1850 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004), 278; Linda Cooke Johnson, “Shanghai: An Emerging Jiangnan Port, 1683–1840,” in Cities of Jiangnan in Late Imperial China, ed. Linda Cooke Johnson (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 162–63. 4. Bryna Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation: Regional Networks and Identities in Shanghai, 1853–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 80–81. 5. On the inequalities between migrants, see Elizabeth J. Perry, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), chap. 1. 6. In pre-modern English cities, guilds played a similar role in providing a decent funeral to their members. Julia Barrow, “Urban Cemetery Location in the High Middle Ages,” in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600, ed. Steven Bassett (Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1992), 78. 7. Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation; William T. Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984); William T. Rowe, Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796–1895 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989). See also the particular and different case of Beijing in Richard D. Belsky, Localities at the Center: Native Place, Space, and Power in Late Imperial Beijing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005). 8. For the sake of simplicity, “guild” will be used for both guilds and corporations throughout the remainder of the text. 9. Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation, 39–47. 10. Ibid., 62; Hiroyuki Hokari, “Kindai shanhai ni okeru itai shori mondai to shimei kosho—Dokyo girudo to Chugoku no toshika” [The management of human remains in modern Shanghai and the Siming Gongsuo—Native-place guilds and China’s urbanization], Shigaku Zasshi 103 (1994): 72. 11. Shanghai xian zhi [Shanghai County gazetteer] ([Kiangsu Province]: Nanyuan Zhiju Chongjiaoben, 1872); Yu Yue, Ying Baoshi, and Mo Wei, Shanghai xian zhi [Shanghai County gazetteer] (n.p., 1882); Yang Yi, Shanghai shi zizhi zhi [Shanghai municipality self-government gazetteer] (n.p., 1915); Yao Wennan, Shanghai xian xuzhi [Shanghai County supplementary gazetteer] (Shanghai: Nanyuan, 1918).

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12. Bo Run and Yao Guangfa, Songjiang fu xuzhi [Songjiang Prefecture supplementary gazetteer] (1884; repr., Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, 1974), 941 et seq. 13. “Shanghai guang-zhao gongsuo gongzuo gaikuang,” n.d. [1950], Q118-12140, SMA. 14. “Guang-zhao gongsuo gongzuo baogao,” n.d. [1951], Q118-12-140, SMA. 15. Although guilds played a similar role in premodern England, by the nineteenth century, low-income males belonged to “friendly societies which provided both death and sickness benefit.” Thomas W. Laqueur, “Bodies, Death, and Pauper Funerals,” Representations 1, no. 1 (1983): 110. 16. “Siming gongsuo chong ding nanchang zhangcheng,” 1920; “Siming gongsuo zhangcheng lu,” Q118-2-1, SMA. 17. Siming Gongsuo, “Dashiji,” 1920, Y4-1-762, SMA. 18. “Hushang siming gongsuo juankuan shengming,” Shenbao, 28 February 1905. 19. “Siming gongsuo yishi lu,” 1939, 43, Y4-1-765-86, SMA. 20. Siming Gongsuo, “Siming gongsuo 28 nian zhengxinlu,” 1939, Y4-1-765, SMA. 21. Ibid. 22. “Siming gongsuo tonyihui 1948 nian zhengxinlu,” 1948, Y4-1-210, SMA. 23. Siming Gongsuo, “Siming gongsuo 28 nian zhengxinlu,” 1939, Y4-1-765, SMA. 24. Wenzhou Tongxianghui, “Shicaihui zhangcheng,” Q117-6-23, SMA. 25. Yao, Shanghai xian xuzhi, 3: 272–78. 26. See the successive lists of members of the Federation of Guild and Corporation Graveyards (Gongsuo Huiguan Shanzhuang Lianhehui) and the Trade Association of Funeral Parlors, Repositories, and Coffin Shipping Companies (Shanghai Shi Binyi Jijiu Yunzang Tongye Gonghui), 1950, Q118-1-6; November 1950, S4404-4, SMA. 27. Charles B. Maybon and Jean Fredet, Histoire de la Concession française de Changhai (Paris: Plon, 1929), 62–63. 28. Yao, Shanghai xian xuzhi, 3: 272–78. 29. Ibid., 201. The Sand Junk Guild also established the Chengshantang to serve the needs of the diseased sailors of the sand junks (shachuan) and perform burial ceremonies. 30. They were Guangdong Huiguan, Guang-Zhao Gongsuo, Yueqiaoshang Lianhehui, and Chaozhou Huiguan. Chang Hsiu-Jung, “Yi chaozhou huiguan wei li xilun qingdai de huiguan yu shangye huodong” [Guild and commercial activity: A case study of the Chaozhou Guild in the Ch’ing dynasty], Baisha Renwen Shehui Xuebao, no. 1 (October 2002): 268. On the Cantonese in Shanghai, see Song Zuanyou, Guangdong ren zai Shanghai (1843–1949) [The Cantonese in Shanghai (1843–1949)] (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 2007). 31. Letter, Guang-Zhao Gongsuo to SZF, n.d. [January–March 1936]; “Guang zhao gongsuo lingnan shanzhuang,” Q118-9-2, SMA. 32. “Shilüe,” recorded from the cemetery stele inscription, “Guang zhao gongsuo lingnan shanzhuang,” 1937, Q118-9-2, SMA. Stele (reproduction), 1880, Q118-9-2, SMA.

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33. Letter, Guang-Zhao Guild to Mayor, 19 March 1936; Letter, Chaozhou Guild to Mayor, 16 April 1936; Letter, Lingnan Cemetery, Guang-Zhao Guild, Chaozhou Guild to Mayor, n.d. [March], 1936; Memorandum, Guang-Zhao Guild, 27 April 1937, Q118-9-2; Letter, Guang-Zhao Guild/Chaozhou Guild/ Guangdong Lühu Tongxianghui, 23 April 1937, Q118-9-2, SMA. 34. Letter, Cantonese Native-Place Association to WSJ, 23 October 1950, Q117-2-217, SMA. 35. Letter, Guangdong Lühu Tongxianghui to Lawyer, 3 April 1947; Letter, Guangdong Lühu Tongxianghui to TDJ, 29 April 1947, Q117-2-217, SMA. 36. Document, Chaozhou Guild, January 1937, Q119-9-2, SMA. On the meaning of bang, see Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation, 39–40. 37. “Shanghai chaozhou huiguan guizhong dichan zhaoren toupiao,” Shenbao, 29 December 1923; “Shanghai chaozhou huiguan dongshihui qi shi,” Shenbao, 6 December 1926. 38. “Chaozhou huiguan de zhidu yu shiye,” http://www.wczbp.com/chaoshang wenhua/2010-01-18/214_9.html; “Chaozhou bayi shanzhuang jianzhang,” 1937, Q118-9-2, SMA. 39. Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation, 58. 40. Shenbao, 25 October 1872, 24 August 1877, 22 August 1880, 29 August 1882. 41. “Cuijiu huiji guang zhong fu tian,” Shenbao, 5 November 1882. 42. “Guang-zhao gongsuo lüeli,” 1950, Q118-12-140-9, SMA. 43. “Xinggong jianjin,” Shenbao, 12 December 1902; “Guang-zhao gongsuo jinbai,” Shenbao, 6 October 1910. 44. See the evolution on Shanghai, 1904, Library of Congress, Map Division (China Shanghai [City]); Shice Shanghai chengxiang zujie tu (Shanghai: Shangwu Yishuguan, 1910); Map of Shanghai (Shanghai: North China Daily News, 1923); see also Virtual Shanghai, Map ID 124, 260, and 468. 45. “Shanghai guang zhao xin shanzhuang jiancheng jinian,” 1931, B168-1798, SMA. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. “Zhangcheng,” 1 November 1924, “Shanghai guang zhao xin shanzhuang jiancheng jinian,” B168-1-798, SMA. 49. I found the trace of another Cantonese organization, the Dapuxian Hengshantang, that established a small graveyard outside the South gate of the walled city in 1875. Shenbao, 11 October 1875. 50. “Zhangcheng,” 1 November 1924, “Shanghai guang zhao xin shanzhuang jiancheng jinian,” B168-1-798, SMA. This was a slight exaggeration. Cantonese numbered 51,365 in 1925 in the International Settlement and 36,947 in the Chinese municipality in 1929. Even with the Cantonese sojourners in the French Concession, the total fell short of the claimed 200,000 Cantonese sojourners. Zou Yiren, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian de yanjiu [Population change in old Shanghai] (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1980), 114–15. 51. On Cantonese funeral customs, especially double burial and processing of the bones, see James L. Watson, “Funeral Specialists in Cantonese Society:

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Pollution, Performance, and Social Hierarchy,” in Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 113; Ruby Watson, “Remembering the Dead: Graves and Politics in Southeastern China,” in Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 206. 52. “Shanghai guang-zhao gongsuo gongzuo gaikuang,” n.d. [1950], Q118-12140, SMA. 53. Minutes, Guang-Zhao Gongsuo Shanzhuang, 31 January 1947, Q118-1253, SMA. 54. Christian Henriot, “Beyond Glory: Civilians, Combatants, and Society during the Battle of Shanghai,” War and Society 31, no. 2 (2012): 106–35; “Guangzhao gongsuo gongzuo baogao,” n.d. [1951]; “Shanghai guang-zhao gongsuo lüeli,” n.d. [1951], Q118-12-140, SMA. 55. Shenbao, 16 November 1914, 25 October 1928, 1 November 1930. 56. “Pudong gongsuo goude gongmu jidi,” Shenbao, 17 June 1926. 57. Ibid. 58. “Jiangxi huiguan dongshihui zhi,” Shenbao, 25 June 1926. 59. Shenbao, 16 November 1914, 25 October 1928, 1 November 1930. 60. Shenbao, 13 December 1926. 61. Shenbao, 26 November 1930. 62. “Molisan shantang jianshe dongshan gongmu luocheng tonggao,” Shenbao, 25 October 1932. 63. “Jiangxi huiguan dongshihui zhi,” Shenbao, 25 June 1926; Shenbao, 21 May 1929, 24 September 1929, 11 December 1930. 64. Shenbao, 31 January 1926, 21 May 1935. 65. Tang Lixing, “Huizhou lü hu tongxianghui de shehui baozhang gongneng (1923–1949)” [The social protection function of the Huizhou Native-Place Association in Shanghai (1923–1949)], Shanghai Shifan Daxue Xuebao 41, no. 3 (2012): 33–44. 66. “Lü hu yongren zhengqiu jianzhu gongmu yijian,” Shenbao, 4 August 1924. 67. “Fu Xiao’an jianyi choushe siming gongmu,” Shenbao, 28 March 1935. 68. “Zhuanjiao qingce,” 28 February 1942, Q117-25-32, SMA. 69. “Newspaper Announcement,” manuscript dated 3 June 1945, Q117-19-31, SMA. 70. Shenbao, 28 September 1878. Announcement by the Huining Sigongtang. The association was still active in 1941. 71. On the rise of tongxanghui and their nature, see Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation, 218 et seq. 72. Letters (to SMC, Mixed Court, Chinese local authorities), 1893, S250-190, SMA. 73. In 1938, as the evacuation of coffins remained difficult, the Siming Gongsuo stored up to 7,000 coffins on its premises in the French Concession. Letter, Siming Gongsuo to BHPA, 12 July 1938, U38-5-1485, SMA.

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74. “Zai lun su zang yi chu yi,” Shenbao, 30 August 1890. 75. Shanghai Bowuguan, Shanghai beike ziliao xuanji [Selected materials from Shanghai stone inscriptions] (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1980), 260–61. 76. Shenbao, 26 October–2 November 1878. Notice by the Zhaoshang Steamship Company. 77. Yao, Shanghai xian xuzhi, 201. 78. Chang, “Yi chaozhou huiguan wei li xilun qingdai de huiguan yu shangye huodong,” 268. 79. “Cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 17 September 1887. 80. “Jianzao pingjiang gongsuo,” Shenbao, 16 August 1895. 81. “Pingjiang gongsuo guanggao,” Shenbao, 20 November 1906. 82. “Weishan shanzhuang qianyi guanggao,” Shenbao, 9 November 1919. 83. “Yanxu shanzhuang tongren gong qi,” Shenbao, 12 November 1892; “Anfang wuji muzhu,” Shenbao, 19 December 1901. 84. “Hushang siming gongsuo juankuan shengming,” Shenbao, 28 February 1905. 85. “Cuijiu huiji guanggao,” Shenbao, 10 September 1909. 86. “Zhabei yanxu shanzhuang guanggao,” Shenbao, 4 February 1915, 18 November 1917, 17 August 1924. The building on the Wangjiazhai site still exists, although it is completely dilapidated. In 2004, the Shanghai Municipal Government placed it under heritage protection. 87. “Zhabei yanxu shanzhuang mujuan qi shi,” Shenbao, 26 August 1926. 88. “Yanxu shanzhuang tonggao qianjiu jingting yi fa gaoshi,” Shenbao, 3 October 1926. 89. Shenbao, 20 March 1925. 90. By the 1940s, however, some guilds, like the Siming Gongsuo, applied to serve as funeral parlors and process the bodies for encoffining. The municipality turned down its application twice, before and after August 1945, on the ground of insufficient space and disinfection equipment. Letter, Siming Gongsuo to WSJ, July1945; Letter, Siming Gongsuo to WSJ, 9 January 1946; Report, WSJ, 11 January 1946; Letter, WSJ to Siming Gongsuo, 21 June 1946, Q400-13977, SMA. 91. Undated document, Siming Gongsuo, Q118-1-7-207, SMA. 92. “Min tongxianghui zhi zhang yun minghan,” Shenbao, 13 December 1924. 93. Report, Guangdong Tongxianghui, 15 October 1942, Q117-2-224, SMA. 94. Memorandum, Hunan Huiguan, 15 July 1941, Q117-25-32, SMA. 95. “Bingshe shenqingshu” (Yanhui Shanzhuang), 1939, R50-1-160, SMA. 96. Letter, Huzhou Guild to WSJ, 27 January 1940, R50-1-1414; Letter to sojourner, Huzhou Huiguan, 22 August 1940, Q165-6-43, SMA. 97. Memorandum, Hunan Huiguan, 15 July 1941, Q117-25-32, SMA. 98. “Qianzang zu yunzang shoupi zangjiu yongfeice,” 4–19 October 1941; “Qianzang zu yunzang di er pi zangjiu yongfeice,” November 1941, Q117-25-32, SMA.

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99. “Siming gongsuo chong ding nanchang zhangcheng,” 1920, “Siming gongsuo zhangcheng lu,” Q118-2-1, SMA. 100. “Bingshe shenqingshu” (Suzhou Jiyi Gongsuo), 16 December 1941, R501-458, SMA. 101. “Bingshe shenqingshu” (Taizhou Gongsuo), 16 December 1941, R50-1458, SMA. 102. “Bingshe shenqingshu” (Dinghai Shanchang Gongsuo), 16 December 1941, R50-1-458, SMA. 103. “Bingshe shenqingshu” (Zhejin Jishantang), 16 December 1941, R50-1458, SMA. 104. “Bingshe shenqingshu” (Doumiye Gongsuo), 16 December 1941, R50-1458, SMA. 105. The repository perceived extra fees for this service, as attested by the vouchers (shouqi jifei shouju) issued to the families. 106. Siming Gongsuo, “Dashiji,” 1920, Y4-1-762, SMA. 107. Ibid. 108. Stele (reproduction), Siming Gongsuo, “Siming gongsuo si da jianzhu quanlu,” 1925, Y4-1-763, SMA. 109. Siming Gongsuo, “Dashiji,” 1920, Y4-1-762, SMA. 110. “Siming gongsuo chong ding beichang guize,” October 1921, “Siming gongsuo zhangcheng lu,” Q118-2-1, SMA. 111. Letter, Siming Gongsuo to Ningbo Zongshanghui, 28 May 1910, 5 December 1910, Q118-2-11-14, SMA. 112. Siming Gongsuo, “Dashiji,” 1920, Y4-1-762, SMA. 113. “Siming gongsuo chong ding nanchang zhangcheng,” 1920, “Siming gongsuo zhangcheng lu,” Q118-2-1, SMA. 114. Siming Gongsuo, “Siming gongsuo 28 nian zhengxinlu,” 1939, Y4-1-765, SMA. 115. “Siming gongsuo chong ding nanchang zhangcheng,” 1920, “Siming gongsuo zhangcheng lu,” Q118-2-1, SMA. 116. “Coffins and Corpses,” September 1941, U1-16-2468; “Shanghai shi gongsuo huiguan shanzhuang gaikuangbiao” (Siming Gongsuo), March 1951, Q118-1-6, SMA. 117. “Shanghai shi gongsuo huiguan shanzhuang gaikuangbiao” (Siming Gongsuo), 28 September 1950, Q118-1-6, SMA. 118. I translate jian as “hall” rather than compartment to convey the nature of these buildings. 119. Siming Gongsuo, “Dashiji,” 1920, Y4-1-762, SMA. 120. Huzhou Huiguan, “Tebie jian,” 1934, Q165-6-34, SMA. 121. Hunan Huiguan, List of registers, 1 March 1941, Q117-2-32, SMA. 122. “Chonghai lü hu tongxianghui jijiu,” 1942–1945, Q117-19-31; Hunan Huiguan, “Bingshe cunjiu piaobu,” 1945, Q117-25-32, SMA. 123. Huzhou Huiguan, “Nan nü da xiao lingjiu yun hu qingce,” 1936, Q1656-42, SMA. 124. See samples in Huzhou Huiguan, “Tebie jian,” 1937, Q165-6-38; “Xiao tongjian,” 1936, Q165-6-33; “You tongjian,” 1936, Q165-6-39, SMA.

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125. “Shanghai tebie shi siming gongsuo nanchang bingshe guanjiu jicun yuebaobiao,” November 1942, March 1943; “Shanghai tebie shi siming gongsuo nanchang bingshe guanjiu banchu yuebaobiao,” March 1943, R50-1-458, SMA. 126. See samples in Huzhou Huiguan, “Tebie jian,” 1934, Q165-6-34, Q1656-43, SMA. 127. “Jianyao zhangcheng,” n.d., Q165-6-34, SMA. 128. Huzhou Huiguan, “Tongxiang jicun shouqi,” 1936, Q165-6-37; “Siming gongsuo zhangcheng,” 1920, art. 30, “Siming gongsuo zhangcheng lu,” Q118-2-1; Revised charter, “Siming gongsuo 28 nian zhengxinlu,” 1939, chap. 9, 1–3, Y4-1765, SMA. 129. Many letters, mostly from 1940, in Q165-6-43, SMA. 130. Huzhou Huiguan, “Zuo tongjian jijiu dice,” no. 5, 1936, Q165-6-33, SMA. 131. Huzhou Huiguan, “You tongjian jijiu dice,” 1932–1937, Q165-6-36, SMA. 132. Huzhou Huiguan, “Xiao tongjian jijiu dice,” no. 3, 1936–1937, Q165-633, SMA. 133. “Shanghai tebie shi siming gongsuo nanchang bingshe guanjiu jicun yuebaobiao,” November 1942, March 1943; “Shanghai tebie shi siming gongsuo nanchang bingshe guanjiu banchu yuebaobiao,” March 1943, R50-1-458, SMA. 134. Zou, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian, 122. 135. “Cuijiu huiji guang zhong fu tian,” Shenbao, 5 November 1882. 136. “Yunjiu huiji,” Shenbao, 20 December 1887. 137. Ibid.; “Yunjiu huiji,” Shenbao, 26 May 1889. 138. “Dai yunju huiji,” Shenbao, 8 October 1892. 139. “Qiyun lüqin,” Shenbao, 23 April 1898; “Cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 2 October 1901; “Cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 8 December 1908. 140. “Cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 27 August 1908. 141. Art. 31, “Siming gongsuo chong ding nanchang zhangcheng,” 1920, “Siming gongsuo zhangcheng lu,” Q118-2-1; Siming Gongsuo, “Siming gongsuo 28 nian zhengxinlu,” 1939, chap. 9, 1–3, Y4-1-765, SMA. 142. Huzhou Huiguan, “Cun jiu yi lan,” February 1938, Q165-6-37, SMA. Our estimate is also based on the following files: Q165-6-33, Q165-6-38, Q165-639, Q165-6-45, SMA. 143. “Zhe-shao yongxitang cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 31 October 1878. 144. “Cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 6 November 1886. 145. “Cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 3 January 1886, 19 November 1889. 146. “Fuzhou shanzhuang zangjiu shengming,” Shenbao, 8 October 1898. 147. “Shanghai yiye bingshe cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 21 March 1936. 148. Shenbao, 13 December 1926. 149. “Fujianren jian,” Shenbao, 6 March 1915, 14 January 1919, 21 November 1921. 150. “Minqiao shanzhuang huiqin cuiling,” Shenbao, 21 November 1920. 151. “Yanxu shanzhuang tonggao qianjiu jingting yi fa gaoshi,” Shenbao, 3 October 1926.

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the on-going conflict revealed the high degree of dependency of the existing system of disposing of the dead on the uninterrupted movement of coffins from Shanghai to the native place of sojourners. Moreover, what started as an emergency situation in 1937 actually lasted throughout the war period and even through the Chinese Civil War. The Chinese families as well as their communal organizations were very reluctant to risk shipping a coffin under unstable and unpredictable conditions. As a result, commercial funeral companies quickly seized the opportunity to establish a new infrastructure to process dead bodies (funeral parlors) and to store coffins (repositories). Although there was a large overlap between the two types of companies, in full violation of all the successive regulations, funeral parlors did provide a service that neither the repositories nor the native-place associations provided, namely the preparation of the body from the time of death to burial or storing. The war permitted the first serious social breakthrough of the commercial funeral companies. This had long-term consequences because a growing number of people eventually found it natural to turn to these companies to help with the arrangements a death called for. The native-place associations remained powerful actors, but they faded in the background, with their role increasingly restricted by successive regulations, until the Communist regime excluded them entirely from any involvement in the management of death. The war created an exceptional situation. The accumulation of stored coffins in the city led to the emergence of a vast necropolis aboveground in Shanghai. Cities have dealt in many ways with the disposal of the dead. For centuries, church graveyards received the remains of millions of urban residents in European cities, something that did not happen in China. Individual tombs and collective graveyards were located outside the city walls, in the countryside. Paradoxically, war created an aberrant pattern whereby dead bodies remained in the urban space, by and large in densely populated neighborhoods, although they were kept in coffins that according to all reports presented no risk to public health. The sheer number of coffins stored in the city made it a challenge to organize their evacuation, especially with organizations, guilds, and companies alike that opposed any form of radical disposal such as cremation. After the war, the growing flow of migrants, mostly refugees, also increased the number of dead bodies to process hic et nunc. The municipal authorities used a large spectrum of measures to force the coffin repositories to remove their inventory from the city. They taxed, regulated, and banned. They threatened with arbitrary cremation. Nothing worked. The commercial repositories were eager to defend their “capital,” even if it was an illusion. Eventually, under a unified and far more intrusive regime, Shanghai was cleaned of its necropolis for good.

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176. “Zhe-shao yongxitang cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 31 October 1878, 3 December 1883, 13 October 1885, 27 March 1886, 19 November 1886, 20 November 1887, 18 November 1889, 24 March 1894. 177. Shenbao, 4 January 1896. 178. Shenbao, 4 April 1897, 11 December 1898. 179. Shenbao, 5 March 1909. The notices distinguished between “shipping back home” (cuijiu huiji) and “expired deadline” (liucai guoqi). 180. “Sanshangtang cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 3 October 1880. 181. Shenbao, 5 November 1882, 20 December 1887, 1 January 1888, 26 May 1889, 8 October 1892, 23 April 1898, 8 December 1908. 182. “Yunjiu huiji shengming,” Shenbao, 1 October 1883. 183. “Cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 27 August 1908. 184. “Huizhang huiguan cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 5 November 1916. 185. Shenbao, 21 September 1928, 23 November 1933, 21 June 1934. 186. “Siming gongsuo cuijiu huiji,” Shenbao, 18 November 1879. 187. “Hushang siming gongsuo juankuan shengming,” Shenbao, 28 February 1905. 188. Ibid. 189. Siming Gongsuo, “Dashiji,” 1920, Y4-1-762, SMA. 190. Shanghai Bowuguan, Shanghai beike ziliao xuanji, 431. 191. Hokari, “Kindai shanhai ni okeru itai shori mondai to shimei kosho,” 71. 192. Sinn, “Moving Bones,” 253–55. 193. Siming Gongsuo, “Dashiji,” 1920, Y4-1-762, SMA. 194. Letter, Siming Gongsuo to FMC, 12 July 1938, U38-5-1485. 195. Huzhou Huiguan, “Nan nü da xiao lingjiu yun hu qingce,” 1936, Q1656-42, SMA. 196. “Shexian shou’antang shanghai zong banshichu yunjiu tonggao,” Shenbao, 23 October 1934. 197. “Shou ba yi san qian tongxiang daiyuan jiufei jishu,” Q165-6-43, SMA. 198. Siming Gongsuo, “Siming gongsuo 28 nian zhengxinlu,” 1939, Y4-1-765, SMA. 199. Letter, Yizhuang Gongsuo to WSJ, 19 August 1942, S246-1-58, SMA. 200. Letter, Huzhou Guild to WSJ, 27 January 1940, R50-1-1414, SMA. 201. Letter, Yizhuang Gongsuo to WSJ, 19 August 1942, S246-1-58, SMA. 202. Inspection report, WSJ, 25 February 1942, R50-1-431-2, SMA. 203. Letter, 8 August [1940], Q165-6-43, SMA. 204. Shenbao, 19 March 1879, 2. 205. [changer ce vaste champ de morts [. . .] en une cité peuplée aujourd’hui d’habitants]. “Rapport du conseil d’administration municipale sur l’affaire des rues de Ningpo et Saigon adressé aux électeurs de la Concession française,” 1874, 14, 635PO/B/27, AD-Nantes. 206. Ibid., 13–14. 207. Richard D. Belsky, “Bones of Contention: The Siming Gongsuo Riots of 1874 and 1898,” Papers on Chinese History, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 56–73.

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208. David S. Barnes, The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 12–23. 209. Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation, 159–69. 210. “Affaire du 3 mai 1874 entre les administrateurs de la Pagode de Ning-po et le Conseil municipal français de Shanghai,” 1874, 3, 635PO/B/27, AD-Nantes. 211. Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation, 160. 212. The French Municipal Council came up with several legal arguments to challenge the right of ownership of the Siming Gongsuo. “Rapport du conseil d’administration municipale sur l’affaire des rues de Ningpo et Saigon adressé aux électeurs de la Concession française,” 7, 8. 213. [au nom de la salubrité et du repos même qui convient aux asiles consacrés aux dépouilles mortelles, veulent que les cimetières soient transportés en dehors des centres de population]. Ibid., 5–6. 214. Madeleine Lassère, “Les pauvres et la mort en milieu urbain dans la France du XIXe siècle: Funérailles et cimetières,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 42, no. 1 (1995): 109. 215. “Rapport du conseil d’administration municipale sur l’affaire des rues de Ningpo et Saigon adressé aux électeurs de la Concession française,” 2. 216. Ibid., 16. 217. For a full account of the events from the French perspective and related documents, see “Affaire du 3 mai 1874 entre les administrateurs de la Pagode de Ning-po et le Conseil municipal français de Shanghai.” 218. Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation, 161–62, 171. 219. Siming Gongsuo, “Dashiji,” 1920, Y4-1-762, SMA. In 1915, the Siming Gongsuo conceded a small strip of land for the sake of facilitating traffic on the corner of its cemetery, but land remained Ningbo property. The guild placed a stone to mark the place. 220. Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation, 170–71. 221. Ibid., 164. 222. Ibid., 168–69. 223. Siming Gongsuo, “Dashiji,” 1920, Y4-1-762, SMA. 224. Letter, 26 June 1910, Q118-2-11-4, SMA. 225. Letter, Jiangning Liu Xian Gongsuo, 3 April 1924; Letter, Hubei Gong xunjuanju, 16 April 1924, Q207-1-183, SMA. 226. Shenbao, 11 August 1908, 15 August 1908, 28 August 1908, 29 August 1908, 21 October 1908, 31 October 1908, 26 December 1908, 31 December 1908, 7 March 1909. 227. Shenbao, 31 August 1908, 6 September 1908, 14 September 1908, 17 September 1908, 22 September 1908, 28 September 1908. 228. Shenbao, 8–10 October 1908. 229. Shenbao, 13 November 1908. 230. Ka-che Yip, Health and National Reconstruction in Nationalist China: The Development of Modern Health Services, 1928–1937 (Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies, 1995).

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231. Christian Henriot, Shanghai, 1927–1937: Municipal Power, Locality, and Modernization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), chap. 8. See also Zwia Lipkin, Useless to the State: “Social Problems” and Social Engineering in Nationalist Nanjing, 1927–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006). 232. “Huiguan gongsuo lianhehui dingqi kaihui wei taolun weishengju qudi bingshe shi,” Shenbao, 22 July 1929. 233. “Xiangxuetang bingshe cuijiu banzang,” Shenbao, 10 December 1929. 234. “Lingjie lianhehui wei maizang zhenru jijiu qi shi,” Shenbao, 19 December 1930; “Haichang gongsuo cuiling jijiu,” Shenbao, 19 December 1930. 235. Shenbao, 25 October 1928, 1 November 1930, 12 October 1935, 8 October 1941. 236. Shenbao, 14 May 1932. 237. Shenbao, 12 March 1835. 238. “Baoshan gongsuo tonggao jijiu ge hu lingzang zhuyi,” Shenbao, 26 March 1936. 239. “Hubei huiguan cuijiu huiji tonggao,” Shenbao, 26 March 1936. 240. Shenbao, 21 September 1928, 23 November 1933, 21 June 1934. 241. Notification, “Guang zhao gongsuo lingnan shanzhuang,” 16 February 1935, Q118-9-2, SMA. 242. Letter, WSJ to Yizhuang Gongsuo, 25 June 1942, S246-1-58, SMA. 243. “Shanghai tebie shi weishengju bugao,” October 1942, Q117-19-32, SMA. 244. “Shanghai tebie shi weishengju bugao 63hao,” March 1943, R50-1-458, SMA. 245. “Shanghai tebie shi qudi bingshe guize,” 1942, Q117-19-32, SMA. 246. “Shanghai tebie shi weishengju bugao,” WSJ, October 1942, R50-1-458, SMA. 247. Letters, several guilds, November 1942, 30 December 1942, R50-1-43337; Letter, Siming Gongsuo to WSJ, 12 January 1943, R50-1-1414; Registration form, Piaoshui Shuilu Gongsuo, n.d. [1942], R50-1-431, SMA. 248. Letter, Yizhuang Gongsuo to WSJ, November 1941, S246-1-58; Letter, Yizhuang Gongsuo to WSJ, 19 August 1942, S246-1-58; Letter, Yizhuang Gongsuo to WSJ, July 1943; Letter, WSJ to Yizhuang Gongsuo, August 1943, R501-433, SMA. 249. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 24 February 1943, R50-1-433-37, SMA. 250. Letter, Siming Gongsuo to WSJ, 3 August 1944; Memorandum, WSJ, 12 September 1944, R50-1-1414, SMA. 251. Letter, Yiji Shanhui, 5 January 1944, R50-1-433; Report, inspector, WSJ, August 1943, R50-1-431, SMA. 252. The draft version “Ben huiguan jijiu zhangcheng” (manuscript, 1 January 1943) was more elaborate than the printed version “Zhengli huiguan banfa,” but both included the same rules. Q117-19-31, SMA. 253. “Newspaper Announcement,” manuscript dated 3 June 1945, Q117-1931, SMA; Shenbao, 8 June 1945, 2.

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254. “Newspaper Announcement,” manuscript dated 3 October 1945, Q11719-31, SMA; Shenbao, 8 June 1945, 2. 255. Letter, Guang-Zhao Gongsuo to Guangdong Lühu Tongxianghui, 26 March 1943, Q118-12-42, SMA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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chapter 3. funeral companies and the commoditization of the dead body 1. This stands in sharp contrast with the professionalization of undertakers in the early modern period in England, even if a proper association was founded only in 1898. Thomas W. Laqueur, “Bodies, Death, and Pauper Funerals,” Representations 1, no. 1 (1983): 113–15; Jani Scandura, “Deadly Professions: Dracula, Undertakers, and the Embalmed Corpse,” Victorian Studies 40, no. 1 (1996): 1–30; Anne Carol, “Le cadavre et la machine au XIXe siècle,” in Corps et machines l’âge industriel, ed. Laurence Guignard, Pascal Raggi, and Étienne Thévenin (Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011), 87–98; Anne Carol, “Faire un ‘beau’ cadavre: Difficultés techniques et ambiguïtés esthétiques de l’embaumement au XIXe siècle (France),” in Rencontres autour du cadavre, ed. Hervé Guy (SaintGermain-en-Laye, France: Groupe d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Funéraire, 2012), 139–42. 2. Shenbao, 25 February 1887, 3; 3 April 1887. 3. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1902 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1903), 343. 4. Shenbao, 6 September 1926, 15. 5. Shenbao, 10 October 1926, 30. 6. Shenbao, 7 November 1932, 11 (China Funeral Home); 13 October 1933, 14 (Shanghai Funeral Parlor); 6 September 1935, 9 September 1935 (Central Funeral Directors). 7. Advertising prospectus, “Zhongguo binyiguan yiji gufen youxian gongsi gaiyao,” n.d. (preface, January 1933), Q400-1-3910, SMA. 8. The relocated guilds included Shaoxing, Hunan, Jiangning, Xijin, Suzhou, Tongzhou, Wuxi, and Yangzhou. The Wuxi Guild regained access to its premises in Zhabei only in July 1942. Letter, Wuxi Guild, 12 July 1942, U1-16-2504; U1-162468 and U1-14-3175 (Hunan Guild), SMA. 9. Letter, Ningbo Guild to Secretary, 7 August 1939, U1-16-2465, SMA. 10. Report, PHD, 28 November 1938, U1-16-2536(1); Report, Health inspector to Chief inspector, PHD, 4 May 1942, U1-16-2536(2), SMA. 11. Report, SMP to Secretary, 12 October 1938, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 12. A full set of blueprints can be found in the registration files of the postwar period. Anle Binyiguan, Q400-1-3960, December 1947; Baigong Binyiguan, Q4001-3969, July 1947; Dazhong Binyiguan, Q400-1-3968, December 1947; Guohua Binyiguan, Q400-1-3965, November 1947; Guoji Binyiguan, Q400-1-3963, August 1947; Guotai Jijiusuo, Q400-1-3973, August 1947; Leyuan Binyiguan, Q400-1-3959, November 1947; Liyuan Binyiguan, Q400-1-3964, November 1947; Nanshi Binyiguan, Q400-1-3966, August 1947; Shangtian Binyiguan, Q4001-3958, December 1947; Shijie Binyiguan, Q400-1-3970, July 1947; Wan’an

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Binyiguan, Q400-1-3967, December 1947; Wanguo Binyiguan, Q400-1-3961, August 1946; Xieqiao Binyiguan, Q400-1-3957, November 1947; Yong’an Binyiguan, Q400-1-3962, December 1947; Zhongguo Binyiguan, Q400-1-3970, December 1947; Zhonghua Binyiguan, S440-1-13, October 1943; Zhongyang Binyiguan, Q400-1-3957, February 1948, SMA. 13. Letter, JCJ to Mayor, 10 October 1940, R36-13-223, SMA. 14. Christian Henriot, “Regeneration and Mobility: The Spatial Dynamics of Industries in Wartime Shanghai,” Journal of Historical Geography 38, no. 2 (2012): 167–80. 15. Memorandum (no author: PHD or SMP), 18 May 1938, U1-14-3177, SMA. 16. “Coffin Repositories and Funeral Parlors,” 28 November 1938, U1-143177, SMA. 17. “Memorandum on Conditions in the Western Extra-settlement Area,” 30 May 1938, U1-16-2108 (1938–1939), 169, SMA. 18. On the issue of policing the extra-settlement roads area during the war, see Frederic E. Wakeman, The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime, 1937–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 19. Letter, Deputy secretary to Secretary, 30 December 1939, U1-16-2471, SMA. 20. Conseil d’Administration Municipale de la Concession Française, Compte rendu de la gestion pour l’exercice 1926 (Shanghai: China Printing Company, 1927), 104. Two successive applications by the same funeral parlor to open in the western part of the settlement were turned down as inappropriate for residential areas. 21. Consular ordinance 158, 18 May 1938, U38-1-507, SMA. 22. Memorandum, Deputy treasurer, SMC, 21 February 1941, U1-16-2471, SMA. 23. Letter, Deputy secretary to Secretary (T. K. Ho), 30 December 1939, U116-2471, SMA. 24. Shanghai Times, 21 October 1937. 25. Files U1-16-2468, U1-16-2469, U1-16-2470, U1-16-2471, R50-1-433, SMA. 26. Letter, Superintendent to PHD, 11 June 1938, U1-14-3177, SMA. 27. Memorandum, PHD, 11 September 1939, U1-16-2465, SMA. 28. Letter, Deputy secretary to PHD, 9 January 1940, U1-16-2471, SMA. 29. Report, Junior health inspector, 26 July 1939, U1-16-2465, SMA. 30. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 27 May 1942, U1-16-2534, SMA. 31. Letter, Superintendent to PHD, 24 August 1939, U1-16-2465, SMA. 32. Letter, Junior health inspector to Superintendent, 14 May 1940, U16-12465, SMA. The report listed five companies: Dada Yunjiu Gongsi and Sida Gongsi in the French Concession; Mingli Yunshu Gongsi, Taishan Lingjiu Banyun Gongsi, and Chang’an Yunjiu Gongsi in the International Settlement. 33. Report, BHPA, 7 February 1939, U38-5-1277, SMA. 34. Survey form (shebeidiaocha), WSJ, 24 December 1946, Q400-1-3956, SMA.

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35. Files S246-1-58 for 1941; R50-1-459, Q117-25-32 for 1941, and R50-1433 for 1943. More itemized data can be found about individual repositories in files R50-1-1414, August 1937; R50-1-160, 30 December 1939; R50-1-160, 1939; R50-1-1414, August 1940; S246-1-58, 1941; R50-1-459, July 1941; Q117-2532, September 1941; R50-1-431-2, 25 February 1942; Q117-19-32, June–August 1942; R50-1-458, March 1943. 36. Letter (R. Guignard), 1938, U1-14-3176, SMA. 37. Dalu Binyiguan, February–October 1940, R36-13-214, SMA. 38. Letter, SMP to Secretary, 12 May 1938, U1-14-3177, SMA. 39. Xinwenbao, 28 June 1938. 40. See U1-14-3178, SMA. 41. Letter, Superintendent P. Veit to Jordan (PHD), 28 April 1938, U1-14-3176; “Memorandum on Conditions in the Western Extra-settlement Area,” 30 May 1938, U1-16-2108, SMA. 42. Letter, Jordan (PHD) to Secretary, 27 July 1938, U1-14-3175, SMA. 43. Letter, PWD to Secretary, 20 April 1938, U1-14-3177, SMA. 44. “Memorandum to Members,” Council meeting, 5 April 1938 and 6 April 1938, U1-14-3177, SMA. 45. Memorandum, PWD, 27 April 1938, U1-14-3177, SMA. 46. Letter, Superintendent to PHD, 11 June 1938, U1-14-3177, SMA. 47. Letter, PWD to Secretary, 19 May 1938, U1-14-3177, SMA. 48. Municipal notification 4962, 10 June 1938, U1-4-3177, SMA. 49. North China Daily News, 9 June 1938. 50. “Coffin Repositories and Funeral Parlors,” 28 November 1938, U1-143177, SMA. 51. Letter, Chief health inspector to PHD, 6 June 1939, U1-14-3177, SMA. 52. Letter, Chief inspector to PHD, 20 September 1939, U1-16-2465, SMA. 53. Letter, Chief health inspector to PHD, 6 June 1939, U1-14-3177, SMA. 54. Report, Nash to Secretary, 22 July 1939; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 21 July 1939, U1-16-2465, SMA. 55. In 1940, the only repository allowed in the French Concession held a mere sixty-seven coffins. Letter, Deputy secretary to PHD, 9 January 1940, U1-16-2471, SMA. 56. Report, Director, BHPA, 28 July 1939, U38-5-1485, SMA. 57. Summary memorandum, PHD/PWD/SMP to Secretary, 26 July 1939, U114-3177; Letter, Deputy secretary to Secretary (T. K. Ho), 30 December 1939, U116-2471, SMA. 58. Letter, Secretary to PWD, 13 February 1940, U1-14-3177, SMA. 59. Report, SMP to Secretary, 19 August 1938, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 60. North China Daily News, 11 August 1938. 61. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 14 August 1938, U1-16-2534, SMA. 62. Letter, Junior health officer to Superintendent P. Veit, 8 August 1938, U116-2534, SMA. 63. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 8 August 1938, U1-16-2534, SMA. 64. Letter, Deputy secretary to Secretary, 30 December 1939, U1-16-2471, SMA.

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65. English version of the regulation in U1-14-3177, SMA. 66. “Shanghai shi guanli binyiguan guize,” 11 November 1932, Q215-1-6886, SMA. After a year of implementation, municipal officials realized the text did not incorporate restrictions on noise and time of activity to protect neighbors. The revised version prohibited noise or chanting by priests after 8 p.m. (art. 12). Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 5 June 1934, Q215-1-6886, SMA. 67. “Huading zhi si chu bingshe quyu suoshu tufen ji sizhi shuoming,” 25 May 1931, Q118-9-2, SMA. The archival file includes a map of the four locations. 68. Shiti lianzang zanxing banfa, 7 February 1938; Qudi fucuo shiguan linshi banfa, n.d. [1938], R36-13-139, SMA. 69. “Shanghai tebie shi weishengju bugao,” October 1942, Q117-19-32, SMA. 70. Letter, PHD to Central Funeral Home, 17 September 1936, Q400-1-3957; Letter, Health inspector to Chief health inspector, 4 January 1944, U1-16-2477, SMA. 71. Letter, Jordan (PHD) to Secretary, 12 January 1940, U1-16-2471, SMA. 72. Letter, Deputy secretary to PHD, 9 January 1940, U1-16-2471, SMA. 73. Letter, SHJ, 30 January 1940, R50-1-1414, SMA. 74. Letter, Mayor to JCJ, 4 March 1940, R36-13-210; Instruction, Mayor, 27 April 1940, R50-1-1414, SMA. 75. Shanghai tebie shi jingchaju guanli binyiguan guize [Regulation on the management of funeral parlors of the Bureau of Police of the Shanghai Special Municipality], March 1940, R36-13-210, SMA. 76. Letter, Mayor to JCJ, 9 April 1940, R36-13-211, SMA. 77. Notification (translation—original in file), August 1940, U1-16-2534, SMA. 78. Letter, WSJ to Yizhuang Gongsuo, 5 November 1941, S246-1-58, SMA. 79. Draft regulation, 1941, R1-12-58, SMA. 80. “Shanghai tebie shi weishengju bugao 63,” October 1940, R50-1-458, SMA. 81. Report, Nanshi office of the WSJ, 9 February 1942; Letters, Tongruchonghaiqi Wuxian Lühu Tongxianghui, 2 April 1942, 19 June 1943, R50-1-431, SMA. 82. Inspection report, WSJ, 27 January 1942; Letter, WSJ to Anping, 22 October 1942, R50-1-431, SMA. 83. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 3 February 1942, R1-12-58, SMA. 84. Shanghai tebie shi qudi bingshe guize, 1942, Q117-19-32, SMA. 85. Shanghai tebie shi weishengju jiancha binyiguan ji bingshe jijiu banfa, 1942; “Shanghai tebie shi weishengju bugao,” October 1942, S246-1-58, SMA. 86. Shanghai tebie shi weishengju jiancha binyiguan ji bingshe jijiu banfa, 1 August 1942, R1-12-58, SMA. 87. “Jiancha baogao,” WSJ, June–August 1943, Q117-19-32, SMA. 88. Letter, WSJ to Anping, 22 October 1942; Letter, WSJ, 30 October 1942, R50-1-431, SMA. 89. Memorandum, WSJ, 8 February 1944, R50-1-431, SMA. 90. Letter, FBTA to members, 31 May 1943, S440-1-7, SMA. 91. Letter, FBTA to WSJ, 1 May 1943, S440-1-7, SMA.

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cemeteries had overfilled since the eighteenth century, procrastination prevailed until 1848 with the Public Health Act. Previous legislation, however, had facilitated the creation of private cemeteries outside the cities.4 A similar process did not take place in China, as from the beginning the dead were not buried within the city walls as in England or Italy, especially in large towns.5 The Chinese authorities did not regulate the issue of burial grounds until the 1920s, which does not mean there was no control or other forms of regulation.

Burial Customs in the Shanghai Area The dominant mode for burial in China was the individual grave (simu) in a suitably located place selected according to geomantic criteria (feng shui). There was no prescription or regulation to lay the dead to rest in specific burial grounds.6 The individual grave was of course the norm for those who owned or rented land. This was manageable in the countryside where land was available, even for the less privileged groups of the rural population. If they did not own land, people could also rent a piece of land to erect a grave.7 Where land was much in demand for agriculture, however, people used land that offered lesser prospect for cultivation to bury their dead. Villages thus had burial grounds in their vicinity. Because proper burial was a key concern, the more prosperous families often owned a plot of land reserved for burial. The members pooled their resources to pay for funerals and to maintain the graves. Large lineages usually owned communal land that served to fund their temple as well as the place devoted to graves.8 In the 1920s, individual graves became the target of increasing criticism because the modernizing elite came to perceive them as a detrimental encroachment on productive land.9 Under the Nationalist regime after 1927 and more so under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), this even became an official motto to promote “modern” ways of disposing of the dead, such as in cemeteries and cremation. Cemeteries as such did not exist, even if throughout the late imperial period, starting with the Song dynasty, the state promoted earth burial as part of its drive against cremation (see Chapter 9) and encouraged the local elites and officials to establish free graveyards for the common people. The impact of this drive, however, was limited and well-off families would establish an individual grave rather than bury their dead with people of inferior status in a public graveyard.10 These free graveyards were the predecessors of the charity graveyards of the modern period that bore the same stigma.

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118. Letter, FBTA to members, 24 November 1943, S440-1-7, SMA. 119. Letter, FBTA to members, 5 November 1943, S440-1-7, SMA. 120. Letter, FBTA to members, 11 January 1946, 9 November 1946, S440-1-8, SMA. 121. Letter, FBTA to members, 5 February 1947, S440-1-9, SMA. 122. Letter, FBTA to JCJ, 27 November 1943; Letter, Nanshi office of the FBTA to JCJ, November 1943; Letter, FBTA to JCJ, 4 December 1943; Letter, FBTA to JCJ, 12 January 1944, S440-1-17, SMA. 123. Examples of certificates in 1943 in S440-1-7, SMA. 124. Letter, FBTA to JCJ, 6 March 1946, S440-1-9, SMA. 125. Letter, Su-Zhe-Wan Coffin Shipping Company, 16 April 1946, S440-1-17, SMA. 126. Letter, FBTA to JCJ, 6 March 1946; Letter, FBTA to JCJ, 30 April 1946; Letter, JCJ to FBTA, 14 March 1946; Letter, FBTA to JCJ, 16 July 1946; Letter, FBTA to Customs, 15 January 1947, S440-1-9, SMA. 127. Letter, FBTA to WSJ, 17 September 1943, S440-1-7, SMA. 128. Letter, FBTA to members, 11 October 1946, S440-1-8, SMA. 129. Letter, FBTA to members, “Diaocha siwang renkou xunbao,” 24 February 1946, S440-1-9, SMA. 130. Letter, FBTA to JCJ, 17 July 1948, S440-1-8; Letter, FBTA to SHJ, 17 November 1948, S440-1-9, SMA. 131. Report, SMP to Secretary, 19 August 1938, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 132. Ibid. 133. Report, SMP to Secretary, 12 October 1938, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 134. Report, Health inspector to Chief inspector, PHD, 11 June 1941; Report, Health inspector to Chief inspector, PHD, 3 July 1941, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 135. Letter, SPBC to PHD, 5 September 1938, 14 September 1938; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 19 September 1938, 1 October 1938; Report, PHD, 11 October 1938; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 21 October 1938; Letter, Secretary to PWD, 28 October 1938; Letter, PWD to Secretary, 7 November 1938; Letter, PWD to PHD, 8 November 1938, U1-16-2536, SMA. 136. Municipal Gazette, 8 July 1940, U1-16-2534, SMA. 137. Letter, Boat owners to SMC, 3 December 1940, U1-16-2534, SMA. 138. Shanghai shi yunjiusuo guanli guize, n.d. [1939], S40-17-15, SMA. 139. Letter, Deputy secretary to Secretary, 30 December 1939, U1-16-2471, SMA. 140. Letter, SPBC, 5 September 1938, 14 September 1938; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 19 September 1938; Letter, Superintendent PHD, 30 September 1938; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 1 October 1938; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 21 October 1938; Letter, Secretary to PWD, 28 October 1938; Letter, PWD to Secretary, 7 November 1938; Letter, PWD to PHD, 8 November 1938, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 141. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 22 February 1941; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 2 October 1941, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 142. Letter, Superintendent to PHD, 18 August 1941, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 143. Letter, Health inspector to Superintendent, January 1942; Letter, Health inspector to Superintendent, 2 February 1942, U1-16-2536(1), SMA.

398

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144. Letter, Jordan (PHD) to Secretary, 27 May 1942, U1-16-2534, SMA. 145. Report, Health inspector to Chief inspector, PHD, 15 June 1942; Report, Health inspector to Chief inspector, PHD, 8 July 1942; Report, Health inspector to Chief inspector, PHD, 20 July 1942, U1-16-2536(2), SMA. 146. Report, Health inspector to Superintendent, 2 June 1942; Report, Health inspector to Superintendent, 8 December 1942; Report, Chief inspector to PHD, 17 May 1943, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 147. Letter, Health inspector to Superintendent PHD, 15 December 1942; Letter, Health inspector to Superintendent PHD, 15 December 1942U1-16-2536, SMA. The names of the six agencies are not mentioned in the documents. Only those that complained are cited by name: Huai’an Agency (Huaiyang), North Kiangsu Agency (Subei), Yangchow Agency (Yangzhou), and Chinkiang Agency (Jingjiang). Letter, PHD to four agencies, 6 July 1943, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 148. Letter of protest, 3 June 1943; Report, Health inspector, PHD, 3 June 1943, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 149. Letter, Superintendent to PHD, 18 August 1941; Inspector to Superintendent, 5 January 1942; 2 February 1942; Report, Inspector, 25 March 1943, 3 June 1943, U1-16-2536, SMA. 150. See reports by health inspectors, 11 June 1941, 3 July 1941, Documents 238–250, 1942, U1-16-2536(2), SMA. 151. Report, Health inspector, PHD, 3 June 1943; Report, Deputy chief inspector, PHD, 8 June 1943; Letter, PHD to four agencies, 6 July 1943, U1-16-2536(1), SMA. 152. “Guanyu weisheng jiancha shixiang,” WSJ, n.d. [August 1943–July 1944], R50-1-1393, SMA. 153. Report, 11 February 1956, B2-2-73, SMA. 154. Shenbao, 15 April 1940. 155. Xinwenbao, 2 May 1939. 156. “Quan wan zhuanyun lingjiu gongsi,” Xinwenbao, 1 August 1939. 157. Shenbao, 18 June 1940. 158. Letter, Guohua to WSJ, 12 June 1942; Memorandum, WSJ, 5 July 1942, R50-1-433, SMA. 159. “Guanyu weisheng jiancha shixiang,” WSJ, n.d. [August 1943–July 1944], R50-1-1393, SMA. 160. Letter, Huzhou Guild to WSJ, 27 January 1940, R50-1-1414, SMA. 161. Letter, Yizhuang Gongsuo to WSJ, 19 August 1942, S246-1-58, SMA. 162. Memorandum, Hunan Huiguan, 15 July 1941, Q117-25-32, SMA. 163. “Qianzang zu yunzang shoupi zangjiu yongfeice,” 4–19 October 1941; “Qianzang zu yunzang di er pi zangjiu yongfeice,” November 1941, Q117-25-32, SMA. 164. Inspection report, WSJ, 25 February 1942, R50-1-431-2, SMA. 165. “Guanyu weisheng jiancha shixiang,” WSJ, n.d. [August 1943–July 1944], R50-1-1393, SMA. 166. Letter, FBTA to WSJ, 10 April 1944; Letter, FBTA to members, 5 May 1944, S440-1-9, SMA.

Notes to Chapter 3

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167. File S440-1-13, SMA. 168. “Qudi binyiguan cuojiu xian niandi fenbie yingzang,” Shenbao, 18 October 1946; “Zang shen wu di weishengju tichang huozang,” Shenbao, 4 November 1946; Shenbao, 21 November 1946. 169. “Jijiu you shi wu wan ju, huozangchang bu fu ying yong,” Shenbao, 18 December 1946. 170. Notification, WSJ to Leyuan Funeral Parlor, 31 December 1946, S440-119, SMA. 171. Shenbao, 18 December 1946; Newspaper clipping (no source), 16 January 1947, S440-1-16, SMA. 172. Letter, FBTA to members, 4 December 1946, S440-1-8, SMA. 173. Letter, FBTA to SZF, 11 December 1946, S440-1-8, SMA. 174. Letter about stored coffins and cremation, FBTA to SZF, 21 December 1946, Q109-1-1407, SMA; Newspaper clipping (no source), 6 January 1947, S440-1-16, SMA. 175. Report, JCJ, 23 December 1946, S440-1-9, SMA. 176. Shenbao, 26 February 1947. 177. Shenbao, 26 April 1947. 178. Letter, SHJ to FBTA, 13 August 1947, S440-1-15, SMA. 179. Letter, FBTA to SHJ, 19 August 1947, S440-1-15, SMA. 180. Letter, WSJ to FBTA, 26 September 1946; Letter, WSJ to FBTA, 8 November 1947, S440-1-9, SMA. 181. Xinwenbao, 20 November 1947. 182. Zhongyang Ribao, 27 November 1947. 183. Letter, FBTA to Municipal Senate, 26 December 1947; Letter, FBTA to WSJ, 24 December 1947, Q109-1-1407, SMA. 184. Letter, WSJ to Municipal Senate, 26 December 1947, Q109-1-1407; Letter, Mayor Wu Guozhen, 21 December 1947, S440-1-19, SMA. 185. Letter, FBTA to WSJ, 16 December 1947, 26 December 1947, S440-1-19, SMA. 186. Letter, BHPA to Directeur des services administratifs, 12 April 1938; Letter, Chief inspector to BHPA, 18 October 1938, U38-5-1485, SMA. 187. Inspection report, WSJ, 13 August 1945, R50-1-1414-9, SMA. 188. Xinwenbao, 18 September 1947. 189. “Shanghai siming gongsuo qingkuang jianjie,” 1951, Q118-1-5-87, SMA. 190. Letter, Hebei merchants to WSJ, 20 May 1947; Letter, GWJ to WSJ, 28 July 1947; Letter, WSJ to Hebei merchants, 16 August 1947, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 191. Letter, Chengyi Tongye Gonghui, 12 October 1947, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 192. Memorandum, WSJ, 11 March 1948; Draft letter, WSJ, 24 December 1948, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 193. Letter, Mayor to WSJ, 9 February 1948; Memorandum, WSJ, 9 March 1948; Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 13 March 1948, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 194. Report, Health inspector, WSJ, 13 September 1946, Q400-1-4012, SMA. 195. Proceedings, 19 October 1946–3 February 1948, Q185-3-2432, SMA.

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196. Proceedings, 7 January 1945–24 October 1947, Q185-3-13166, Q185-315380, SMA. 197. Minutes, “Gongmu tiaozheng,” WSJ, 31 October 1946, Q400-1-3902, SMA. 198. Note, WSJ, 26 December 1946, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 199. Budget, Office of Funeral Management, November 1946, Q109-1-1938, SMA. 200. Budget application, WSJ, May 1948, 18 July 1948, Q124-1-1805; Newspaper clipping (no source), 27 November 1947, S440-1-16, SMA. 201. Budget application, WSJ, February 1949, Q124-1-1085, SMA. The cost was far from negligible: 11.5 million yuan in 1947, 153 million yuan in 1948, and 15.7 million gold yuan in February 1949. 202. On the issue of postwar refugees and use of coffin repositories as housing, see Janet Y. Chen, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 206–10. 203. Letter, FBTA to WSJ/JCJ, 3 December 1947, S440-1-8; Letter, Datong Funeral Parlor to FBTA, 3 December 1947, S440-1-27, SMA. 204. Xinwenbao, 8 March 1948; Letter, Yizhuang Gongsuo to JCJ, 6 April 1948, S246-1-58. 205. Letter, JCJ to Yizhuang Gongsuo, 6 April 1948, B242-1-489, SMA. 206. Letter, Yizhuang Gongsuo to JCJ, 16 May 1948; Xinwenbao, 22 May 1948; Letter, Yizhuang Gongsuo to JCJ, 22 June 1948; Draft agreement, 30 July 1948, S246-1-58, SMA. 207. Letter, Jiu’an Funeral Parlor to FBTA, 9 June 1948, S440-1-27; Letter, FBTA to JCJ/SHJ/Municipal Senate, 12 June 1948, 8 July 1948, S440-1-8, SMA. 208. Instruction, Mayor, 20 July 1948, S440-1-27, SMA. 209. Letter, Guoji Binyiguan, 9 April 1948; Letter, Guotai Funeral Parlor to FBTA, 28 March 1948, S440-1-27; Letter, FBTA to Gangkou Silingbu, 15 April 1948, S440-1-8; Letter, International Funeral Parlor to FBTA, S440-1-27, SMA. 210. Letter, Leyuan Funeral Parlor to FBTA, 27 March 1948, S440-1-27; Letter, FBTA to SHJ/SZF/Gangkou Silingbu, 28 March 1948, 1 April 1949, S440-1-8, SMA. 211. Letter, Song-Hu Military Headquarters to FBTA, 13 April 1949, S440-127, SMA. 212. Letter, Wan’an Coffin Repository to FBTA, 5 April 1949, S440-1-27; Letter, FBTA to Song-Hu Military Headquarters, 4 May 1949, S440-1-8, SMA. 213. Letter, Dazhong Funeral Parlor to FBTA, 5 April 1949, S440-1-27, SMA. 214. Letter, FBTA to members, 2 May 1948, S440-1-8, SMA. 215. Letter, FBTA to members, 16 April 1948, 26 April 1948, S440-1-8, SMA. 216. Letter, FBTA to members, 30 April 1948, 21 May 1948, 28 May 1948, S440-1-8, SMA. 217. Shenbao, 23 January 1948. 218. “Tong ru chong hai qi wu xian lü hu tongxianghui jinji tonggao,” Shenbao, 19 May 1948. 219. Minutes, FBTA, 16 July 1949, S440-4-5, SMA; Report, WSJ, n.d. [November 1949], B242-1-226, SMA.

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220. Letter, WSJ to People’s Court, n.d. [July 1949], B242-1-124-14, SMA. 221. Minutes, FBTA, 23 July 1949, S440-4-5, SMA. 222. Newspaper clipping (no source), 27 September 1949, S440-1-16, SMA. 223. Report, WSJ, n.d. [November 1949], B242-1-226, SMA. 224. Minutes, FBTA, 17 October 1949, S440-4-5, SMA. 225. Xinmin Wanbao, 21 May 1950. 226. Xinmin Wanbao, 21 May 1951; “Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu weishengju guanyu shanghai shi san nian lai weisheng gongzuo zongjie,” n.d. [1951], B242-1381-1, SMA. 227. Minutes, FBTA, 2 February 1950, S440-4-5; Shanghai shi qingchu shiqu jijiu buchong banfa, 22 May 1950, B242-1-225-6, SMA. 228. Report, WSJ, n.d. [1952], B242-1-381-1, SMA. 229. Survey form (qingkuang diaochabiao), Doumiye Gongsuo, March 1951, Q118-1-6-87; Survey form, Siming Gongsuo, 10 April 1951, Q118-1-6-73, SMA. 230. Minutes, 20 November 1951, Q118-1-21, SMA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

chapter 4. a final resting place 1. Shenbao, 9 July 1917. 2. Julia Barrow, “Urban Cemetery Location in the High Middle Ages,” in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600, ed. Steven Bassett (Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1992), 78–100. 3. Vanessa Harding, The Dead and the Living in Paris and London, 1500– 1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 82; Madeleine Lassère, “Les pauvres et la mort en milieu urbain dans la France du XIXe siècle: Funérailles et cimetières,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 42, no. 1 (1995): 109; Jacqueline Thibaut-Payen, Les morts, l’Église et l’État: Recherches d’histoire administrative sur la sépulture et les cimetières dans le ressort du parlement de Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fernand Lanore, 1977). 4. Chris Brooks, Mortal Remains: The History and Present State of the Victorian and Edwardian Cemetery (Exeter, UK: Wheaton, 1989), 37–43; James Stevens Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death (Detroit: Partridge, 1972), 33–35, 131–33. 5. There were no less than 107 parish churches in London, all of which at some time received burials. Many disappeared over time. Yet it shows the extent of intra muros burial in modern London. Harding, The Dead and the Living, 120. 6. Jan Jakob Maria de Groot, The Religious System of China (Leyden [Leiden]: E. J. Brill, 1892), 3:1374. 7. Ibid., 3:1375; John Henry Gray, China: A History of the Laws, Manners, and Customs of the People (London: Macmillan, 1878), 297. 8. David Wakefield, Fenjia Household Division and Inheritance in Qing and Republican China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998), 192–93. 9. Yet John Lossing Buck estimated the total surface devoted to graves to only 2 percent of all cultivated land. John Lossing Buck, Chinese Farm Economy (New York: Garland, 1980), 31–32. 10. Patricia Ebrey, “Cremation in Sung China,” American Historical Review 95, no. 2 (1990): 423–24.

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11. De Groot, Religious System of China, 3:845, 847; Dispute case, Shenbao, 23 December 1882. 12. Henrietta Harrison, The Making of the Republican Citizen: Political Ceremonies and Symbols in China, 1911–1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 13. North China Herald, 13 June 1863. On unburied coffins in Ningbo, see North China Herald, 23 October 1852, 9 September 1865. 14. Granville G. Loch, The Closing Events of the Campaign in China: The Operations in the Yang-Tze-Kiang and Treaty of Nanking (London: J. Murray, 1843), 44. 15. North China Herald, 15 February 1851. 16. “Xian zang xi guan,” Shenbao, 24 September 1877. 17. “Quan zang wen,” Shenbao, 21 May 1879; “Qing yan jin ting guan shuo,” Shenbao, 14 March 1880; “Lun qian zang,” Shenbao, 17 June 1881; “Lun ting guan e su,” Shenbao, 22 March 1886; “Lun ting guan bu zang,” Shenbao, 20 January 1889; “Zai lun su zang yi chu yi,” Shenbao, 30 August 1890; “Lun yi yan shen ting guan bu zang zhi li,” Shenbao, 6 January 1892; “Lun fang yi yi xian zang ting guan,” Shenbao, 9 June 1894; “Lun zu zang,” Shenbao, 1 August 1902; “Quan zang bu yi zao qie shuo,” Shenbao, 14 August 1903. See also North China Herald, 23 August 1862. 18. “Lun jin huozang,” Shenbao, 6 September 1877. 19. North China Herald, 31 January 1852, 20 April 1861. 20. “Yi zun cui zang bao guan gao shi,” Shenbao, 31 March 1873; Shenbao, 9 January 1885. 21. Shenbao, 18 September 1877. 22. “Shanghai xian mou gao shi,” Shenbao, 16 March 1878. 23. Shenbao, 30 March 1891. 24. Ibid. 25. “Quan zang wen,” Shenbao, 21 May 1879. 26. “Qing yan jin ting guan shuo,” Shenbao, 14 March 1880. 27. “Lun yi yan shen ting guan bu zang zhi li,” Shenbao, 6 January 1892. 28. “Xin ding baomu zhangcheng,” Shenbao, 26 March 1885. 29. “Wei jin ting guan,” Shenbao, 4 May 1880; “Shi jin ting guan bu zang shi,” Shenbao, 8 July 1880 (governor of Jiangsu); “Yu ling su zang,” Shenbao, 24 July 1880 (Yangzhou); “Yan jin ting jiu shi,” Shenbao, 3 April 1885 (Songjiang Prefecture). 30. Shenbao, 26 November 1886, 2 November 1887. 31. “Zai lun su zang yi chu yi,” Shenbao, 30 August 1890. 32. “Lun fang yi yi xian zang ting guan,” Shenbao, 9 June 1894. 33. “Lun zu zang,” Shenbao, 1 August 1902. 34. “Zhuzhong weisheng zhi pici,” Shenbao, 11 May 1908 (Shanghai daotai). 35. “Chengxiang quid bingshe zhi wengao,” Shenbao, 5 October 1910; “Shen jin ting gun bu zang zhi bing su,” Shenbao, 18 November 1910. 36. “Quan yu mai zang guan mu,” Shenbao, 28 September 1912. 37. “Fu you quan su zang shuo,” Shenbao, 28 June 1885; “Xu su zang shuo,” Shenbao, 30 June 1885; “Quan zang wen,” Shenbao, 17 August 1885; “Shu shu

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su fu Huang zishou zhong han quan zang shi hou,” Shenbao, 27 November 1889, 29 November 1889. 38. “Fen guan,” Shenbao, 22 April 1874; “Yin gong lu,” Shenbao, 18 May 1876. 39. “Dao guan,” Shenbao, 1 August 1876; “Kan yan xu wen,” Shenbao, 29 August 1876; “Xi guan bei qie,” Shenbao, 26 December 1881; “Xi guan bei dao,” Shenbao, 28 December 1881; “Dao guan you jian,” Shenbao, 19 October 1883; “Dao guan yi cha,” Shenbao, 4 May 1884; “Pao guan yi ban,” Shenbao, 26 January 1885; “Lun qian zang,” Shenbao, 17 June 1881. 40. “Ting guan bing su,” Shenbao, 25 October 1885. 41. Shenbao, 4 September 1881. 42. “Fu you quan su zang shuo,” Shenbao, 28 June 1885. 43. “Lun ting guan bu zang,” Shenbao, 20 January 1889. 44. “Shi jin ting guan,” Shenbao, 29 December 1902 (Songjiang daotai). 45. Qudi tingjiu zhangcheng, 19 April 1929. The text was revised in March 1948. Q400-1-4010, SMA. 46. Shenbao, 2 March 1927, 27 March 1937. 47. Report, SHJ, Shenbao, 20 August 1928. 48. On Wang Yiting, see James Brooks Jessup, “The Householder Elite: Buddhist Activism in Shanghai, 1920–1956” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2010). 49. “Wang Yiting faqi jianzhu mianfei gongmu,” Shenbao, 17 April 1936. 50. On beliefs in “avenging ghosts,” see Stephan Feuchtwang, The Anthropology of Religion, Charisma, and Ghosts: Chinese Lessons for Adequate Theory (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 125–42; Erik Mueggler, The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 267–70. For a historical perspective, see Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). 51. Shanghai xian zhi [Shanghai County gazetteer] ([Kiangsu Province]: Nanyuan Zhiju Chongjiaoben, 1872), 196. 52. Hsi-yuan Chen, “Summoning the Wandering Ghosts of the City: The Li Sacrifice in the State Cult and the Popular Festival in Suzhou” (paper presented at the Berkeley Summer Research Institute, University of California, Berkeley, August 2011); Zhu Jianming, “Shanghai Chenghuangmiao de Sanxun Huijiji” [The Sanxunhui sacrifice of the Shanghai City God Temple], Minsu Quyi, no. 135 (May 2000): 119–32. 53. Charity cemeteries were established sometimes after a disaster that necessitated burying a group of coffins. In one case of multiple deaths in a Zhabei factory, the Zhabei Charity Group (Zhabei Cishantuan) served as an intermediary between the factory and the bereaved families. Eventually it bought 3 mu of land near Pengpu. Shenbao, 17 April 1923, 19 April 1924, 23 April 1924. 54. Bo Run and Yao Guangfa, Songjiang fu xuzhi [Songjiang Prefecture supplementary gazetteer] (1884; repr., Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, 1974), 9:940–41. 55. Yao Wennan, Shanghai xian xuzhi [Shanghai County supplementary gazetteer] (Shanghai: Nanyuan, 1918), 3:271–76. 56. Shenbao, 11 March 1926, 19 March 1926, 12 June 1926.

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57. Shenbao, 31 January 1874; Bryna Goodman, “The Locality as Microcosm of the Nation? Native Place Networks and Early Urban Nationalism in China,” Modern China 21, no. 4 (1995): 391–94. 58. Shenbao, 27 March 1873. 59. Shenbao, 10 April 1922, 22 June 1922, 25 August 1922. 60. “Xinmen wai shenshang qing pu malu,” Shenbao, 30 September 1907; “Ximen wai qian zhong zhulu wenti,” Shenbao, 26 March 1908; “Gongchengju jiejue jiu tiao luxia,” Shenbao, 26 March 1908; “Hu dao duiyu qianzhong zhulu zhi shenzhong,” Shenbao, 28 March 1908. 61. Shenbao, 16 November 1914, 12 October 1920. 62. Shenbao, 9 April 1915, 10 December 1917. 63. Shenbao, 16 September 1912, 20 September 1912. 64. Shenbao, 9 December 1903, 19 February 1904. 65. Shenbao, 28 December 1932. 66. Shenbao, 30 October 1893. 67. Shenbao, 24 August 1890. 68. “Zai lun su zang yi chu yi,” Shenbao, 30 August 1890. 69. Shenbao, 31 May 1922. 70. Shenbao, 7 May 1924, 8 April 1926 (Pudong, Yangjing). 71. Shenbao, 14 April 1882. 72. Shenbao, 8 May 1878. 73. Shenbao, 29 April 1889. 74. Shenbao, 2 April 1878. 75. Shenbao, 23 March 1926. 76. Shenbao, 5 September 1891. 77. Shenbao, 20 June 1874, 15 December 1874, 6 November 1876, 1 April 1897. 78. Shenbao, 20 May 1879, 1 April 1897 (bodies in river). 79. Shenbao, 5 September 1891 (sailor). 80. “Lun you li zhi jia yi baohu tongzong fenmu,” Shenbao, 4 May 1886. 81. “Citang de gailiang,” Shenbao, 18 September 1920. 82. “Zangshi zhi gailiang,” Shenbao, 6 April 1921. 83. “Gongmu jianyi,” Shenbao, 25 November 1921. 84. “Gongmu bu ru shenzang,” Shenbao, 21 April 1924. 85. “Dui gailiang fenmu de taolun,” Shenbao, 27 August 1932. 86. “Chuang jian gongmu zhunyu bei’an,” Shenbao, 16 October 1919; Burial notice, Shenbao, 3–6 April 1919. 87. Advertisements, Shenbao, 16 April 1928. 88. “Shanghai guang-zhao gongsuo tonggao,” Shenbao, 4 August 1924. 89. “Lü hu yongren zhengqiu jianzhu gongmu yijian,” Shenbao, 4 August 1924. 90. Shenbao, 11 January 1926. 91. “Pudong gongsuo goude gongmu jidi,” Shenbao, 17 June 1926. 92. “Jiangxi huiguan dongshihui zhi,” Shenbao, 25 June 1926; Shenbao, 21 May 1929, 24 September 1929, 11 December 1930.

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understand the dynamics of these various forms of burial. After the midnineteenth century, when the city expanded in all directions, to the north and west with the foreign settlements and to the south with the urban expansion of the original walled city, the urban sprawl slowly engulfed areas heretofore used for agriculture but also to bury the dead. Numerous villages peppered the rural landscape, many of them with local and family burial grounds but also with lots of scattered individual tombs. Close to the city wall, various organizations, among them the major guilds, also maintained cemeteries and coffin repositories. The various forms of burial grounds literally produced a death belt around the city with well-defined contours and a fuzzier halo as one moved away into the countryside. Although earth burial was the norm, religious and social considerations strongly influenced actual burial practices, in particular beliefs in feng shui, which entailed choosing a propitious site and time for burial. These beliefs produced a very particular funeral landscape around Shanghai. Whereas Westerners buried their dead shortly after death, in the countryside in the Jiangnan area where such beliefs predominated in popular customs, actual burial depended on the decisions of the feng shui specialists and Daoist priests. In-between, coffins were kept aboveground, either in temples that provided a storage place but far more commonly by placing the coffin just anywhere in a field or in a site that looked like a cemetery, where coffins had been buried previously, yet without any inscription. The practice was known as tingguan bu zang, or “aboveground coffins.” Local topography also explained why the coffins were not buried. In the Shanghai region, the soil was filled with water. As soon as one dug the earth, water was bound to surface. It was inconceivable to bury one’s dead in such inauspicious conditions.13 Although the practice was not limited to the Jiangnan area—similar burial grounds could be found in North China—coffins were placed on the ground and covered with earth that formed a mound above the coffins. When British troops came to Shanghai for the first time, one part of the contingent walked through the countryside from Wusong to Shanghai. Granville Loch, one of the officers, reported that “graves were in every field—mounds of earth, some hollowed into vaults, others with the coffin resting on the top, and covered with matting.”14 A Western resident reported in 1851: “The appearance of Shanghae and its vicinity to a stranger arriving here [. . .] is very gloomy, arising from the numerous cemeteries and burial places of the Chinese, truly said to be scattered over the face of the earth.”15 Most often coffins were left aboveground, with only straw or bamboo matting as a protection against the elements (see Figure 4.1). The wind often removed these covers, leaving the coffin exposed to inevitable damage. Were such places actual cemeteries where coffins could await the proper

406

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118. “Suzhou wulong gong mu qi shi,” Shenbao, 7 January 1940. 119. “Shanghai shi binyi jijiu yunzang shangye tongye gonghui huiyuan mingce,” September 1954, S440-4-3, SMA. 120. Shanghai shi guanli sili gongmu guize, Shenbao, 21 November 1930. 121. “Qudi sili gongmu jian she bingshe,” Shenbao, 19 September 1930. 122. Ibid. 123. Shenbao, 13 November 1934 (Shanghai Cemetery and Shanghai Funeral Parlor). 124. Shanghai tebie shi guanli sili gongmu guize, n.d. [1941], U1-16-2423; Shanghai tebie shi guanli sili gongmu guize (draft), 7 June 1941, R1-12-58, SMA; Shanghai tebie shi guanli sili gongmu guize cao’an, Shenbao, 18 January 1947. 125. Kerrie L. Macpherson, “The Head of the Dragon: The Pudong New Area and Shanghai’s Urban Development,” Planning Perspectives 9, no. 1 (1994): 71–74. 126. Letter, Applicant to WSJ, 27 December 1946; Letter, GWJ to WSJ, 13 February 1947; Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 26 February 1947, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 127. Letter, GWJ to WSJ, 9 June 1947; Letter, WSJ to TDJ, 28 April 1947, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 128. Application form, 17 March 1947; Letter, WSJ to GWJ/TDJ, 12 June 1947; Letter, GWJ to WSJ, 19 December 1947; Letter, WSJ to Applicant, 25 December 1947, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 129. Letter, Hebei merchants to WSJ, 20 May 1947; Letter, GWJ to WSJ, 28 July 1947; Letter, WSJ to Hebei merchants, 16 August 1947, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 130. Letter, Shanghai Jidujiao Zilihui, 2 May 1947; Draft letter, WSJ, n.d. [1947], Q400-1-3905, SMA. 131. Application letter, Changshou Gongmu, 26 May 1947; Application letter, Wu Cengrong to WSJ, 31 March 1948, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 132. Memorandum, WSJ, 26 February 1948; Note, WSJ, 6 March 1948, Q400-1-3904, SMA. 133. Letter, Zhenru Municipal Office, 24 September 1947; Application form, Chengyi Tongye Gonghui, 22 October 1947; Internal memorandum, WSJ, 23 October 1946; Letter, GWJ to WSJ, 6 December 1947; Letter, WSJ to Chengyi Tongye Gonghui, 19 June 1947, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 134. Application form, Taiping Gongmu, 17 March 1947, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 135. Ibid. 136. Gongmu tiaoli, Shenbao, 22 October 1928. 137. Gongmu tiaoli, Q215-1-8142, U1-4-711, SMA. 138. Shenbao, 30 March 1929. 139. “Gongmu yu huozang qingnan,” Shenbao, 25 February 1929. The Five Province Conference was established in 1928 by the central government to coordinate its policies in various domains, in particular land policy. It included Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, and Fujian. 140. Shenbao, 29 April 1929. 141. “Shehuiju tichang gongmu,” Shenbao, 24 March 1929; “Duanping tichang gongmu zhi zhongyao,” Shenbao, 28 March 1929.

Notes to Chapter 4

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142. Instruction, Mayor to WSJ/GWJ, 29 October 1928, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 143. Letter, TDJ to SZF, 22 November 1929, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 144. Letter, TDJ, 16 December 1929, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 145. Shanghai tebie shi weishengju guanli shili gongmu guanli zhangcheng, 6 February 1930, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 146. Letter, WSJ to GWJ, 12 December 1930, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 147. Budget estimate, WSJ, n.d. [1930]; Letter, WSJ to GWJ, 27 January 1931, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 148. Document, WSJ, 16 December 1930, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 149. Instruction, Mayor to WSJ/CZJ, 6 February 1931, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 150. Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 26 May 1931; Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 16 June 1931, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 151. “Shanghai shi diyi gongmu tiantu gongcheng shuoming shu,” Q215-18143; Letter, GWJ to TDJ, 30 September 1931, Q215-1-8142, SMA. See all the relevant technical and legal documents in Q215-1-8142, SMA. 152. Letter, Heji Company to GWJ, 26 January 1932, Q215-1-8143, SMA. 153. Letter, WSJ/GWJ to Mayor, 7 June 1932; Letter, Mayor to WSJ/GWJ, 28 July 1932, Q215-1-8143, SMA. 154. Letter, GWJ/WSJ/CZJ to Mayor, 16 September 1932, Q215-1-8143, SMA. 155. “Shanghai shili jiangwan di yi gongmu wangong,” Shenbao, 10 September 1932. 156. On the spatial development of railways in and around Shanghai, see Yue Qintao, “Hu–Ning, Hu–Hang–Yong tielu yanjiu” [A study of Shanghai–Nanjing, Shanghai–Hangzhou–Ningbo railways] (Ph.D. diss., Fudan University, 2013), chap. 3, 151–211. 157. Letter, Mayor to GWJ, 30 November 1932, Q215-1-8143; Letter, WSJ to GWJ, 23 February 1933, Q215-1-8143, SMA. 158. Letter, GWJ to Mayor, 16 November 1932; Letter, Mayor to GWJ, 7 February 1933, Q215-1-8143, SMA. 159. Minutes, 27 February 1933; Letter, GWJ to WSJ, 19 March 1933; Letter, GWJ/WSJ to Mayor, 7 April 1933, Q215-1-8143, SMA. 160. Letter, Ministry of Railway, 4 April 1933; Letter, Ministry of Railway to GWJ, 1 May 1933, Q215-1-8143, SMA. 161. Letter, Mayor to WSJ, 9 May 1933; Letter, WSJ, 21 August 1933; “Jisuan zhi,” n.d. [May 1933], Q215-1-8143; Meeting report, GWJ/WSJ/TDJ/CZJ, 21 February 1934; Letter, WSJ to CZJ (loan contract), 18 July 1934; Letter, CZJ to Municipal bank, 3 August 1934; Letter, GWJ to WSJ (extra funding), 16 October 1934; Letter, Mayor to GWJ/WSJ, 31 October 1934, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 162. Letter, GWJ to TDJ, 17 December 1934, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 163. Letter, GWJ to WSJ, 28 August 1935; “Zhichu yusuan shu, 16 July 1935, Q215-1-8144, SMA. 164. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 27 April 1934, Q215-1-8142, SMA. 165. Minutes, GWJ/WSJ/TDJ/CZJ/Bureau of Public Safety, 16 August 1935, Q215-1-8144, SMA; Shenbao, 18 August 1935.

408

Notes to Chapter 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

166. Meeting report, WSJ, 1 December 1932, Q215-1-8143, SMA. 167. Letter, WSJ to municipal bureaus, 28 November 1932, Q215-1-8143, SMA. 168. “Shanghai shi shili gongmu guanli guize,” Shenbao, 9 October 1932. 169. Shenbao, 18 March 1928. 170. Shenbao, 20 March 1933. 171. Shenbao, 17 January 1935, 12 November 1935. 172. Report, “Zhengli wanguo gongmu baogao,” 1935, Q215-1-8277, SMA. 173. Letter, Mayor to WSJ/TDJ/GWJ/CZJ, 20 April 1933, Q215-1-8277, SMA. 174. Instruction, Mayor, 27 September 1934, Q123-1-871-5, SMA. 175. Letter, WSJ/TDJ/GWJ/CZJ to Mayor, 26 March 1933, Q215-1-8277, SMA. 176. Minutes, WSJ/TDJ/GWJ/CZJ, 8 October 1934, Q215-1-8277, SMA. 177. Letter, Mayor to WSJ, 7 June 1935, Q215-1-8277, SMA; Shenbao, 10 November 1936. 178. Documents, GWJ, June 1936, Q215-1-8277, SMA. 179. Shenbao, 23 October 1935. See also Yang Guozhu, “Wo guo gongmudi guanli fagui yange, shiyong yu yanxiu zhi tantao” [A discussion of the evolution, application, and testing of the regulations on the management of cemeteries in China], Jingshe Fazhi Luncong, no. 8 (1981): 399–418. 180. “Jiang weiyuanzhang tichang gongmu ling bianru guomin duben zhong guanshu minzhong zhengque zhishi,” Shenbao, 7 February 1937. 181. Shenbao, 12 March 1939. 182. Letter, Chen Gongbo to Putong Dichan Guanli Weiyuanhui, 29 August 1942, R1-18-1231, SMA. The committee was placed under the Japanese Special Services. 183. Letter, Putong Dichan Guanli Weiyuanhui to Chen Gongbo, 12 December 1942, R1-18-1231; Letter, WSJ to funeral parlors, 9 March 1942, R50-1-421-1, SMA. 184. Letter, Chen Gongbo to Putong Dichan Guanli Weiyuanhui, 25 December 1942, R1-18-1231, SMA. 185. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 24 October 1947; Note, WSJ, 16 October 1947, Q400-1-3907, SMA. 186. Letter, Mayor to Japanese Navy, 17 April 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 187. Letter, TDJ to Mayor, 24 April 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 188. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 19 June 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 189. Report, WSJ to Mayor, 11 May 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 190. Letter, citizens to WSJ, 5 May 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 191. Letter, citizens to WSJ, 14 May 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 192. Letter, 81 citizens to WSJ, 16 June 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 193. Letter, 106 citizens to Mayor, n.d. [June 1943]; Letter, citizens to Guomindang Zhongyang Zhixing Weiyuanhui, n.d. [transferred on 28 June 1943 to the Shanghai mayor]; Letter, citizens to Mayor, 8 June 1943; Letter, citizens to Mayor, 14 June 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 194. Letter, citizens to Mayor, 20 July 1943, R1-9-284, SMA.

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195. Letter, citizens to SZF, 28 June 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 196. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 14 August 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 197. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 3 June 1943. The rejection of the Miaohang location explains why it was not necessary to use the Hangchan Cemetery. 198. Letter, Mayor to WSJ, 26 August 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 199. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 3 August 1943; Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 12 October 1943, R1-9-284, SMA. 200. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 22 March 1944, R1-9-284, SMA. 201. “Lü hu yueqiao saomu daibanchu qi shi,” Shenbao, 1 April 1939. 202. “Chang’an gongmu ge zanghu jun jian,” Shenbao, 4 April 1939. 203. Shenbao, 16 April 1939. 204. Shenbao, 1939 (Jiu’an, Wan’an, Hongqiao), 1940 (Chang’an, Bao’an, Dalu). 205. Instruction, Mayor to WSJ, 21 November 1945, Q400-1-3924, SMA. 206. Shenbao, 12 March 1939. 207. Letter, Board of Administration to WSJ, 18 April 1946, Q400-1-3917, SMA. 208. Letter, Mayor to Shanghai Cemetery Board, 16 October 1946, Q400-13917, SMA. 209. Letter to the editor, Xinwenbao, 22 November 1946. 210. Newspaper article (no title), 15 December 1946, S440-1-16, SMA. 211. Letter, Shanghai Cemetery Board to WSJ, 15 February 1947; Letter, 26 February 1947, Q400-1-3917, SMA. 212. Letter, Shanghai Cemetery Board to WSJ, 27 November 1946; Resolution, Municipal Senate, 12 December 1946; Letter, Municipal senators, 9 June 1947, Q400-1-3917, SMA. 213. Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 12 December 1946; Letter, WSJ to TDJ, 18 December 1946; Memorandum, WSJ, 11 March 1947, Q400-1-3917, SMA. 214. Letter, WSJ to Municipal senators, n.d. [June 1947], Q400-1-3917, SMA. 215. Letter, Shanghai Cemetery Board, 25 November 1946, Q400-1-3917, SMA. 216. Letter, Mayor to WSJ, 24 May 1947, Q400-1-3917, SMA. 217. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 9 March 1949; Letter, Mayor to WSJ, 8 April 1949, Q400-1-3917, SMA. 218. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 24 October 1947; Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 30 April 1948, Q400-1-3907, SMA. 219. Note, WSJ, 16 October 1947, Q400-1-3907, SMA. 220. Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 2 April 1948, Q400-1-3907, SMA. 221. Letter, Zhongyang Xintuoju to WSJ, 30 June 1947, Q400-1-3907, SMA. 222. Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 2 April 1948; Minutes, WSJ/TDJ/Zhongyang Xintuoju, 1 April 1948; Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 22 June 1948; Letter, Zhongyang Xintuoju to WSJ, 8 December 1948; Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 2 November 1948, Q400-1-3907, SMA. 223. Shenbao, 21 November 1946. 224. Letter, WSJ to GWJ, 19 August 1946; Memorandum, WSJ, 16 October 1947; Letter, GWJ to WSJ, 24 December 1946; Letter, WSJ to GWJ, 17 September

410

Notes to Chapter 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1946, Q400-1-3916; Letter, WSJ to GWJ, 6 November 1947; Letter, GWJ to WSJ, 5 December 1947; Letter, WSJ to GWJ, 17 December 1947, Q400-1-3953, SMA. 225. Memorandum, WSJ, 10 April 1947; Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 30 April 1947, Q400-1-3916, SMA. 226. Newspaper article (untitled), 26 February 1947, S440-1-16, SMA. 227. Report, WSJ, 9 March 1947, Q131-7-1592, SMA. 228. Letter, J. B. Leong to International Cemetery, 5 May 1947; Letter, J. B. Leong to WSJ, 19 June 1947, Q400-1-3917, SMA. 229. Memorandum, WSJ, 16 June 1947, Q400-1-3917, SMA. 230. Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 22 August 1947; Memorandum and map, WSJ, n.d. [1947]; Letter, Mayor to TDJ/WSJ, 22 September 1948, Q400-1-3917, SMA. 231. Letter, WSJ/TDJ to Mayor, 23 January 1948; Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 13 April 1948; Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 26 June 1948, Q400-1-3924, SMA. 232. Letter, WSJ to TDJ, 8 June 1948; Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 7 July 1948; Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 30 September 1948, Q400-1-3916, SMA. 233. Letter, TDJ to WSJ, 10 November 1948, Q400-1-3924, SMA. 234. Memorandum, WSJ, 16 September 1949, B242-1-123, SMA. 235. See detailed map of the Lokawei Cemetery, U38-4-3282, SMA. 236. Memorandum, First District Office (former International Settlement) to SZF, 6 April 1944, U1-14-3185, SMA. 237. Letter, DASM to DG, 11 August 1939, U38-4-3280, SMA. 238. “Guang-zhao shanzhuang jianshi hegu guanggao,” Shenbao, 8 November 1916. 239. “Lingjie lianhehui wei gongmu qianzang shijin yaoqi shi,” Shenbao, 4 May 1929. 240. “Shanghai shi lingjie lianhehui quanti huiyuan qi shi,” Shenbao, 20 October 1934. 241. Letter, Shanghai Shi Lingjie Lianhehui, 9 August 1939, U38-5-1485, SMA. 242. “Zhenru qingzhen di’er bieshu zuori luocheng,” Shenbao, 24 January 1934. 243. Shenbao, 3 October 1939; “Rifang leqian huijiao gongmu,” Shenbao, 6 October 1939. 244. Memorandum, Jingchaju, 11 May 1945, R1-9-361, SMA. 245. Letter, Lingnan Cemetery/Guang-Zhao Cemetery/Yanjishantang to members, 21 October 1947, Q117-2-217, SMA. 246. Report, Cantonese Native-Place Association, 27 September 1950; Letter, Cantonese Native-Place Association, 23 October 1950, Q117-2-217, SMA. 247. Letter, Cantonese Native-Place Association to WSJ, 23 October 1947; Letter, WSJ to Cantonese Native-Place Association, 10 November 1947, Q117-2-217, SMA. 248. Letter, Cantonese Native-Place Association, 13 November 1947, Q117-2217, SMA. 249. Document, Guangdong Lühu Tongxianghui, n.d. [1948], Q117-2-216, SMA. See individual removal authorization forms in Q117-2-217, SMA. 250. Letter, Guangdong Lühu Tongxianghui to members, 17 March 1948; Letter, Guangdong Lühu Tongxianghui to members, 4 April 1948, Q117-2-216, SMA.

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Bone boxes were individual ossuaries where the remains were placed after excavating the bones. Several terms were used to designate these boxes: wata, jiuta, or guta. 251. Letter, Cantonese Native-Place Association to board members, 24 January [1951], Q117-2-217, SMA. 252. Letter, Lingnan Cemetery Board to members, 8 September 1950; Minutes, Lingnan Cemetery Board, 13 September 1950; Report, Cantonese Native-Place Association, 27 September 1950, Q117-2-217, SMA. 253. Letter, Xi’an Cemetery to WSJ, 20 December 1948; Memorandum, WSJ, 1948, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 254. Memorandum, WSJ, March 1946, Q400-1-3926, SMA. See also Memorandum, WSJ, 15 November 1945, Q400-1-3926, SMA. 255. Letter, British consul to Mayor, 30 August 1948; Letter, Mayor to WSJ, 13 September 1948, Q400-1-3903, SMA. 256. “Shandong lu shang waiguo fenshan,” 2 April 1949, Q400-1-3903, SMA. 257. Note, WSJ, 4 April 1949, Q400-1-3903, SMA. 258. Letter, Ingénieur-en-chef to DASM, 2 August 1935, U38-4-3286, SMA. 259. Letter, BHPA to DASM, 25 September 1935, U38-4-3286, SMA. 260. Letter, Wai Wou Yuen soy sauce factory to FMC, 15 October 1935, U384-3286, SMA. 261. Letter, Wai Wou Yuen soy sauce factory to FMC, 19 February 1936, U384-3286, SMA. 262. Letter, Rabaute, BHPA to DASM, 15 November 1935; Letter, Rabaute, BHAP-DA, 19 January 1937; Letter, Rabaute, BHPA to DASM, 4 April 1937, U38-4-3286, SMA. 263. Letter, BHPA to DASM, 11 March 1936, U38-4-3286, SMA. 264. Letter, Watchman to BHPA, 17 April 1936, U38-4-3286, SMA. 265. Letter, Watchman to Chef inspecteur de l’hygiène, 26 January 1936, U385-374, SMA. 266. Letter, Trinity Cathedral to Mayor, 11 November 1947; Letter, Office of Funeral Management, 12 April 1949, Q400-1-3918, SMA. 267. Report, Warden, 19 July 1948; Memorandum, 29 October 1948; Letter, Lawyer to WSJ, 22 October 1948, Q400-1-3916, SMA. 268. Letter, Office of Funeral Management to WSJ, 14 May 1949, Q400-13923, SMA. 269. Note, WSJ, 15 January 1948, Q400-1-4004, SMA. 270. Note, WSJ, 5 August 1948, Q400-1-4004, SMA. 271. Report, WSJ, n.d. [November 1949], B242-1-226, SMA. 272. The participants included the Secretariat of the People’s Government, the Bureau of Public Health, the Bureau of Civil Affairs, the Bureau of Public Works, the People’s Court, and various local offices. Letter, People’s Government, 14 November 1949, B242-1-226, SMA. 273. Report,“Shifu guanyu sili gongmu de shuoming,” n.d. [November 1949], B242-1-226, SMA. 274. “Chuli sili gongmu wenti zuotanhui huiyi jilubu,” 4 April 1950, B242-1226, SMA. Beyond the “green belt,” the power to authorize new cemeteries was entrusted to the local authorities in accordance with municipal regulations.

412

Notes to Chapter 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

275. Report,“Shifu guanyu sili gongmu de shuoming,” n.d. [November 1949], B242-1-226; “Heding sili gongmu shoujia jisuanbiao,” 6 December 1949, B242-1226, SMA. 276. Shanghai shi yunjiusuo guanli guize; Shanghai shi sili huozangchang guanli guize; Shanghai shi bingshe guanli guize; Shanghai shi binyiguan guanli guize, March 1950, B242-1-226, SMA. 277. Shanghai shi sili gongmu guanli guize, 5 March 1950, B242-1-124, B2421-226, SMA. 278. The successive drafts of the regulation can be found in file B242-1-226, SMA. 279. Shanghai shi sili gongmu shenqing sheli zanxing shenhe banfa, 25 March 1950, B242-1-226, SMA (also in B242-1-124-80). 280. “Chuli sili gongmu wenti zuotanhui huiyi jilubu,” 4 April 1950, B242-1226, SMA. 281. Minutes, Meeting on private cemeteries, 4 April 1950, B242-1-226, SMA. 282. “Ge youguan jiguan shenhe sili gongmu shenqing sheli anjian yijianbiao,” August 1950; “Shangtao shenhe sili gongmu gaijin shiyi zuotanhui,” 12 September 1950, B242-1-226, SMA. 283. Letter, WSJ to Shanghai Shi Jiaqu Tugai Weiyuanhui, 3 July 1951, B14-126, SMA. 284. Letter, WSJ to Shanghai Shi Jiaqu Tugai Weiyuanhui, 20 November 1951, B14-1-26, SMA. 285. “Shili gongmu muxuan tongjibiao,” 1953, B1-2-841, SMA. 286. Letter, People’s Government to Shanghai Shi Renmin Zhengzhi Falü Weiyuanhui, 2 April 1954; Letter, Shanghai Shi Renmin Zhengzhi Falü Weiyuanhui to People’s Government, 1 July 1954, B1-2-839, SMA. 287. Zheng Zu’an, “Shandong lu gongmu de bianqian” [The vicissitudes of the “Shandong Road Cemetery”], Dang’an yu Lishi, no. 6 (2001): 72. 288. Notification, MZJ, 28 October 1953, B1-2-840, SMA. 289. Document, “Guanyu qian jing’ansi gongmu qingkuang ji jinhou juti cuoshi yijian,” n.d. [1953], B1-2-840, SMA. 290. See correspondence in “British Civil and Military Cemeteries in China: Future of Bubbling Well Cemetery in Shanghai—1953,” FO 369/4909; “British Civil and Military Cemeteries in China: Future of Bubbling Well Cemetery in Shanghai—1953,” FO 369/4910, FO 369/4911; “Closure of Bubbling Well Cemetery, Shanghai; British and American Cemeteries in China,” FO 369/5018, British National Archives. 291. “Removal of Pa Hsien Cemetery in Shanghai to Meet Municipal Construction Requirements—1957,” FO 35/6160, British National Archives. 292. Letter, Gongyong Shiye Guanliju to all concerned units, 26 May 1959; “Shili luwan gongmu qianzang jihua,” 21 May 1959, B257-1-1500, 34, SMA. 293. Report, “Guanyu dui longhua zhongxin gongmu huozangchang gongzuo jiancha baogao,” 16 February 1960, B168-1-148-102, SMA. 294. Ibid. 295. Ibid.

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296. Shanghai minzheng zhi (Shanghai: Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, 2000), http://www.shtong.gov.cn/node2/node2245/node65977/node66002/ node66042/userobject1ai61642.html. 297. Ibid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

chapter 5. foreign cemeteries and the colonial space of death This chapter is a revised and expanded version of Christian Henriot, “The Colonial Space of Death in Shanghai (1844–1949),” in Twentieth-Century Colonialism and China: Localities, the Everyday and the World, ed. Bryna Goodman and David S. G. Goodman (Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2012), 108–33. 1. The best introduction to this process is Robert A. Bickers, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832–1914 (London: Allen Lane, 2011). 2. By far the best study on this issue is Pär Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 3. Zou Yiren, Jiu shanghai renkou bianqian de yanjiu [Population change in old Shanghai] (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1980), 141. 4. Ibid., 138. 5. Arthur Stanley, “Health and Hospitals,” in Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China: Their History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources, ed. Arnold Wright (London: Lloyds Greater Britain Publishing Company, 1908), 435. 6. “Brief History,” 4 May 1939, U1-14-6912, SMA. 7. Chris Brooks, Mortal Remains: The History and Present State of the Victorian and Edwardian Cemetery (Exeter, UK: Wheaton, 1989), 38–42. 8. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 23 February 1925, U1-14-6912, SMA. 9. North China Herald, 15 September 1855. 10. See documents 58–61, 1924, U1-14-6921, SMA. By then, the cemetery held 1,783 graves of soldiers and sailors. 11. As this was not yet a municipal venture in the International Settlement, the cost was borne by a subscription. Extract from Annual Report, 17 March 1865, U1-16-2453, SMA. 12. Letter, H. W. Dent to SMC, 8 February 1866, U1-14-6921; Extract from Annual Report, 1865–1866, U1-16-2452, SMA; North China Daily News, 8 November 1926, 8 March 1927. 13. Lanning and Couling mention the 31st and 67th regiments of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers and the Commissariat Corps as well as many Belluchis. Many had died of wounds or cholera. George Lanning and Samuel Couling, The History of Shanghai (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1923), 2:254–55. 14. The cemetery was actually never used to its full extent. In 1867, there remained eighty burial spaces. Letter, SMC, 27 May 1867, U1-2-1111, SMA; North China Herald, 24 January 1908. 15. Letter, SMC, 27 May 1867, U1-2-1111, SMA.

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16. North China Daily News, 30 September 1935. 17. North China Daily News, 28 September 1935. 18. Extract from Annual Report, 1896, 167. 19. Technical note, 2 December 1938, U1-14-6913, SMA. 20. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 26 June 1928, U1-16-2443, SMA. 21. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 26 June 1928; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 23 June 1930; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 4 May 1939; Letter, PWD to Secretary, 11 May 1939; Letter, Superintendent of cemeteries to PHD, 4 March 1941, U1-16-2443, SMA. 22. “Plan du cimetière de Lokawei,” U38-4-3282, SMA. 23. Letter, DASM to DG, 11 December 1939, U38-4-3280, SMA. 24. In September 1939, there were 738 individual graves, but the cemetery also served for paupers’ burials. The 560 unclaimed victims of the Great World bombing on 14 August 1937 were all buried there. Letter, DASM to DG, 11 December 1939, U38-4-3280, SMA. 25. Letter, DASM to DG, 11 December 1939, U38-4-3280, SMA. 26. Letter, DASM to DG, 11 August 1939, U38-4-3280, SMA. 27. Letter, DASM to DG, 8 November 1939, U38-4-3280, SMA. 28. “Décisions de la commission municipale,” 29 June 1943, U38-1-1000, SMA. 29. Letter, PWD to Secretary, 11 August 1932, 1933 (documents 18–22), 1935 (documents 23–35, including map), U1-16-2450, SMA. 30. Ibid. 31. Report, n.d. [November 1949], B242-1-226-62, SMA. 32. On British settlers, the classic work is Robert A. Bickers, Britain in China: Community, Culture and Colonialism 1900–1949 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1999). See also Robert A. Bickers and Christian Henriot, New Frontiers: Imperialism’s New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000). 33. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 20 October 1931, U1-3-1183, SMA. 34. Note, PHD, 16 June 1933; Memo, no author, 29 June 1933, U1-16-2423, SMA. 35. Superintendent of cemeteries to PHD, 23 November 1937; List, n.d., but 1940, U1-16-2423, SMA. 36. On this issue, see Note, PHD, 16 June 1933; Memo, 29 June 1933, U116-2423, SMA. See new regulation, Municipal notification 4361, 4 May 1933, Municipal Gazette, U1-16-2423, SMA. 37. Letter, Superintendent of cemeteries to PHD, 23 November 1937, U1-162423, SMA. 38. Letter, Health inspector to Secretary, 14 March 1913, U1-14-3195, SMA. 39. One could read here a parallel with public parks, from which most Chinese were excluded until the late 1920s. To make up for this exclusion, a public park for Chinese was created along Soochow Creek in 1890. On this issue, see Robert A. Bickers and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, “Shanghai’s ‘Dogs and Chinese Not Admitted’ Sign: Legend, History and Contemporary Symbol,” China Quarterly 142 (1995): 444–66.

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40. Letter, Secretary to PWD, 5 September 1924, U1-14-3195, SMA. 41. Madeleine Lassère, “L’espace urbain et la mort: La création d’un cimetière communal à Grenoble (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles),” Cahiers d’Histoire 39, no. 2 (1994): 117. 42. Letter, FMC to SMC, 24 February 1911, U1-16-2453, SMA. 43. “Notes and Instructions for the Guidance of the Inspector Undertaking Cemetery Duties,” 15 June 1923, U1-16-2423, SMA. 44. “Règlement du cimetière de la route de Zikawei,” Ordonnance consulaire, 12 October 1933; “Règlement du cimetière de Lokawei,” Ordonnance consulaire, 12 October 1933, U38-1-2174, SMA. 45. Letter, PHD to SMC, 21 July 1938, U1-4-712, SMA; Municipal notification 4030, Municipal Gazette 23, no. 1275, 14 November 1930. 46. “Notes and Instructions for the Guidance of the Inspector Undertaking Cemetery Duties,” 15 June 1923; Letter, Secretary, 6 July 1929, with two new regulations, U1-16-2423, SMA. 47. Letter, P. W. Massey to SMC, n.d.; Draft regulation, PHD to Secretary, 6 August 1924; Letter, PHD to Massey, 11 August 1924; Letter, Secretary to PHD, 17 September 1924, U1-16-2423, SMA. 48. Letter, PWD to Secretary, 28 December 1942, U1-4-712, SMA. 49. Christine Cornet, “Ordre et désordre à Shanghai: Les policiers tonkinois et la Concession française, 1907–1946” (HDR, University of Lyon, 2014). 50. Letter, DASM to DG, 11 August 1939, U38-4-3280, SMA. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Minutes, Watch Committee, 7 November 1907; Letter, Park keeper to Chief municipal engineer, 5 April 1908, U1-14-6907, SMA. 54. Letter, Sikh assistant superintendent, 12 April 1911, U1-14-690, SMA. 55. Letter, Secretary to SMP, 4 May 1911; Letter, SMP to Secretary, 10 September 1913, U1-14-690, SMA. 56. Letter, PWD, 10 September 1923, U1-14-690, SMA. 57. Memorandum, SMP to Secretary, 2 April 1932, U1-3-3010, SMA; Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1903 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1904), 187. 58. A Map of the Foreign Settlements at Shanghai, 1900 (Virtual Shanghai, Map ID 342). 59. See correspondence in file U1-16-2453, SMA. 60. Letter, FMC to SMC, 13 February 1911, U1-16-2453, SMA. 61. Letter, PWD to Secretary, 29 July 1940, U1-16-2453, SMA. 62. Françoise Kreissler, “Exil ou asile à Shanghai? Histoire des réfugiés d’Europe centrale (1933–1945)” (HDR, University of Paris VIII, 2000); Chiara Betta, “From Orientals to Imagined Britons: Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai,” Modern Asian Studies 37, no. 4 (2003): 999–1023; Marcia R. Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); Bei Gao, Shanghai Sanctuary: Chinese and Japanese Policy toward European Jewish Refugees during World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

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63. A Map of the Foreign Settlements at Shanghai, 1900 (Virtual Shanghai, Map ID 342); Plan of Shanghai 1919, compiled from surveys made by the Shanghai Municipal Council, 1919 (Virtual Shanghai, Map ID 28). 64. Letter, China Realty Company to SMC, 28 February 1936; Letter, SMC, 4 March 1936, U1-14-6927, SMA. 65. Letter, PWD to Nissim [Jewish community], 20 March 1936, U1-14-6927, SMA. 66. Letter, Secretary to PHD, 11 December 1939; Letter, Superintendent of cemeteries to PHD, 14 December 1939; Letter, PWD to Secretary, 15 December 1939, U1-16-2422, SMA. 67. Letter, Jewish Liberal Community to SMC, 11 December 1940; Letter, PWD to Secretary, 5 March 1941; Letter, PWD to Secretary, 15 January 1941, U114-6927, SMA. 68. Minutes, Council meeting, 19 February 1941, U1-14-6927, SMA. 69. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 28 February 1941, U1-14-6927, SMA. 70. Note, “Visit to Jewish Cemetery on 27 June 1942,” n.d., U1-14-6927, SMA. 71. Letter, Committee for Assisting Jewish Refugees to PWD, 3 July 1942; Letter, Juedische Gemeinde to PWD, 4 November 1942; Letter, Juedische Gemeinde to Secretary general, First Special District, 21 September 1943, U1-14-6927, SMA. 72. Letter, PWD to Secretary, 6 October 1943; Letter, PWD to Juedische Gemeinde, 8 October 1943; Letter, Juedische Gemeinde to PWD, 8 November 1943; Letter, Secretary to PWD, 15 December 1943, U1-14-6927, SMA. 73. Memorandum, WSJ, n.d. [1947], Q400-1-3914, SMA. 74. Memorandum, WSJ, 12 June 1946, Q400-1-3914, SMA. 75. Letter, TDJ to WSJ, August 1946, Q400-1-3914, SMA. 76. Memorandum, WSJ, 3 September 1947; Letter, WSJ to Lawyer, 21 October 1947, Q400-1-3914, SMA. 77. Saishin Shanhai chizu [The new map of Shanghai City], 1908 (Virtual Shanghai, Map ID 269); Plan of Shanghai 1919 (Virtual Shanghai, Map ID 28). 78. Plan of Shanghai 1919 (Virtual Shanghai, Map ID 28). 79. Shenbao, 27 January 1923, 31 March 1925, 7 March 1926, 2 April 1933. 80. There were three minor extensions in 1934 (0.7 mu), 1935 (1.65 mu), and 1936 (1.64 mu); “Agreement,” U1-14-6931, SMA. See extension documents in U114-6931, SMA. 81. Memo, PWD, 14 September 1938, U1-14-6931, SMA. 82. See documents and map in U1-14-6931, SMA. 83. Letter, Mayor to TDJ, 9 May 1946, Q400-1-4004, SMA. 84. Instruction, Mayor, 18 July 1946, Q400-1-4004, SMA. 85. Letter, SMC, 3 December 1942; Letter, PHD to Secretary, 11 December 1942; Letter, PWD to Secretary, 19 December 1943, 28 December 1942; Minutes, Coordinating Committee (SMC), 4 January 1943, 6 January 1943, U1-4-712, SMA. 86. Shanghai Times, 3 March 1933. 87. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 9 March 1949, Q400-1-3916, SMA.

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88. Memo on Shantung Road Cemetery, 23 February 1940, U1-14-6912, SMA. 89. Letter, Secretary to Legal adviser, 2 February 1925; Letter, Legal adviser to SMC, 22 May 1925, U1-14-6912, SMA. 90. Letter, E. S. Little to SMC, 28 March 1939; Letter, SMC to Legal adviser, 2 February 1925; Letter, Legal adviser to SMC, 22 May 1925, U1-14-6912, SMA. 91. Memo on Shantung Road Cemetery, 23 February 1940; Memo on Shantung Road Cemetery, 26 February 1940, U1-14-6912, SMA. 92. Memorandum, WSJ, 15 November 1945; Manuscript note, 14 March 1946, Q400-1-3935; Memorandum, March 1946, Q400-1-3926; Newspaper [unidentified] article, 2 April 1949; Note, WSJ, 4 April 1949, Q400-1-3903, SMA. 93. See documents 38–40, 1913, 1917, U1-14-6921, SMA. 94. See documents 45 and 47–50, 1920, U1-14-6921, SMA. 95. Letter, SMC to Shanghai Dock and Engineering Company, 14 September 1927, and agreement, U1-14-6921, SMA. 96. Letter, PHD/PWD, 18 June 1928, U1-16-2452, SMA. 97. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 29 January 1932; Letter, SMC to SZF, 21 November 1932; Letter, SMC to Gong’anju, n.d. [1932], U1-16-2452, SMA. 98. Letter, Superintendent of cemeteries to PHD, 1 November 1938, U1-162452; Report, Superintendent of cemeteries to PHD, 17 September 1942, Letter, Secretary to PHD, 23 October 1942, U1-16-2443, SMA. 99. North China Herald, 3 February 1912. 100. Letter, PWD to Secretary, 15 July 1924, U1-16-2454; Letter, Superintendent of cemeteries to PHD, 27 May 1926; Letter, Consul to SMC, 5 July 1926; Letter, SMC to Consul, 21 January 1927, U1-4-711, SMA. 101. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 4 February 1938; Letter, PWD to Secretary, 28 March 38, U1-16-2454, SMA. 102. Letter, PWD to Secretary, 28 March 1938, U1-16-2454, SMA. 103. Minutes, 6 April 1938, U1-16-2454, SMA. 104. Letter, SMC to Consulate, 9 April 1938, U1-16-2454, SMA. 105. Letter, Consulate to SMC, 13 August 1938, U1-16-2454, SMA. The SMC even consulted the East Surrey Regiment about the design of the memorial. Letter, PHD to PWD, 9 January 1939, U1-16-2454, SMA. 106. Letter, Superintendent of cemeteries to PHD, 9 December 1938, U1-162454, SMA; Lanning and Couling, History of Shanghai, 2:254. 107. North China Daily News, 14 December 1938; China Press, 1 March 1939. 108. Shanghai Times, 27 September 1939; North China Daily News, 30 September 1939; China Press, 4 October 1939; North China Daily News, 4 October 1939. 109. “Yingjun gongmu,” Shenbao, 9 January 1939. 110. “Ghouls Rob Foreign Graves, Steal Bones,” North China Daily News, 3 February 1949; Letter, WSJ to North China Daily News, 24 February 1949; Memorandum, 8 February 1949, Q400-1-3916, SMA. 111. North China Daily News, 3 February 1949. 112. Charles B. Maybon and Jean Fredet, Histoire de la Concession française de Changhai (Paris: Plon, 1929), 61.

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113. Bryna Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation: Regional Networks and Identities in Shanghai, 1853-1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 159–69. 114. The case of the Tongren Fuyuantang cemetery is studied in detail by Fuma Susumu, “Shanhai—Shinmatsu shanhai no kindaika to tsuka mondai” [Shanghai—Problems of modernization and charitable cemeteries at Shanghai at the end of the Qing era], in Ko¯za tenkanki ni o¯keru nigen, no. 4, Toshi no wa [Studies in the rise of mankind, no. 4, What are cities?] (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1989), 287–90. 115. “Agreement,” 18 July 1893, U1-14-6928, SMA. 116. “Site for Chinese Public School,” extract from Annual Report, 1902, U114-6928, SMA. 117. Letter, Engineer and surveyor to TRFYT, 5 January 1906, U1-14-6928, SMA. 118. Map of Tongren Fuyuantang Cemetery, 27 January 1927, with notes by PWD inspector, U1-14-6928, SMA. 119. Letter, PHD to PWD, 28 July 1930, U1-14-6928, SMA. 120. Memo, “Fu Yun Tang Cemetery,” 6 October 1932, U1-14-6928, SMA. 121. Report and map, PWD, 22 November 1933; Letter, SMC to TRFYT, 14 April 1934; Note, PWD, 8 June 1934, U1-14-6928, SMA. 122. Note, 19 March 1936, U1-14-6928, SMA. 123. Letter, Zhonghua School to SMC, 25 March 1937, 22 December 1937; Letter, SMC to TRFYT, 17 January 1938, U1-14-6928, SMA. 124. Letter, Federation to SMC, 10 February 1938; Letter, SMC to Federation, 15 February 1938, U1-14-6928, SMA. 125. Memo, PWD, 3 October 1940, U1-14-6928, SMA. 126. Susumu, “Shanhai,” 294–95. 127. Letter, PWD to PHD, 21 November 1939, U1-16-2450, SMA. 128. Letter, PWD to PHD, 11 August 1941, U1-16-2450, SMA. 129. Letter, PHD to PWD, 15 August 1941, U1-16-2450, SMA. 130. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 3 February 1943, U1-16-2450, SMA. 131. Departmental report, 1 February 1907, U1-14-6913, SMA. 132. Memo of interview, 16 October 1907, U1-14-6913, SMA. 133. Memo of interview, 18 October 1907, U1-14-6913, SMA. 134. Memo of general meeting, 15 November 1907, U1-14-6913, SMA. 135. Proclamation poster, 12 December 1907, U1-14-6913, SMA. 136. Minutes, 23 March 1908, U1-14-6913, SMA. 137. Letter, Secretary to PWD, 23 December 1911; Letter, PWD to Secretary, 27 December 1911, U1-14-6913, SMA. 138. See maps 62 and 63 in file U1-14-6913, SMA. 139. Minutes, Works Committee, 8 January 1908, U1-14-6913, SMA. 140. Secretary, 25 November 1914, U1-14-6913, SMA. 141. Minutes, Works Committee, 20 April 1916, U1-14-6913, SMA. 142. Letter, PWD to Secretary, 14 February 1920; Letter, Secretary to PWD, 26 January 1926, U1-14-6913, SMA.

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chapter 6. invisible deaths, silent deaths This chapter is a revised and expanded version of Christian Henriot, “‘Invisible Deaths, Silent Deaths’: ‘Bodies without Masters’ in Republican Shanghai,” Journal of Social History 43, no. 2 (2009): 407–37. 1. The standard Chinese expression was wuzhu shiti for exposed corpses and wuzhu guancai for abandoned coffins. 2. On the rise of philanthropic associations, see Raymond Lum, “Philanthropy and Public Welfare in Late Imperial China (Canton, Kwangtung, Charity)” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1985); Fuma Susumu, Chu¯goku zenkai zendo¯shi kenkyu¯ [A study of the history of benevolent associations in China] (Kyoto: Do¯ho¯sha Shuppan, 1997). 3. Angela Ki Che Leung, “To Chasten Society: The Development of Widow Homes in the Qing, 1773–1911,” Late Imperial China 14, no. 2 (1993): 1–32; Liang Qizi [Leung Ki-che], Shishan yu jiaohua: Ming Qing de cishan zuzhi [Charity and moral transformation: Philanthropic organizations of the Ming and Qing periods] (Taibei [Taipei]: Lianjing Chuban Shiye Gongsi, 1997); Angela Ki Che Leung, “Organized Medicine in Ming-Qing China: State and Private Medical Institutions in the Lower Yangzi Region,” Late Imperial China 8, no. 1 (1987): 134–66. 4. Lum, “Philanthropy and Public Welfare,” 146–47. 5. Chris Brooks, Mortal Remains: The History and Present State of the Victorian and Edwardian Cemetery (Exeter, UK: Wheaton, 1989), 33–37. 6. This phenomenon is more comparable to the premodern French cities that drained population from the countryside to maintain their lifeline than to the European cities in the same period. Jean-Pierre Bardet, Rouen aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Les mutations d’un espace social (Paris: Société d’Édition d’Enseignement Supérieur, 1983); John Landers, Death and the Metropolis: Studies in the Demographic History of London, 1670–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Fertig, 1973); Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987). 7. On the history of the Tongren Fuyuantang, see “Préface pour le rapport de la gestion des affaires et des comptes du Bureau de Bienfaisance, Shanghai,” January 1933, U38-5-1641, SMA; Letter, Qin Yan, administrator of the SPBC, to FMC, 22 November 1938, U38-5-1641 “Tongren fuyuantang shenqing buzhu, mianfei chezhao ji qingdu yongju, yaoshui, deng,” 1939, U38-5-1641, SMA; William Charles Milne, Life in China (London: Routledge, 1858), 68–69. 8. The SPBC published its first announcement on 13 December 1914 and the second one on 9 November 1915. Shenbao, 13 December 1914, 9 November 1915. The SPBC also ran a small out-patient clinic (baishizi pushan chanke) between 1920 and 1937 as well as a school for poor children (pushan xiaoxue). Shanghai Times, 13 September 1942; Pushan shanzhuang boyin mukuan tekan [Special issue of the radiophonic fund-raising by the SPBC], 26 July 1947, 4, Q1-12-1502, SMA. 9. “Is It There Still?” North China Daily News, 11 January 1939. 10. “Each Forever Laid,” Shanghai Sunday Times, 11 February 1923.

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11. China Press, 28 January 1934, 15 January 1937, 29 March 1939. 12. Shanghai Evening Post, 29 March 1939. 13. Shanghai Times, 29 March 1939, 6 April 1940, 17 November 1942; North China Daily News, 6 October 1941; Shanghai Evening Post, 14 September 1942. 14. Letter, SPBC to SMC, 18 March 1926, U1-16-2458, SMA. 15. There were Chinese and foreign associations that provided a place where parents could “abandon” their newborn or infants, as in Europe, but unlike Europe the practice of dropping dead children in the street was widespread. In European cities, some parents dropped their dead newborn in the church cemetery with the hope it would receive a decent burial, but this was not very common. On “found children,” see Rachel Ginnis Fuchs, Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Volker Hunecke, I trovatelli di Milano: Bambini esposti e famiglie espositrici dal XVII al XIX secolo (Bologna: Mulino, 1989). 16. Jan Jakob Maria de Groot, The Religious System of China (Leyden [Leiden]: E. J. Brill, 1892), 1:240, 329–30. 17. Shanghai Times, 13 September 1942. 18. Shanghai Times, 17 November 1942; Shanghai Evening Post, 14 September 1942. 19. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:320. In the French Concession, residents had to obtain a permit from the authorities to be allowed to keep a coffin in a private dwelling for a limited period of time. In 1935, out of 1,057 permits, only 3 percent were kept in private dwellings. Conseil d’Administration Municipale de la Concession Française, Compte rendu de la gestion pour l’exercice 1935 (Shanghai: Imprimerie Municipale, 1936), 141. 20. De Groot, Religious System of China, 3:1388. “They are of stone blocks or of brick, and measure some five meters in diameter; their shape is either round, polygonal or square, and they form a single compartment with a tiled roof. Corpses are to be dropped in through a window-like aperture, from which the winds, birds and bats are warded off by a square wooden shutter [ . . .] Some baby towers have two such apertures, placed opposite each other, the one on the left or principal side for receiving the infants of the male sex, and the other for the female bodies.” See also Milne, Life in China, 44–45. 21. Milne, Life in China, 68–69. 22. North China Herald, 25 August 1860, 23 August 1862. 23. E. J. Powell, City and Environs of Shanghai (Shanghai: Hydrographic Office, 1862). 24. North China Herald, 25 October 1881, 15 October 1921. 25. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1903 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1904), 79–80. 26. “Pushan shanzhuang jianshi,” Pushan shanzhuang boyin mukuan tekan, 1. 27. Initially, for example, it established two sites in a Buddhist temple in Sinza and in a benevolent association where people could send the dead children. Yet, although it advertised the service was free, it was not an incentive to poor people who found it easier to just dump the body in their vicinity. Shenbao, 9 November 1915.

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regulation on coffins aboveground that would impose on families the obligation to bury the coffins.27 In 1885, the Songjiang Prefecture attempted to enforce a more general system of control with a fourteen-article regulation aimed at protecting the existing graves and coffins. The regulation ordered the various dibao and benevolent organizations to conduct a general survey of all the graves and to establish a register in two copies with the location and the name of the grave. If there was no stone, one should be placed by the benevolent association. If it was an unknown coffin, a number and date should be carved in the wood. Periodically, the dibao and the associations were expected to survey their area to make sure the graves and coffins were in good condition, to identify the new ones, and to bury those that revealed their content. In the regulation, there was nothing that indicated a policy to restrict the practice. The emphasis was on the protection of the graves from robbery and destruction and of the aboveground coffins from cremation. The prefecture would provide funding to cover the expenses resulting from the survey and the purchase of stones to mark the unidentified graves.28 Although the emphasis in the early texts was on morality and filial duties—this was the main line of argument in official edicts—references to the potential impact on health and the diffusion of disease, especially during the hot season, became a regular item in the discussion of the above ground coffins.29 In November 1886, Prefect Li Bozhi made an explicit reference to the potential for infection in his order to curb the practice of leaving coffins aboveground. The instructions to the dibao became more stringent as they had to bury all coffins, irrespective of the evidence of being the object of regular rituals.30 In August 1890, the Shenbao’s editorial about aboveground coffins for the first time used the argument of preventing the spread of disease.31 Shanghai was exposed to epidemics that, for the most part, came from outside, but local sources of infection were also a major factor. Until the end of the nineteenth century, there was a high sensitivity to these issues, especially in the foreign settlements, where the rules for burials were especially strict. A dead body had to be interred within twenty-four hours. The Shenbao argued in favor of strict measures for burials to stifle potential sources of infection as well as to contain the negative influence of the bodies left aboveground.32 Even in 1902, an explicit link was established between “bad smells” and the epidemic that developed in the city. The Shenbao renewed its call to the authorities to have all the unburied coffins removed and interred.33 From then onward, the medical discourse took over moral considerations on passing judgment on the practice of coffins aboveground.34 The proto-municipal organizations that started managing the various districts of Shanghai under Chinese administration

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45. On the history of the SPBC, see Q6-9-470 and Charter, n.d. [1929], Q1141-9, SMA. 46. Shenbao, 14 March 1880. 47. North China Herald, 15 March 1870. 48. Lum, “Philanthropy and Public Welfare,” 140. 49. Guangzhou Shi Weishengju Tongjishi, “Guangzhou shi weishengju shou jianlushi shulian,” 20 September 1946. I owe this map to Xavier Paulès, who found it at the Guoshiguan in Taiwan. There was no indication of place and publisher. 50. Madeleine Yue Dong, Republican Beijing: The City and Its Histories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Madeleine Yue Dong and Joshua L. Goldstein, Everyday Modernity in China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006); Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 51. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:135–39. 52. Ibid., 3:863–65; Jean Malval, “Le sort des cadavres dans la Concession française,” Revue d’Hygiène et de Médecine Préventive 61, no. 1 (1939): 44–45. 53. Municipal Gazette, 11 March 1938. 54. Draft report, PHD to Secretary, 5 April 1940, U1-16-2533, SMA. 55. Pushan shanzhuang boyin mukuan tekan, 1. The associations also provided corpses for dissection in medical training when requested from the universities. Letter, Director BHPA to TRFYT, 15 January 1943, U38-5-1638, SMA. On the use of paupers’ bodies for anatomy in Great Britain, see Elizabeth T. Hurren, “Whose Body Is It Anyway? Trading the Dead Poor, Coroner’s Disputes, and the Business of Anatomy at Oxford University, 1885–1929,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 4 (2008): 775–818. 56. Letter, Li Yi Benevolent Society to SMC, 30 January 1929; Letter, Li Yi Benevolent Society to SMC, 4 February 1929; Note, PHD, 5 February 1929, U116-2458; Letter, Health inspector, 4 April 1939, U1-16-2530, SMA. 57. Letter, Li Yi Benevolent Society to SMC, 30 January 1929; Letter, Li Yi Benevolent Society to SMC, 4 February 1929; Note, PHD, 5 February 1929, U116-2458, SMA. 58. Letter, Health inspector, 4 April 1939, U1-16-2530, SMA. 59. “Pushan shanzhuang yichou nian baogao” (1925 report of the SPBC), U14-198, SMA. In 1925: 594 coffins from Renji Shantang, 344 from Lianyi Shantang, 3,807 from Guangchao Shantang, 213 from Tongyuan Xizihui, 1,933 from Fulai Gongsi, and 50 from Shenshi Hospital; “List Showing Coffins Supplied and Buried during 1930,” SPBC, U1-3-2399, SMA. 60. Letter, SMC to SPBC, 15 February 1938, U1-16-2530, SMA. 61. Letter, SPBC to SMC, 24 March 1938, U1-16-2457, SMA; Shenbao, 11 August 1938. 62. Each junk was identified by the large characters—Tongren Fuyuantang— painted in black on a white background and circled in red. Each had a different number. U38-5-1260-1, SMA. 63. The SPBC actually never recovered its Dachang cemetery, fully destroyed during fighting. The large track of land was taken over for the construction of the Dachang military airport. Pushan shanzhuang boyin mukuan tekan, 1.

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64. Letter, PHD to SMC, 21 January 1938, U1-16-2530, SMA. 65. Letter, SPBC to SMC, 29 November 1937, 6 December 1937; Letter, Japanese consul to SMC, 17 December 1937; Letter, PHD to SMC, 30 December 1937, U1-16-2530; Letter, PHD to SMP, 21 January 1938, U1-16-2530, SMA; North China Daily News, Reader’s letter, 23 February 1938. 66. Letter, SMC to SPBC, 15 February 1938, U1-16-2530, SMA. See the public statements by the Chinese Women’s Club, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of China, YWCA, Women’s Vocational Association, and Chinese Women’s League. Municipal Gazette, 11 March 1938. 67. Report, WSJ, n.d. [June 1947], Q400-1-3932, SMA. 68. Letter, Health inspector to PHD, 7 January 1941, U1-16-2457, SMA. 69. Report, SPBC, n.d. [July 1947], Q6-9-470, SMA. 70. Report, WSJ, n.d. [June 1947], Q400-1-3932, SMA. 71. Letter, SPBC to SZF, 9 September 1948, Q109-1-790; Correspondence, May 1949, Q400-1-3929, SMA. 72. Lum, “Philanthropy and Public Welfare,” 149. 73. Untitled memo (et seq.), R. Y. Yorke, A.C., June 1928, U1-3-2399, SMA. 74. “Coffin Dumping: Kiaochow Rd 1920–25,” U1-3-590, SMA. 75. Letter, SPBC to SMC, n.d. [1921], U1-3-1806, SMA. 76. Letter, SPBC to SMC, 15 February 1922, U1-3-1806; Letter, SPBC to SMC, 6 April 1923, U1-16-2458, SMA. The same letter was addressed to the French Concession and the consular body. 77. Memo, Health inspectors, 22 March 1926, U1-16-2458, SMA. 78. Letter, SMC to SPBC, 27 March 1926, U1-16-2458, SMA. 79. Conseil d’Administration Municipale de la Concession Française, Compte rendu de la gestion pour l’exercice 1926 (Shanghai: China Printing Company, 1927), 63–64. 80. Untitled memo (et seq.), R. Y. Yorke, A.C., June 1928, U1-3-2399, SMA. 81. Letter, Secretary SMC to Commissioner of police, 29 August 1928, U116-2465; Office note (SMP), 7 August 1928; Letter, SMC to SPBC, 24 September 1928; Memo, PHD, 15 January 1929, U1-16-2458; Letter, SMP to SMC, 18 August 1928; Letter, PHD to SMC, 21 August 1928, U1-3-2399, SMA. 82. Report, SMP, 11 February 1931, U1-3-2399; Letter, SMC to SPBC, 24 March 1937; Letter, SPBC to SMC, 5 May 1937, U1-16-2458, SMA. 83. Donation by private parties represented around 10 percent of its total income in 1939 ($233,142). The contribution of the settlements was based on an estimate of the number of collected corpses. Letter, French deputy director of public health to Chief health inspector, 16 March 1938; Letter, SPBC to French Concession, 28 March 1938; “Tongren fuyuantang shenqing buzhu, mianfei chezhao ji qingdu yongju, yaoshui, deng,” 1939, U38-5-1641, SMA. 84. “Tongren fuyuantang shenqing buzhu, mianfei chezhao ji qingdu yongju, yaoshui, deng,” 1939, U38-5-1641, SMA. 85. Besides civilian corpses (about 4,000), the SPBC took also care of the burial of the dead soldiers left on the battlefield. During the 1931–1932 conflict, the SPBC buried more than 3,000 bodies. Report, SPBC, n.d. [July 1947], Q6-9470, SMA; Shanghai zhanqu nanmin linshi jiujihui, Shanghai zhanqu nanmin linshi

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jiujihui gongzuo baogao shu (Shanghai: Shanghai Zhanqu Nanmin Linshi Jiujihui, 1933), 54. 86. Letter, Commissioner of public health to Secretary SMC, 12 February 1932, U1-16-2539, SMA. 87. Memo, SPBC to SMC, 7 March 1932, U1-16-2539, SMA. 88. The first thorough study on the subject of refugees and the role of local elites was Yi Feng, “Élites locales et solidarités régionales: L’aide aux réfugiés à Shanghai (1937–1940),” Études Chinoises 15, no. 1–2 (1996): 71–106; see also Henriot, “Shanghai and the Experience of War.” 89. Letter, F. R. W. Graham (SVC) to Secretary, 25 August 1937, U1-16-2530, SMA. 90. Letter, TRFYT to Consul general, n.d. [1938], U38-1-507, SMA. 91. Letter, Secretary to PHD, 18 August 1937, U1-16-2530, SMA. 92. Letter, Naigai Wata Kaisha Cotton Mill, 20 May 1938; Letter, PHD to SMP, 9 July 1938; Letter, China Chemical Works, 21 April 1938; Memo, Health inspector, 26 May 1938; Letter, PHD to SMC, 13 June 1938, U1-16-2532, SMA. 93. Note, PHD to SMC, March 1938, U1-16-2457, SMA. 94. Unsigned document, Divisional office “B,” 21 May 1938, U1-16-2532, SMA. 95. Letter, J. H. Jordan to Superintendent of police, 27 May 1938, U1-16-2532, SMA. 96. Municipal Gazette, 11 March 1938. 97. Memorandum, PHD, 4 February 1937, U1-4-198; Letter, SMC to SPBC, 24 March 1937; Letter, SPBC to SMC, 5 May 1937, U1-16-2458, SMA. 98. Municipal Gazette, 11 March 1938; Letter, Secretary, 27 August 1937, U116-2449, SMA. 99. Letter, Director of police to Director BHPA, 9 May 1938, U38-1-507, SMA. The measure was prompted by a dispute about the removal of the coffins from the Ningbo Guild on Rue Vouillemont. The guild had accumulated 6,650 in its premises since the beginning of the hostilities, of which one-half were coffins stored on behalf of the Tongren Fuyuantang. 100. Office note, SMP, 7 August 1928, U1-16-2458, SMA; Letter, TRFYT to Consul general, [May 1938], U38-1-507, SMA. 101. Note, Palud, Director BHPA, 7 June 1938, U38-1-507, SMA. 102. Letter, Director BHPA, 23 December 1939; Communication, Administrative director, 29 December 1939, U38-5-158, SMA. 103. The idea of using cremation to deal with exposed corpses seems to have taken root in public opinion. In August 1944, an article in the Shenbao argued in favor of establishing a crematorium for poor people in order to deal with street bodies at a low cost. “Gaige zanglian” [Suggestion to reform burials], Shenbao, 8 August 1944. 104. Letter, SMC to SPBC, 15 February 1938; Letter, SPBC to SMC, 17 February 1938, U1-16-2533, SMA. 105. Memorandum, PHD to Secretary, 3 December 1938, U1-4-198, SMA. 106. Report, April 1943; Report, September 1943, U1-16-4649, SMA.

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107. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 27 August 1937, U1-16-2449; Report, PHD, October 1943, U1-16-4649; “Incinération des cadavres humains abandonnés sur la concession: Quelques considérations,” BHPA, 20 April 1938, U1-16-2465, SMA. 108. Letter, J. H. Jordan to Secretary SMC, 8 August 1938, U1-16-2534, SMA. 109. Memo, Acting chief inspector of health to J. H. Jordan, 11 September 1939, U1-16-2465, SMA. 110. In 1938, the French Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance oversaw the cremation of 11,416 bodies. Conseil d’Administration Municipale de la Concession Française, Compte-rendu de la gestion pour l’exercice 1937 (Shanghai: Imprimerie Municipale, 1938), 157. 111. There are several mentions of corpses or people bound to die in the street in the novel. One of the characters, Yamaguchi, originally an architect, has even shifted to selling the bones of abandoned corpses. Yokomitsu Riichi, Shanghai: A Novel (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2001), 49, 62, 110, 205, 208, and chap. 42. 112. Letter, residents, 28 February 1920; Letter, Chinese commissioner, 27 March 1920, 28 February 1921; Letter, Health officer, 11 January 1921, 19 November 1921, U1-3-590, SMA. 113. Letter, Commissioner of health, 26 February 1926, U1-3-590, SMA. 114. Letter, Health officer, 27 July 1922, 30 July 24, 10 March 1935, U1-53590, SMA. 115. Letter, residents, 9 July 1937; Report, Health inspector, 13 July 1937, U116-2457, SMA. 116. Letter, foreign residents, Race Course Apartments, 17 August 1937; Letter, PHD to SPBC, 17 August 1937, U1-16-2457 SMA. 117. Letter, Miss Ada Lum, 15 December 1937, U1-16-2473, SMA. 118. A young man of twenty-three, Lee Kyung-tsung, arrested when breaking up a coffin on a waste ground, received one year’s imprisonment on charges of defiling and breaking a coffin. The maximum sentence was five years. Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury, 17 December 1937. 119. Letter, Mayor Su Xiwen to Police, 25 February 1938; Letter, Mayor Su Xiwen to Police, 22 April 1938; Letter, SHJ to Mayor Su Xiwen, 9 May 1938, R36-13-221, SMA. 120. Letter, Mr. Kobayashi, Naigai Wata Kaisha, 18 May 1938, U1-143175 (General—Cemeteries—Coffin Repositories, Burial Grounds and Funeral Parlors), SMA. 121. “Complaints about Corpses and Coffins,” 1937–1940, U1-16-2473, SMA. 122. Letter, Health inspector to PHD, 27 December 1937, U1-16-2530; Report, Chief health inspector to PHD, 9 February 1938; Letter, PHD to SPBC, 12 February 1938, U1-16-2457; Letter, SMC to SPBC, 27 March 1939, U1-16-2457; Report, BHPA to Director general of services, 21 February 1941; Report, Chief health inspector, 24 April 1941, 20 May 1941; Report, BHPA to Director general of services, 3 September 1942, U38-5-1368, SMA. 123. Letter, PHD to SPBC, 12 February 1938, U1-16-2457, SMA.

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124. Letter, SMC to SPBC, 27 March 1939, U1-16-2457, SMA. 125. Memorandum, BHPA, 16 March 1938, U38-5-1641, SMA. 126. Letter, Secretariat of the French Municipal Council to TRFYT, 11 March 1938, U38-5-1641; “Tongren fuyuantang shenqing buzhu, mianfei chezhao ji qingdu yongju, yaoshui, deng,” 1939, U38-5-1641; Decisions of the Municipal Commission, 7 March 1938, U38-1-507, SMA. 127. Letter, “The Residents of Rue de Ningpo,” 21 August 1941, U38-5-1638, SMA. 128. “Bureau de bienfaisance,” Chief health inspector, 23 July 1941, U38-51638, SMA. 129. Report, Chief health inspector, 14 June 1941, U38-5-1638, SMA. 130. Letter, Palud (BHPA) to TRFYT, 27 February 1941, 8 June 1941; Report, Palud (BHPA) to FMC, 20 May 1941, 24 June 1941; Report, Palud (BHPA) to FMC, 3 September 1942, U38-5-1638, SMA. 131. We know that in 1939 the five truck drivers of the SPBC were young men in their thirties. Three were from Ningbo and the other two hailed from Nantong and Donghai. Letter, SPBC to SMC, 18 September 1939, U1-16-2457, SMA. 132. Letter, SPBC to SMC, 25 February 1938, U1-16-2457, SMA. 133. Letter, SPBC to SMC, 14 June 1938, U1-16-2457, SMA. 134. Letter, Treasurer to SMC, 23 December 1939, U1-16-2457, SMA. 135. Letter, Chief health inspector to Y. Palud, Director BHPA, 6 December 1938, U38-5-1641, SMA. 136. Letter, Chief health inspector to Y. Palud, Director BHPA, 6 December 1938, U38-5-1641, SMA. 137. “Tongren fuyuantang anmaidui gongzuo yuangong mingdan,” n.d. [prewar], Q400-1-3995, SMA. 138. Report, Chief inspector of hygiene, 29 August 1942, U38-5-1638, SMA. 139. In 1942, the cost of a large coffin was $37.65, but by April 1943 the cost had jumped to $88.35. The same increase applied to labor, transportation, and burying. Altogether the cost of burying an unclaimed body had increased from $88.69 to $205.30. Report, Crime and Special Branch, 23 April 1943, U1-162458, SMA. The report by the Shanghai Municipal Police supported the application for an increase of the SPBC grant. 140. Letter, Health inspector to PHD, 16 December 1941, U1-16-2457, SMA. 141. “Collection of Corpses,” PHD, 3 January 1942; Memo, Commissioner of public health, 16 January 1942, U1-16-2537, SMA. 142. Letter, TRFYT to Director BHPA, 26 December 1941, U38-5-1638, SMA. 143. Memo, Commissioner of public health, 16 January 1942, U1-16-2537, SMA. 144. Memo, Commissioner of public health, 16 January 1942, U1-16-2537, SMA. 145. Letter, Secretary of Transport Control Committee to Superintendent of police, 16 January 1942, U1-16-2537, SMA. 146. Letter, Secretary of Transport Control Committee to Superintendent of police, 2 March 1942, U1-16-2537, SMA.

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147. Report, August 1943, U1-16-4649, SMA. 148. Letter, Chief health inspector to Superintendent of police, 8 April 1942, U1-16-2537, SMA. 149. Letter, Chief health inspector to Deputy director of public health, 3 December 1943, U1-16-2537, SMA; Letter, Chief health inspector to Deputy director of public health, 12 January 1944, U1-16-2537, SMA. A handwritten commentary on this document confirmed that the Public Works Department collected only a portion of the exposed corpses. 150. Report, Chief inspector of hygiene, 13 February 1943, U38-5-1638, SMA. The need for such police investigation before removal partly explains the delays residents complained about. See files U38-5-1264-1, U38-5-1262-1, U38-5-1263-1, U38-5-1262-2, U38-5-1263-2, U38-5-1264-2; Daily register of the police photographer of the French police, June 1940–December 1942, U38-2-2713, SMA. 151. Letter, Director BHPA to French consul, May 1938, U38-5-379. See files U38-5-1264-1, U38-5-1262-1, U38-5-1263-1, U38-5-1262-2, U38-5-1263-2, U385-1264-2, SMA. 152. Daily register of the police photographer of the French police, June 1940– December 1942, U38-2-2713, SMA. 153. Memo, WSJ, n.d.; Memo, WSJ, 19 December [1946], Q400-1-3995, SMA. 154. Report, SPBC, n.d. [July 1947], Q6-9-470, SMA. 155. Letter, SPBC to SHJ, 17 December 1945; Letter, SPBC to SHJ, 21 July 1947, Q6-9-117, SMA. 156. Shenbao, 19 August 1948; Letter, TRFYT to WSJ, 18 May 1949, Q4001-3995, SMA. 157. Jeffrey G. Williamson, “Was the Industrial Revolution Worth It? Disamenities and Death in 19th Century British Towns,” Explorations in Economic History 19, no. 3 (1982): 221–45. 158. Minutes, Shanghai Canfei Yanglao Gongzuo Weiyuanhui [Shanghai Work Committee for Crippled and Old People], 10 February 1951–20 June 1951, Q11522-40, SMA. 159. Shanghai shi shimin shiti yidong chuli zanxing banfa [Provisional regulation on the removal of corpses of residents of the Shanghai municipality], 21 December 1953, S440-4-18, SMA. 160. “Shengming tongji zong baogao” [General report on vital statistics], July 1950–June 1951, 50–51, B242-1-255, SMA. 161. “Shengming tongji zong baogao” [General report on vital statistics], July 1950–June 1951, 22, B242-1-255, SMA. 162. Shanghai minzheng zhi (Shanghai: Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, 2000), http://www.shtong.gov.cn/node2/node2245/node65977/node66002/ node66042/userobject1ai61641.html, http://www.shtong.gov.cn/node2/node2245/ node65977/node66002/node66042/userobject1ai61642.html. 163. Shanghai shi shimin shiti yidong chuli zanxing banfa, 21 December 1953, S440-4-18, SMA. 164. “Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu weishengju guanyu shanghai shi san nian lai weisheng gongzuo” [General work report on three years of work by the Bureau

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of Public Health of the Shanghai People’s Government], n.d. [1951], B242-1-3811, SMA. 165. “Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu weishengju tianbao huadong qu shanghai shi 1951 nian weisheng shiye chengguo baogaobiao” [Statistical report on the achievements in public health in 1951 submitted to the municipal government of Shanghai, East China Region, by the Bureau of Public Health], n.d. [1951], B2421-250, 14; “Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu weishengju gongzuo baogao zongjie” [Synthesis of the work report of the Bureau of Public Health of the Shanghai People’s Municipal Government], 1951, B242-1-248, SMA.

 

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chapter 7. funerals and the price of death 1. William R. Jankowiak, Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Emily M. Ahern, The Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Village (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1973); Janet Lee Scott, For Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors: The Chinese Tradition of Paper Offerings (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007); Chee Kiong Tong, Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); Shaoming Zhou, Funeral Rituals in Eastern Shandong, China: An Anthropological Study (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2009); Akira Sato¯, Chu¯goku bochishi [A history of Chinese cemeteries] (Tokyo: Nihon Ko¯enryokuchi Kyo¯kai, 1987); Kenneth Dean, “Funerals in Fujian,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 4, no. 1 (1988): 19– 78; Ellen Oxfeld, “‘When You Drink Water, Think of Its Source’: Morality, Status, and Reinvention in Rural Chinese Funerals,” Journal of Asian Studies 63, no. 4 (2004): 961–90. 2. James L. Watson, “The Structure of Chinese Funerary Rites: Elementary Forms, Ritual Sequence, and the Primacy of Performance,” in Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 3–19; James L. Watson, “Rites or Beliefs? The Construction of a Unified Culture in Late Imperial China,” in China’s Quest for National Identity, ed. Lowell Dittmer and Samuel S. Kim (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 80–103. For a discussion of Watson’s work, see Melissa J. Brown, “Ethnic Identity, Cultural Variation, and Processes of Change: Rethinking the Insights of Standardization and Orthopraxy,” Modern China 33, no. 1 (2007): 91–124. 3. Ruby Watson, “Remembering the Dead: Graves and Politics in Southeastern China,” in Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 203–27; A. P. Cheater, “Death Ritual as Political Trickster in the People’s Republic of China,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 26 (1 July 1991): 67–97. 4. Miranda Brown, The Politics of Mourning in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007); Constance A. Cook, Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man’s Journey (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Norman Kutcher, Mourning in Late Imperial China: Filial Piety and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Prince ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Sato¯, Chu¯goku bochishi. 5. Mechthild Leutner, Geburt, Heirat und Tod in Peking: Volkskultur und Elitekultur vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin: Reimer, 1989).

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6. One of the earliest accounts dates back to 1830 and attests to the strong impression funerals made on foreign observers. W. W. Wood, Sketches of China: With Illustrations from Original Drawings (Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1830), 165–68. 7. Susan Naquin, “Funerals in North China: Uniformity and Variation,” in Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 37–70; Donald S. Sutton, “Death Rites and Chinese Culture: Standardization and Variation in Ming and Qing Times,” Modern China 33, no. 1 (2007): 125–53. 8. Jan Jakob Maria de Groot, The Religious System of China (Leyden [Leiden]: E. J. Brill, 1892); Justus Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese: A Daguerreotype of Daily Life in China (London: S. Low, Son, and Marston, 1868); John Henry Gray, China: A History of the Laws, Manners, and Customs of the People (London: Macmillan, 1878). 9. Annie Cormack, Everyday Customs in China (Edinburgh: Moray, 1935); H. Y. Lowe, The Adventures of Wu: The Life Cycle of a Peking Man, 2 vols. (1940; repr., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). 10. Juwen Zhang and Guoliang Pu, A Translation of the Ancient Chinese: The Book of Burial (Zang Shu) by Guo Pu (276–324) (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2004). 11. Marcel Granet, “Le langage de la douleur d’après le rituel funéraire de la Chine ancienne,” Journal de Psychologie (February 1922): 97–118. 12. Kutcher, Mourning in Late Imperial China. 13. For a description of funeral rites in Taiwan, see Hsu Fu-ch’uan [Xu Fuquan], Zhongguo sang zang li, su [Chinese funeral rites] (Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1983). 14. These beliefs persist in contemporary Taiwan. Ahern, Cult of the Dead, 170–73. 15. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:68, 208. 16. De Groot stayed in China on two occasions, first from February 1877 to February 1878, then from 1886 to 1890. He was also an avid collector of artifacts. On his life and achievements, see R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, The Beaten Track of Science: The Life and Work of J.J.M. de Groot (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002); and the excellent informative review by Barend ter Haar, “Review,” T’oung Pao 92, no. 4–5 (2006): 540–60. 17. Extreme circumstances, such as the massive loss of lives during the Taiping Rebellion, disrupted the process of burying the dead, which became a major and systematic enterprise after the restoration of order. See the beautiful book by Tobie Meyer-Fong, What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 100–101, 124–25. 18. Jean Malval, “Le sort des cadavres dans la Concession française,” Revue d’Hygiène et de Médecine Préventive 61, no. 1 (1939): 40–47. 19. On the influence of Buddhism in late Ming and Qing funeral rituals, see Timothy Brook, “Funerary Ritual and the Building of Lineages in Late Imperial China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 49, no. 2 (1989): 465–99. 20. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:69, 97.

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21. For a detailed description of the structure of coffins, see Xu Jijun, Chang jiang liuyu de sangzang [Funerals in the Yangzi Valley] (Wuhan: Hubei Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 2004), 404–12. 22. Malval, “Sort des cadavres dans la Concession française,” 41. 23. According to a rare study of the timber business in Beijing, there were about 1,000 wood-making workshops, although only the coffin shops (guichang) specialized in coffins. Pekin mokuzaigyo¯ no enkaku [The evolution of the timber business in Beijing], Cho¯sa shiryo¯ 12 (Beijing: Kahoku Sangyo¯ Kagaku Kenkyu¯jo, 1940), 3–4, 14. 24. Chris Townsend, Art and Death (London: Tauris, 2008), 22. 25. “Census of Coffin Shops Paying Municipal Rates,” September 1923, U1-1180, SMA. 26. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:88. 27. De Groot collected a wide range of funeral apparel, including models of coffins, funeral clothing, and mourning garb. They are part of the collections of the Dutch Museum of Ethnology, which makes them available online (photographs) (http://www.volkenkunde.nl/). 28. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:95. 29. Malval, “Sort des cadavres dans la Concession française,” 41. 30. Although it does not focus on funerals and covers the whole Jiangnan region, see Vincent Goossaert, “A Question of Control: Licensing Local Ritual Specialists in Jiangnan, 1850–1950,” in Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of Sinology (Taipei: Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan, 2013), 569–604. 31. On funeral specialists in Beijing, see Nianqun Yang, “The Establishment of Modern Health Demonstration Zones and the Regulation of Life and Death in Early Republican Beijing,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, no. 22 (1 January 2004): 69–95. 32. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:11. 33. Susan Mann, The Talented Women of the Zhang Family (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 10–11, 79, 152–53, 238; Wen-hsin Yeh, Provincial Passages: Culture, Space, and the Origins of Chinese Communism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 174–76. 34. Most of these works examine premodern Chinese society. Pei-yi Wu, “Childhood Remembered: Parents and Children in China, 800 to 1700,” in Chinese Views of Childhood, ed. Anne Behnke Kinney (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1995), 138–45; Keith Nathaniel Knapp, Selfless Offspring: Filial Children and Social Order in Early Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 137–63; Allan H. Barr, “Marriage and Mourning in EarlyQing Tributes to Wives,” Nannü 15, no. 1 (2013): 137–78; Katherine Carlitz, “Mourning, Personality, Display,” Nannü 15, no. 1 (2013): 30–68; Lynn A. Struve, “Song Maocheng’s Matrixes of Mourning and Regret,” Nannü 15, no. 1 (2013): 69–108. 35. Ning Yao, “Commemorating the Deceased: Chinese Literati Memorial Painting—A Case Study of Wu Li’s ‘Remembering the Past at Xingfu Chapel’ (1672)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Heidelberg, 2013).

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36. James Stevens Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death (Detroit: Partridge, 1972), 2–7. 37. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:152–53. 38. Thomas W. Laqueur, “Bodies, Death, and Pauper Funerals,” Representations 1, no. 1 (1983): 109. 39. “Registration of Chinese Deaths in the Western District,” 22 December 1913, U1-1-180, SMA. 40. Shenbao, 3–6 June 1878. 41. J. Lust, “The ‘Su-Pao’ Case: An Episode in the Early Chinese Nationalist Movement,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 27, no. 2 (1964): 408–29; Y. C. Wang, “The Su-Pao Case: A Study of Foreign Pressure, Intellectual Fermentation, and Dynastic Decline,” Monumenta Serica 24 (1965): 84–129. 42. Curl, Victorian Celebration of Death, 4. 43. San Tiao Hsiao, Peking on Parade: A Pocket Guide (Peiping [Beijing]: Standard Press, 1935), 51; Guide to Peking (Peking [Beijing]: The Leader, 1930), 52. 44. Virtual Shanghai, Image ID 2267, http://www.virtualshanghai.net/Photos/ Images?ID=2267. 45. Virtual Shanghai, Image ID 202, http://www.virtualshanghai.net/Photos/ Images?ID=202. 46. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:172. 47. Ibid., 1:152–53. 48. Jiegang Gu, “Funeral Processions,” in Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, ed. Patricia Ebrey (New York: Free Press, 1993), 389. Original text in Gu Jiegang and Liu Wanzhang, Su Yue de hun sang [Weddings and funerals in Jiangsu and Guangdong] (Taipei: Dongfang Wenhua Gongyingshe, 1970). 49. “Xi yue ying shen,” Dianshizhai Huabao [Shanghai], vol. xin, 9. 50. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1931 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1932), 54. 51. R. Barz, Shanghai: Sketches of Present-Day Shanghai (n.p.: Centurion, 1935), 110. 52. Townsend, Art and Death, 26. 53. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:180. 54. Gu, “Funeral Processions,” 389. 55. Barz, Shanghai, 106. 56. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:192. 57. A whole collection of Chinese mourning apparel collected by de Groot in nineteenth-century Fujian can be seen at the Museum Volkenkunde (Museum of Ethnology) in Leiden (http://volkenkunde.nl/en). 58. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:180. 59. Aside from the visual sources, I am strongly indebted for this section to the full descriptions of ibid., 1:152–208; Gu, “Funeral Processions”; Gray, China, 278–328; Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, 198–204. 60. Gu, “Funeral Processions,” 388–90. 61. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:203.

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à

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62. Albert Feuerwerker, China’s Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsuan-Huai (1844–1916) and Mandarin Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958); Li Ding, Sheng Xuanhuai: Zhongguo shangfu yu ta de shangye diguo [Sheng Xuanhuai: The father of Chinese trade and his commercial empire] (Taipei: Haige Wenhua Chuban Tushu Youxian Gongsi, 2004); Wang Wei, Wan Qing di yi guan shang: Sheng Xuanhuai de zhengmian yu beimian [The first bureaucratmerchant in late Qing: The front face and back face of Sheng Xuanhuai] (Wuhan: Huazhong Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, 2012). 63. Richard J. Meyer, Ruan Ling-Yu: The Goddess of Shanghai (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005); Miriam Bratu Hansen, “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film as Vernacular Modernism,” Film Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2000): 10–22. On female suicide, see Bryna Goodman, “The New Woman Commits Suicide: The Press, Cultural Memory and the New Republic,” Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 1 (2005): 67–101. 64. Sheng’s funeral compares well with Wellington’s funeral procession on 18 November 1852. Curl, Victorian Celebration of Death, 4–6. 65. North China Daily News, 23 April 1916. 66. “Gaoxi,” Shenbao, 2–22 November 1917. 67. “Sheng Xingsun chusang zhi laomin shangcai,” Shenbao, 20 November 1917. 68. “Hongdong yuanjin zhi dachubin,” Shenbao, 18 November 1917. 69. Miao Qing, “Sheng Xuanhuai yu jindai shanghai shehui” [Sheng Xuanhuai and modern Shanghai society] (Ph.D. diss., Shanghai Normal University, 2010), 141–42. 70. “Shang ding Sheng Xingren chubin luyou,” Shenbao, 8 November 1917. 71. There was a full description in many newspapers. See “Sheng Xingsun chubin zhi shengkuan,” Shenbao, 19 November 1917. 72. Miao, “Sheng Xuanhuai yu jindai shanghai shehui,” 137. 73. Gu, “Funeral Processions,” 390. 74. Miao, “Sheng Xuanhuai yu jindai shanghai shehu,” 143. 75. Conseil d’Administration Municipale de la Concession Française, Compte rendu de la gestion pour l’exercice 1917—Budget 1918 (Shanghai: Imprimerie Municipale, 1918), budget tables. 76. Shenbao, 9 March 1935. See also Goodman, “New Woman Commits Suicide.” 77. “Ruan Lingyu jinri chubin anzang,” Shenbao, 14 March 1935; “Ruan Lingyu zuori binzang,” Shenbao, 15 March 1935; “Funeral of a Chinese Favour ite,” North China Herald, 20 March 1935. 78. “Baosang,” Shenbao, 17 July 1935; “Zheng Zhengqiu xiansheng zhuidao dahui,” Shenbao, 25 August 1935. 79. Anne Kerlan, Hollywood Shanghai: L’épopée des studios Lianhua Shanghai (Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015), 303. 80. Letter, Resident to PHD, n.d. [1938], U1-14-3176, SMA. 81. De Groot, Religious System of China, 1:203. 82. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1902 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1903), 343.

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83. See, for example, the “Indemnité de funérailles” (29 June 1943) in the Règlement administratif—Personnel municipal—Personnel chinois, U38-1-1434, SMA. 84. See “Funeral of Sub-inspector John Crowley, SMP, 1928”; “Historical Photographs of China,” http://hpc.vcea.net/. 85. Set of eight pictures, n.d., H1-1-14-2328, SMA. 86. North China Herald, 25 April 1934. 87. Set of fifty-eight pictures, n.d. [1934], H1-1-14-262, SMA. 88. The intervention of the state in the funeral of high officials in Europe tended to sideline the role of religion and promote secular ceremonies. Dino Mengozzi, La morte e l’immortale: La morte laica da Garibaldi a Costa (Manduria, Italy: P. Lacaita, 2000). 89. Rebecca Nedostup, “Civic Faith and Hybrid Ritual in Nationalist China,” in Converting Cultures: Religion, Ideology, and Transformations of Modernity, ed. Dennis E. Washburn and Kevin A. Reinhart (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 27–56. 90. On state funerals, see “Guozangfa,” 1930, Q215-1-6827, SMA. 91. North China Herald, 16 December 1936. 92. Shenbao, 27 October 1940, 28 October 1940. 93. Set of twenty-four photographs, n.d. [1940], H1-1-14-2183, SMA. 94. North China Herald, 16 October 1940, 30 October 1940. 95. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1897 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1898), 36. 96. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1903 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1904), 68–69. 97. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1938 (Shanghai: North China Daily News and Herald, 1939), 104. 98. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1939 (Shanghai: North China Daily News and Herald, 1940), 97; Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1940 (Shanghai: North China Daily News and Herald, 1941), 117. 99. Letter, Police to Secretary, 12 May 1938, U1-14-3177, SMA. 100. Draft Regulations Governing Crematoriums in the Shanghai Special Municipality, translated from Shizheng gongbao, December 1942, U1-16-2423, SMA. 101. Shanghai shi binyiguan guanli guize, n.d. [1950], B242-1-226, SMA. 102. File U1-4-2452, SMA. 103. Shenbao, January 1934. 104. North China Daily News, 12 November 1934; Shenbao, 5 November 1934, 12 November 1934. 105. On the aftermath of the Taiping Rebellion, see Meyer-Fong, What Remains, 205–6. 106. On the cult of the City God in Imperial China, see David Johnson, “The City-God Cults of T’ang and Sung China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45, no. 2 (1985): 363–457. 107. Shenbao, 26 November 1877. 108. Shenbao, 4 September 1890, 5 April 1892. 109. “Bianmai gongdi,” Shenbao, 2 November 1908.

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times a year a special festival was organized to call upon all the lost spirits under the aegis of the City God (see Chapter 6).52 Beyond unexpected deaths, however, disposing of dead bodies was a major activity of the benevolent associations. They established graveyards around towns and cities to bury the remains of all those who could not afford a burial place of their own or, later, a burial lot in a private or municipal cemetery. These graveyards were not dissimilar to the mass graves in premodern European cities, even if in China each body was buried separately. Yet, in terms of status, charity graveyards represented the least attractive and most debased form of burial. The negative image of graveyards, where the poor, the homeless, the exposed bodies, the unknown bodies were buried, weighed significantly in the slow development of modern cemeteries in China. Charity cemeteries were for the most part small-scale facilities that left little documentary trail. The imperial administration took no record of the graveyards. It was an unregulated activity in the hands of benevolent associations and guilds. They usually had no name, except by reference to the name of the benevolent association that managed it. On the Chinese maps of Shanghai, they appear at best as “charity graveyards” (yizhong). Most of the time, however, they simply do not appear. On Western maps, any graveyard is shown as “Chinese cemetery” or “cemetery,” with no distinction between charity, family, or guild graveyards. Most of the time, the sources mention the burial of bodies in the charity graveyard of a given association. Sometimes, by chance, the approximate location is given, usually a place name with no further indication. Since many place names were duplicated in the countryside around Shanghai, locating a graveyard is often impossible. The best approximation to a history of the charity graveyards is a relatively good record in one local gazetteer of the Republican period (1918). There is no doubt that many places went unrecorded. There were numerous benevolent associations in Shanghai, some quite small, that owned a small plot of land they used as a graveyard.53 The gazetteer of the Song jiang Prefecture in 1884 recorded thirteen charity graveyards for Shanghai, owned mostly by well-established associations such as the Tongren Fuyuantang, Guoyutang, Tongrentang, Tongshantang, and Cunrentang. Guoyutang owned the largest graveyard, 690 mu, probably split among several locations.54 Although this was an incomplete record, these charity graveyards covered a total area of 1,087 mu. The 1918 Shanghai Gazetteer recorded a much larger number of graveyards (112).55 Yet its list included graveyards established as early as the mid-seventeenth century. It also included guild cemeteries, discussed in Chapter 2. Altogether, there were seventy-four charity graveyards, with fifty-two still in operation. Anonymous graveyards represented about one-half, although six were

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137. Laurence Croq, “Le dernier hommage: La comptabilité des frais funé raires et du deuil dans la société parisienne aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Histoire et Mesure 27, no. 1 (2012): 171. 138. The funding of funerals in the countryside rested on a different basis, mostly with land set apart or money pooled together to pay for the funerals of parents. In late imperial China, it was both a moral and legal obligation to provide family members with a funeral. David Wakefield, Fenjia Household Division and Inheritance in Qing and Republican China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998), 79, 121, 135, 164, 167. 139. Manuscript table, 3 June 1954, S440-4-18-10, SMA. The surveyed parlors were Leyuan, Anle, Guohua, Dazhong, Hunan, Yong’an, Hong’an, Zhongguo, Liyuan, and Xieqiao. 140. Letter, FBTA to WSJ, 20 November 1943, S440-1-7, SMA. 141. Letter, FBTA to Bureau of Economics, 29 October 1943; Letter, FBTA to WSJ, 18 November 1943; Letter, FBTA to members, 16 November 1943, S440-17; Letter, FBTA to Bureau of Economics (First District), 20 March 1944; Letter, WSJ to FBTA, 21 January 1944, S440-1-15, SMA. 142. Letter, Resident to WSJ, 23 May 1946; Memorandum, WSJ, 6 June 1946; Memorandum, WSJ, 29 June 1946, Q400-1-4015, SMA. 143. Letter, WSJ, 12 June 1946, Q400-1-4015, SMA. 144. Report, WSJ, 14 August 1946, Q400-1-4015, SMA. 145. Memorandum, WSJ, 29 June 1946, Q400-1-4015, SMA. 146. Memorandum, WSJ, 22 September 1947; Letter, SHJ to WSJ, 25 September 1947; Letter, FBTA to members, 1 September 1947; Letter, FBTA to SHJ, 16 September 1947, Q400-1-4015, SMA. 147. Letter, FBTA to newspapers, 25 August 1947, S440-1-7, SMA; Dagongbao, 7 November 1947; Dagongbao, 29 August 1947; Letter, SHJ to WSJ, 16 August 1947, Q400-1-4015, SMA. 148. Letter, FBTA to members, 25 August 1948, S440-1-9, SMA. 149. Letter, FBTA to members, 13 November 1948, S440-1-9, SMA. 150. Minutes, FBTA, 5 November 1948, S440-4-5, SMA. 151. Minutes, FBTA, 28 October 1949, S440-4-5, SMA. 152. Report, SPBC, 12 March 1941, U1-4-198, SMA. 153. Shanghai Times, 28 February 1941. 154. Letter, SPBC to French consul, n.d. [June 1942], U38-5-1638, SMA. 155. “Shanghai shi gongsuo huiguan shanzhuang lianhehui ban nian lai gongzuo gaikuang,” n.d. [1950], Q118-1-2-33, SMA. 156. Shenbao, 15 June 1947. 157. “Guoji binyiguan jijiu jiamubiao,” May 1947, S440-1-15, SMA. 158. “Wan’an binyiguan jiamubiao,” 1948; “Jianghuai binyiguan jiamubiao,” 16 August 1948, S440-1-15, SMA. 159. Letter, PHD to Secretariat, 20 October 1931, U1-3-1183, SMA; Municipal Gazette, Municipal notification 4150, 19 November 1931. 160. “Tarif des concessions de cimetières,” 8 March 1943; “Ordonnance consulaire 82,” 13 March 1943, U38-1-2174; “Décisions de la commission municipale du 29 juin 1943,” U38-1-1000, SMA.

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161. Shanghai shi li gongmu guanli guize, art. 3, 1935, Q215-1-8144, SMA. 162. Letter, WSJ to all funeral parlors, 9 March 1942, R50-1-421, SMA. 163. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 2 January 1946; Letter, Mayor to WSJ, 30 January 1946, Q400-1-3902, SMA. 164. Letter, WSJ, 23 September 1946, Q400-1-3902, SMA. In fact, the accounts of the municipal cemeteries under the Shanghai Municipal Council exhibited a regular deficit in the mid-1920s. “Cemeteries and Crematoriums—Scale of Charges,” 19 February 1925, U1-16-2425(1), SMA. 165. Minutes, WSJ, 31 October 1946, Q400-1-3902, SMA; Memorandum, WSJ, 4 October 1946, Q400-1-3923, SMA. 166. See the successive adjustments in Q400-1-3902, SMA. 167. Advertisement, Shenbao, March–May 1928. 168. Shenbao, 30 November 1930, 2 August 1937. 169. “Shanghai sili xiyuan gongmu jianzhang,” 20 December 1946, Q400-13905, SMA. 170. Application form, Taiping Gongmu, 17 March 1947; Application form, Xianle Cemetery, 17 March 1947, Q400-1-3905, SMA. 171. Shenbao, 9 March 1947. 172. Shenbao, 3 April 1948. 173. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 5 March 1949, Q400-1-3902, SMA. 174. Minutes, “Guang-zhao shanzhuang zhengli jihua,” 13 May 1949, Q11812-6-16, SMA. 175. Converting the Chinese dan 石 measure of volume is a headache as it varied across time, place, and type of cereal. I adopted the conversion rate for raw rice of 108 pounds for 1 dan. 176. Minutes, “Guang-zhao shanzhuang zhengli jihua,” 13 May 1949, 29 June 1949, Q118-12-6-16, SMA. 177. Minutes, “Guang-zhao shanzhuang zhengli jihua,” 8 July 1949, 6 August 1949, Q118-12-6-16, SMA. 178. One mu of land could accommodate 100 graves. 179. “Heding sili gongmu shoujia jisuanbiao,” 6 December 1949, B242-1-226, SMA. 180. Shanghai shi sili gongmu guanli guize, 5 March 1950, B242-1-226-1, SMA. 181. “Shanghai shi binyi jijiu yunzangye tongye gonghui gongmuzu huiyuan xuedi yijiabiao,” n.d. [1951], S440-4-18, SMA. 182. Letter, People’s Government to Shanghai Shi Renmin Zhengzhi Falü Weiyuanhui, 2 April 1954; Letter, Shanghai Shi Renmin Zhengzhi Falü Weiyuanhui to People’s Government, 1 January 1954; Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu minzhengju guanyu shili gongmu muxue shenqing shiyong zanxing banfa, 1 September 1954, B1-2-839, SMA. 183. Letter, People’s Government to MZJ, 1 September 1954, B1-2-839, SMA. 184. Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu minzhengju guanyu shili huozangchang zanxing banfa, n.d. [September 1954], B1-2-839, SMA. 185. Report, “Guanyu dui longhua zhongxin gongmu huozangchang gongzuo jiancha baogao,” 16 February 1960, B168-1-148-102, SMA.

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186. Manuscript table, 2 November 1954, S440-4-18, SMA. 187. Xiaoming Zhu, “La police de la Concession française de Shanghai (1910– 1937)” (Ph.D. diss., École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 2012), 71. 188. Rates calculated from Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1906 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1907), 439. 189. Memorandum, “Survey Staff,” 1 November 1927, U1-14-585, SMA. 190. Shanghai Shi Difang Xiehui, Shanghai shi tongji [Statistics of Shanghai] (Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1933), Administration, 21–23. 191. Wakefield, Fenjia Household Division, 78–79, 135. 192. Shanghai Tebie Shi Shehuiju, Shanghai tebie shi laozi jiufen tongji baogao [Statistical report on labor disputes in the Shanghai municipality] (Shanghai: Dadong Shuju, 1929), 27. 193. International Labour Office, Shanghai laogong tongji, 1930–1937 [Labor statistics of Shanghai] (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1938), 21; Shehuiju, Shanghai shi zhi gongzilü [Wage rates in Shanghai] (Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1935). 194. Bureau of Social Affairs, Standard of Living of Shanghai Laborers (Shanghai: Shanghai Shi Zhengfu Shehuiju, 1934), 13–17. For an analysis of data, see Zhang Zhongmin, “Jindai shanghai gongren jieceng de gongzi yu shenghuo—Yi ershi shiji sanshi niandai diaocha wei zhongxin de fenxi” [The life and wages of the working class in modern Shanghai: An analysis based on 1930s surveys], Zhongguo Jingjishi Yanjiu, no. 2 (n.d.): 1–16. 195. Bureau of Social Affairs, Standard of Living of Shanghai Laborers, 111– 14. For a discussion of social surveys of workers in Republican Shanghai, see Mark Swislocki, “Feast and Famine in Republican Shanghai: Urban Food Culture, Nutrition, and the State” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2002), 29–43. 196. Shenbao, 25 January 1948, 5 February 1948, 3 April 1948, 18 May 1948, 8 July 1948, 15 August 1948, 30 August 1948, 31 December 1948. 197. “Huiyuan danwei zhigong gongzi gaikuangbiao,” 11 November 1953, S440-4-19, SMA. 198. “Heding sili gongmu shoujia jisuanbiao,” 6 December 1949, B242-1-226, SMA.

 

 

 

 

chapter 8. the cremated body 1. Mark Jenner, “Death, Decomposition and Dechristianisation? Public Health and Church Burial in Eighteenth-Century England,” English Historical Review 120, no. 487 (2005): 615–32; Paul Pasteur, “Les débuts de la crémation moderne en France,” Mouvement Social, no. 179 (1 April 1997): 59–80. 2. Douglas James Davies, A Brief History of Death (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 63; Lisa Kazmier, “Leading the World: The Role of Britain and the First World War in Promoting the ‘Modern Cremation’ Movement,” Journal of Social History 42, no. 3 (2009): 557–79. 3. “Huozang yi jin,” Shenbao, 31 August 1877; “Lun jin huozang,” Shenbao, 6 September 1877; Shenbao, 2 January 1882. 4. Patricia Ebrey, “Cremation in Sung China,” American Historical Review 95, no. 2 (1990): 406. The following relies mostly on this brilliant article.

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designated by the surname of their founder. The other graveyards were the initiative of benevolent associations. Many of the anonymous graveyards (23) were closed and there was no information on their time of operation. Yet the gazetteer mentioned ten graveyards established between 1646 and 1799 that were still open. The anonymous graveyards were all very small and represented about 100 mu. There were also eight township graveyards (39 mu), three of them by a benevolent association, established between 1851 and 1876. The benevolent associations owned the largest share of graveyards. The thirty-five listed locations represented 149 acres (903 mu), but several benevolent associations actually owned several plots. The Tongren Fuyuantang had thirteen locations totaling 58 acres (353 mu), about 19 percent of all charity burial grounds. It was definitely the largest single funeral landowner in Shanghai. The Tongrentang came next with a unique location (36 acres, 222 mu), followed by the Guoyutang (23–140 mu). These organizations had for decades been major actors in dispensing aid to needy families. Their role in providing funeral services, from distributing free wood planks or coffins to collecting bodies and organizing burials, was well established. Besides taking care of the dead, these organizations were involved in a dazzling range of activities, those that modern municipalities and social services would later provide: constructing and repairing roads, bridges, and so on; dispensing free drugs and running free clinics or hospitals; establishing and managing orphanages and homes for old people and widows; creating and supporting charity schools; organizing life-saving agencies such as firefighting or river rescue; distributing clothing, blankets, coal, and food; and running soup kitchens. The locations of the charity cemeteries were given in the most simple terms in the gazetteer, with the mention of the bao and tu (administrative divisions) where they were established. They were scattered all around Shanghai, several of them close to the city wall before its destruction. Map 4.1 shows that distance was a concern when the cemeteries were established, despite the facilities the waterways provided. It also confirms the Chinese practice of exclusion of burials in the city proper. Over time, the distance from the city itself increased, in part because the city itself expanded beyond its wall and in part because of the development of the foreign settlements. In fact, the urban sprawl reached the charity graveyards that some benevolent associations thought were at a very safe distance from the urban districts. Thirteen graveyards were located in the area west of the last extension of the French Concession in 1900. Eight were found south of Zhaojia Creek. A few more were in more remote areas to the west or the northeast, but all of them eventually came under foreign administration. Pudong hosted seven of the located sixty-nine charity graveyards.

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30. Davies, Brief History of Death, 63. 31. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1897 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1898), 145. 32. The Public Health Department set the initial rate at 40 taels. It remained stable throughout most of the prewar period with a light increase to 50 taels in 1923–1929. In 1936, the cost of cremation amounted to 70 yuan. War inflation, however, pushed the price up. In August 1941, the Public Health Department raised the rate to 150 yuan for residents, then again to 220 yuan in January 1943. Letter, PHD to Secretary, 20 October 1931, U1-3-1183; “Modification of Regulations for Crematorium,” 15 May 1936, U1-4-712, SMA. 33. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1923 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1924), 144; “Extraordinary Expenditure 1923,” PHD; Letter, PWD to PHD, 14 April 1924, U1-14-3197, SMA. 34. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1938 (Shanghai: North China Daily News and Herald, 1939), 212. 35. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1906 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1907), 176. 36. Jupp, From Dust to Ashes, 147. 37. See file on Sikh cremation, U1-14-6907, SMA. 38. Minutes, Watch Committee, 7 November 1907, U1-14-6907, SMA. 39. Memorandum, SMP, 15 March 1932, U1-3-1330, SMA. 40. Letter, PWD to SMC, 18 July 1911, U1-14-3210, SMA. 41. Memorandum, SMP, 25 April 1935, U1-16-2463, SMA. 42. Letter, SZF (Li Ting’an) to WSJ, 2 April 1935; Memorandum, Superintendent SMP, 11 April 1935; Letter, SMC to SZF, 29 April 1935; Letter, SZF to SMC, 19 June 1935; Letter, SMC to SZF, 19 June 1935; Letter, SZF to SMC, 14 September 1935; Letter, SMC to SZF, 19 September 1935, U1-16-2463, SMA. 43. Christian Henriot, “‘Little Japan’ in Shanghai: An Insulated Community, 1875–1945,” in New Frontiers: Imperialism’s New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953, ed. Robert Bickers and Christian Henriot (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000), 147. 44. Andrew Bernstein, “Fire and Earth: The Forging of Modern Cremation in Meiji Japan,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 27, no. 3–4 (2000): 299–300. 45. Henriot, “‘Little Japan’ in Shanghai.” 46. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1903, 77. 47. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1906, 176. 48. Notification 6331, SMC, Municipal Gazette, 19 April 1931. 49. “Shehuiju banli gongyi shiye zhi fangzhen,” Shenbao, 20 August 1928. 50. Shenbao, 10 December 1928. 51. “Fu ling chouban yizhong huozangchang,” Shenbao, 7 July 1931; Shenbao, 9 October 1932. 52. Shenbao, 12 April 1935. 53. “Choujian shili huozangchang,” Shenbao, 17 June 1936. 54. “Wu Liande chouzu zhongguo huozang xiehui,” Shenbao, 20 June 1936. 55. Shenbao, 2 March 1937.

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56. In the archival documents consulted, only one guild, the Guang-Zhao Guild, announced once it would raise money to buy more land and to establish a crematorium “to create a precedent for society.” This never happened. “Zhangcheng,” 1 November 1924, “Shanghai guang zhao xin shanzhuang jiancheng jinian,” B168-1-798, SMA. 57. Shenbao, 27 March 1937. 58. Shenbao, 13 June 1937. 59. Shenbao, 2 July 1937. 60. Report, Pudong Lüren Yiyuan to WSJ, 15 September 1939; Investigation report, WSJ, 23 September 1939; Report, Pudong Lüren Yiyuan to WSJ, 24 October 1939; Report, WSJ, 19 October 1939; Memorandum, WSJ, 17 November 1939; Zhabei Lüren Yiyuan, 19 September 1939, R1-3-1432, SMA. 61. “Fojiaojie choujian putong huozangta,” Shenbao, 1 December 1940; Chuan Jiaoshi, “Jindai shanghai de fojiao cishan shiye ji qi shehui zuoyong” [Buddhist benevolent activities and their social function in modern Shanghai], Neiming, no. 242 (1 May 1992): 25–30. See also Foxue Banyuekan, no. 225 (1940). 62. “Dui gailiang fenmu de taolun,” Shenbao, 27 August 1932. 63. “Gailiang fenmu zhi chujian,” Shenbao, 4 September 1932. 64. Letter, SMC to WSJ, 29 April 1935; Letter, SZF to SMC, 19 June 1935; Letter, SMC to SZF, 21 June 1935; Letter, SZF to SMC, 14 September 1935; Letter, SMC to SZF, 19 September 1935, U1-16-2463, SMA. 65. Memorandum, PHD to SMC, 4 February 1937, U1-4-198, SMA. 66. Letter, SMC to SPBC, 24 March 1937; Letter, SPBC to SMC, 5 May 1937, U1-16-2458, SMA. 67. Report, Inspector, Eastern District, 25 April 1938, U1-16-2533, SMA. 68. Shanghai Municipal Council, Report for the Year 1938, 178. 69. Letter, PHD, 13 June 1938; Letter, Superintendent, 30 June 1938; Letter, PHD, 2 July 1938; Letter, Secretariat, 5 July 1938, U1-16-2533, SMA. 70. Report, Superintendent PHD, 15 February 1938, U1-16-2533, SMA. 71. Letter, Secretary to Emergency Supplies and Fuel Subcommittee, 27 August 1937, U1-16-2449, SMA. 72. Shenbao, 8 November 1937. 73. Shenbao, 28 November 1938, 26 December 1938. 74. Report, Superintendent PHD, 29 November 1937, U1-16-2533, SMA. 75. Report, PHD to Secretariat, 30 November 1937, U1-16-2533, SMA. 76. Report, Superintendent WSJ, 9 February 1938; Letter, SPBC to PHD, 8 February 1938, U1-16-2533, SMA. 77. Letter, PHD to Secretariat, 11 February 1938, U1-16-2533, SMA. 78. Letter, PHD to SPBC, 15 February 1938, U1-16-2530, SMA. 79. Letter, Junior health officer to Superintendent PHD, 14 February 1938, U1-16-2533, SMA. 80. Report, Superintendent of police, 17 April 1939, U1-16-2533, SMA. 81. Letter, PHD to Chief health inspector, 14 May 1938, U1-16-2533, SMA. 82. Memorandum, PHD to Secretary, 3 December 1938, U1-4-198, SMA. 83. Letter, Hungjao Association, 7 March 1939; Letter, PHD to Hungjao Association, 8 March 1939; Letter, Cumming to PHD, 9 March 1939, U1-16-2530, SMA.

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84. Report, PHD, April 1943, U1-16-4649, SMA. 85. Shenbao, 18 March 1941; Memorandum, PHD, 1939, U1-16-2533, SMA. 86. Memorandum, “Cost of Cremation—1939 Unclaimed Coffins and Bodies,” 1939, U1-16-2533, SMA. 87. Letter, PHD to PWD, 4 March 1939, U1-16-2533, SMA. 88. Report, PHD, October 1943, U1-16-4649, SMA. 89. Memorandum, “Cost of Cremation—1939 Unclaimed Coffins and Bodies,” 1939, U1-16-2533, SMA. 90. Report, n.d. [August 1943–July 1944], R50-1-1393, SMA. 91. “Cong ximai wenti shuo dao huozang,” Shenbao, 25 May 1940. 92. Ibid. 93. Shenbao, 31 May 1940 (Wujiang Huiguan). 94. Shenbao, 11 June 1940 (Guang-Zhao Gongsuo); 30 June 1940 (Nanshi and Zhabei guilds). 95. “Tichang huozang,” Shenbao, 18 October 1940. 96. “Huozang,” Shenbao, 20 August 1940. 97. Memorandum, PHD to Secretariat, 24 February 1943, U1-4-706, SMA. 98. “Gaige zanglian,” Shenbao, 8 August 1944. 99. Letter, Huxi Police Station to WSJ, 26 August 1941, R50-1-1320, SMA. 100. Letter, Private entrepreneur to WSJ, 18 August 1942; Letter, WSJ to Private entrepreneur, 2 September 1942, R50-1-1324, SMA. 101. “Huozang zhaiyichang gufen youxian gongsi,” 12 October 1942; Letter, Huxi Police Station, 4 November 1942, R50-1-1324, SMA. 102. Draft Regulations Governing Crematoriums in the Shanghai Special Municipality, translated from Shizheng gongbao, December 1942, U1-16-2423, SMA. 103. Letter, GWJ to Mayor, 28 May 1943; Letter, GWJ/WSJ to Mayor, August 1943, R50-1-1320, SMA. 104. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 10 April 1944, S440-1-16, SMA. 105. Letter, SZF to FBTA, 29 March 1944, R50-1-1324, SMA. 106. Letters, Shanghai Difang Fayuan Jianchachu, 1944, R44-1-193, SMA. 107. Letter, Shanghai Difang Fayuan Jianchachu to WSJ, 26 October 1945, Q400-1-3935; Letter, WSJ to People’s Court, n.d. [July 1949], B242-1-124-14, SMA. 108. “Zang shen wu di weishengju tichang huozang,” Shenbao, 4 November 1946. 109. Shenbao, 21 November 1946. 110. “Jijiu you shi wu wan ju, huozangchang bu fu ying yong,” Shenbao, 18 December 1946. 111. Letter, FBTA to SZF, 11 December 1946; Letter, FBTA to SZF, 24 December 1946; Letter, FBTA to SZF, 26 December 1946, S440-1-8, SMA. 112. Shenbao, 7 January 1947; Newspaper article (no source), 6 March 1947, S440-1-16, SMA. 113. Newspaper article (no source), 9 April 1947, S440-1-16, SMA. 114. Minutes, FBTA, 16 April 1948; Letter, FBTA to members, 30 April 1948, S440-1-8, SMA. 115. “Gonggao,” Dagongbao, 14 April 1948.

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116. Note, WSJ, 19 November 1946, Q400-1-3918, SMA. 117. Letter, Zhongyang Xintuoju to WSJ, 16 November 1946; Letter, WSJ to Zhongyang Xintuoju, 19 March 1947; Memorandum, WSJ, 10 July 1947, Q4001-4004, SMA. 118. Letter, Municipal Senate to SZF, 24 June 1947. See also text of its resolution (First session, Third meeting), Q109-1-162; Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 2 June 1947; Letter, JCJ to Mayor, 26 August 1947, Q400-1-4004; Decision, SZF, n.d. [1947], Q109-1-163; Letter, SZF to Executive Yuan, 9 September 1947, Q400-14004, SMA. 119. Memorandum, WSJ, 8 May 1947; Memorandum, 18 June 1947, Q4001-4004, SMA. 120. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 22 June 1948, Q400-1-4004; Resolution, Municipal Senate, 24 August 1947, Q109-1-163, SMA. 121. Letter, Mayor to WSJ, 3 October 1947, 6 October 1947; Letter, Zhonyang Xintuoju to WSJ, 5 November 1947; Letter, WSJ to Di Yi Weisheng Qichedui, 9 December 1947, Q400-1-4004, SMA. 122. Memorandum, WSJ, 28 August 1947; Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 6 December 1947; Telegram, Shanghai Gangkou Silingbu to Executive Yuan, December 1947, Q400-1-4004, SMA. 123. Letter, Mayor to WSJ, 5 May 1948, Q400-1-4005; Letter, SPBC to WSJ, 11 August 1948, Q400-1-4004, SMA. 124. “Qudi binyiguan cuojiu xian niandi fenbie yingzang,” Shenbao, 18 October 1946. 125. Letter, SPBC to WSJ, 19 June 1946, Q400-1-4005, SMA. 126. Letter, 58 residents, 30 September 1946, Q400-1-4005, SMA. 127. Letter, WSJ to Zhongyang Ribao, 31 August 1948, Q400-1-4005, SMA. 128. Instruction, WSJ, 7 August 1948, Q400-1-4005, SMA. 129. Newspaper article (no source), 22 August 1947, S440-1-16, SMA; “Huozang ji,” Shenbao, 9 April 1949. 130. Advertisement by the Bureau of Public Health, Shenbao, 2 May 1948. 131. Newspaper article (no source), 22 August 1947, S440-1-16, SMA; Shenbao, 18 December 1948. 132. Letter, WSJ to Gas company, 26 July 1949, Q400-1-3918, SMA. 133. “Shanghai shi shili gongmu huozangchang ji lushi tuzang huozang renshu,” 1949, Q400-1-4071, SMA. 134. Letter, WSJ to Mayor, 2 December 1948, Q124-1-2033; Accounting documents, March 1949, Q124-1-2034, SMA. It was not possible to identify the exact measure of 1 dan of wood, except it was approximately equal to a bundle of firewood. One man could carry 2 dan with a shoulder pole. In December 1948, 1 dan of firewood cost 88 yuan (Memorandum, WSJ, 5 December 1948, Q124-1-2033); in March 1949, the price had jumped to 3,600 gold yuan. 135. Report, “Shifu guanyu sili gongmu de shuoming,” n.d. [November 1949], B242-1-226, SMA. 136. Shanghai shi sili huozangchang guanli guize, 8 February 1952, S440-4-18, SMA.

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137. Minutes, Shanghai Shi Huiguan Gongsuo Shanzhuang Lianhehui, 29 September 1950, Q118-12-9, SMA. 138. “Binzang guanli,” Shanghai minzheng zhi [Shanghai civil affairs gazetteer], http://www.shtong.gov.cn/node2/node2245/node65977/node66002/ node66042/userobject1ai61641.html. 139. Letter, Shanghai Shi Renmin Zhengzhi Falü Weiyuanhui to People’s Government, 2 April 1954, B1-2-839, SMA. 140. “Shanghai shi renmin zhengfu weishengju guanyu san nian lai weisheng gongzuo zongjie,” 1952, B242-1-381-1, SMA. 141. Letter, MZJ to RMZF, n.d. [1953]; Letter, MZJ, 18 June 1953; Letter, Caizhengju, 20 July 1953, B1-2-839; Document, FBTA, 3 June 1954, S440-4-18, SMA. 142. Letter, WSJ to RMZF, 17 April 1954, B1-2-839, SMA. Text of the revised Shanghai shili gongmu muxue shenqing shiyong zanxing banfa. 143. Letter, RMZF to WSJ, 18 May 1954, B1-2-1513, SMA. 144. Handwritten note, Letter, People’s Government to Shanghai Shi Renmin Zhengzhi Falü Weiyuanhui, 2 April 1954, B1-2-839, SMA. 145. Letter, RMZF to MZJ, 1 September 1954, B1-2-839, SMA. 146. “Binzang guanli,” Shanghai minzheng zhi. 147. Ibid. 148. Letter, Shanghai Shi Renmin Zhengzhi Falü Weiyuanhui to People’s Government, 2 April 1954, B1-2-839, SMA. 149. Report, WSJ, 11 February 1956, B2-2-73, SMA. 150. “Binzang guanli,” Shanghai minzheng zhi. 151. Letter, FBTA to Federation of Trade and Industry, 27 June 1957, S440-423, SMA. 152. Document, People’s Committee, 26 June 1962, A72-2-965-106, SMA. 153. Report, “Guanyu dui longhua zhongxin gongmu huozangchang gongzuo jiancha baogao,” 16 February 1960, B168-1-148-102, SMA. 154. Respectively 6.8, 45, and 60 tons per hectare whereas the average yield range for carrots in Europe in 1961 was 24–34 tons and average world rice yield in 2010 was 4 tons per hectare. U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Rice Yearbook,” http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo .do?documentID=1229; “U.S. Carrots Statistics,” http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/ MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1229. 155. Report, “Xibaoxing lu huozangchang jiancha gongzuo baogao,” 18 February 1960, B168-1-148-117, SMA. 156. Report, “Xinlu huozangchang jiancha gongzuo baogao,” n.d. [February 1960], B168-1-148-117, SMA. 157. Report, “Guanyu dui longhua zhongxin gongmu huozangchang gongzuo jiancha baogao,” 16 February 1960, B168-1-148-102, SMA. 158. Report, “Xibaoxing lu huozangchang jiancha gongzuo baogao,” 18 February 1960, B168-1-148-117, SMA. 159. “Binzang guanli,” Shanghai minzheng zhi. 160. Ibid.

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161. Report, WSJ, 23 January 1964, B168-1-585-1, SMA. The Bubbling Well Crematorium was transferred to the Jing’ansi Park in November 1974. The building was torn down four years later. “Jing’an Si,” Shanghai 360 du, http://shtong .gov.cn/node2/node4429/node4438/node70484/node70700/node70702/userobject 1ai72122.html. 162. Report, WSJ, 23 January 1964, B168-1-585-1, SMA. 163. Ibid. 164. “Sheshi he fuwu,” Shanghai minzheng zhi [Shanghai civil affairs gazetteer], http://shtong.gov.cn/node2/node2245/node65977/node66002/node66042/ userobject1ai61642.html. 165. “Qingzhensi, gongmu,” Shanghai tongzhi [Shanghai annals], http:// shtong.gov.cn/node2/node2247/node79044/node79327/node79347/userobject 1ai103689.html.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

chapter 9. the management of death under socialism Part of this chapter was published in Christian Henriot, “The Socialist Transformation of Funeral Companies in Shanghai (1949–57),” European Journal of East Asian Studies 13, no. 2 (2014): 186–211. 1. Letter, WSJ/MZJ to RMZF, 14 April 1953, B1-2-841, SMA. This file includes all the documents related to the transfer of competence between the two bureaus. 2. Xinmin Wanbao [Xinmin evening news], 21 May 1950. 3. Although they do not examine the reform process at the level of companies or commercial sectors, the following works provide a solid background on CCP policies in the early phase of taking over major cities. Kenneth Lieberthal, Revolution and Tradition in Tientsin, 1949–1952 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980); James Zheng Gao, The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1954 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004). 4. “Shanghai shi binyi jijiu yunzang shangye tongye gonghui zhangcheng” [Charter of the Shanghai Funeral Business Trade Association], July 1950, S440-4-1, SMA. 5. Letter, Federation of Trade and Industry to FBTA, 28 June 1950, S440-4-1, SMA. 6. Minutes, 3 July 1950, 4 July 1950, Q118-1-1, SMA. 7. Letter of resignation, Hua Ronghai, 5 June 1951, S440-4-1, SMA. 8. Letter of resignation, Gao Huaizhi, 20 June 1952; Letter of resignation, Wang Beiwu, 1 July 1952, S440-4-1, SMA. 9. Letter of resignation, Shen Shigang, Puji Cemetery, 6 January 1956; Letter of resignation, Shen Sishui, 1 June 1956, S440-4-1, SMA. 10. Letter of resignation, Shen Maozhen, 25 June 1956, S440-4-1; Minutes, FBTA, 9 July 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 11. Yang Kuisong, “Xin zhongguo ‘zhenya fangeming’ yundong yanjiu” [A study of New China’s “Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries Campaign”], Shixue Yuankan, no. 1 (January 2006): 45–61; Kuisong Yang, “Reconsidering the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries,” China Quarterly 193 (2008):

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102–21; Feng Xiaocai, “Shenfen, yishi yu zhengzhi: 1956 nian hou zhonggong dui zibenjia de sixiang gaizao” [Class, ideology and politics: The thought reform of capitalists by the Chinese Communist Party after 1956], Huadong Shifan Daxue Xuebao, no. 1 (2012): 32–38. 12. Report, FBTA, 15 September 1958, S440-4-1, SMA. 13. Gao, Communist Takeover of Hangzhou, 18. 14. Ibid. 15. Report, FBTA, 12 August 1954, S440-4-2, SMA. 16. Ibid. 17. Report, FBTA, 13 April 1954, S440-4-2, SMA. 18. Minutes, FBTA, 14 September 1950, S440-4-5, SMA. 19. Minutes, FBTA, 26 December 1950, S440-4-5, SMA. 20. Shanghai shi bingshe guanli guize [Regulation on the management of coffin repositories of the Shanghai municipality], 8 December 1952, S440-4-18, SMA. 21. Christian Henriot, “Scythe and Sojourning in Wartime Shanghai,” Karunungan 27 (2007): 127–31. 22. Report, FBTA, 12 August 1954, S440-4-2, SMA. 23. Minutes, FBTA, 23 July 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 24. Minutes, FBTA, 12 December 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 25. Minutes, FBTA, 20 December 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 26. Minutes, FBTA, 9 July 1956, 22 September 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 27. Ibid. 28. Li Xiaowei, “1949–1956 nian guojia zhengquan yu minjian cishan zuzhi de guanxi jiexi” [An analysis of the relations between charity organizations and state power, 1949–1956], Zhonggong Dangshi Yanjiu, no. 9 (2012): 66–73. 29. Minutes, Gongsuo Huiguan Shanzhuang Lianhehui, 27 June 1951, Q1181-22, SMA. 30. The other two charities were Deben Shantang and Shanghai Canfei Yanglao Tang. Minutes, 10 February 1951–20 June 1952, Q115-22-40, SMA. 31. On the transformation of charity associations, see Nara Dillon, “New Democracy and the Demise of Private Charity in Shanghai,” in Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China, ed. Jeremy Brown and Paul Pickowicz (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 80–102. Dillon missed the central point that guilds were kept separate from the regular charity organizations, although there were numerous overlapping links between them, not the least because the same elite members were active in both fields. 32. Yiji Shanhui (also called Sichuan Lühu Yiji Shanhui) was an organization established by Sichuan natives in Shanghai. “Shanghai shi minzhengju minzhengchu guanyu jiu shetuan shanghai jixinhui, sanban gongsuo, jiangzhe changshanju, baoxiju, sichuan lühu yiji shanhui wu ge feihangyexing de zuzhi de chuli yijian,” 24 October 1957, B168-1-820-70, SMA. 33. “Shanghai shi gongsuo huiguan shanzhuang lianhehui zhangcheng,” n.d. [4 July 1950], Q118-1-2, SMA. On the early activities of the federation, see “Shanghai shi gongsuo huiguan shanzhuang lianhehui bannian lai gongzuo gaikuang,” n.d. [1951], Q118-1-2, SMA.

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34. Minutes, Shanghai Shi Yiban Jiuji Tuanti Lianxi Huiyi Jilu, 26 June 1951, Q115-22-23-10, SMA. 35. The heavy fiscal hand of the government was also part of a larger plan to tame inflation through a drastic reduction of circulating currency. 36. Survey form, Guang-Zhao Gongsuo, 13 July 1950, Q118-1-6-19, SMA. 37. Minutes, Gongsuo Huiguan Shanzhuang Lianhehui, 18 November 1952, Q118-1-21, SMA. 38. Minutes, Gongsuo Huiguan Shanzhuang Lianhehui, 21 July 1952, Q1181-21, SMA. 39. Minutes, Gongsuo Huiguan Shanzhuang Lianhehui, 25 October 1953, Q118-1-21, SMA. 40. Shanghai shi shimin shiti yidong chuli zanxing banfa [Temporary rule on processing the removal of corpses in Shanghai municipality], 21 December 1953, S440-4-18, SMA. 41. Minutes, FBTA, 1 February 1950, 7 February 1950, S440-4-5, SMA. 42. The government abolished the tax in May 1955. Minutes, FBTA, 6 May 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 43. Shanghai shi ge ye gongshang yehu 1955 nian yingyu fenpei shenqingshu [Application form for the distribution of profit of calendar year 1955 for all industrial and commercial units in the Shanghai municipality], 13 January 1956, S7-416-45, SMA. 44. Lieberthal, Revolution and Tradition in Tientsin, 20–21. 45. Minutes, FBTA, 16 May 1950, S440-4-5, SMA. 46. Minutes, FBTA, 27 May 1950, S440-4-5, SMA. 47. The CCP used the same ploy in Tianjin. Lieberthal, Revolution and Tradition in Tientsin, 84. 48. Minutes, FBTA, 4 September 1950, S440-4-5, SMA. 49. Report, FBTA, 19 May 1953, S440-4-2, SMA. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Minutes, FBTA, 14 January 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 53. Minutes, FBTA, 27 February 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 54. Minutes, FBTA, 18 July 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 55. Minutes, 23 July 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 56. Minutes, 26 October 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 57. On another hanjian case during this period, see Feng Xiaocai, “Zhengzhi yundong de jiceng luoji yu richanghua: Yi ge ‘hanjian’ de faxian yu shencha” [The basic logic and normalization of political campaigns: The discovery and investigation of a “traitor”], Ershiyi Shiji, no. 134 (December 2012): 38–48. 58. Letter, FBTA to Fei Xizhen (lawyer), 14 July 1947, S440-1-9, SMA. 59. Shangtian Binyiguan, 1952, B242-1-489; Report, Caizhengju, 15 October 1952, B242-1-489-1; Letter, Caizhengju to WSJ, 4 December 1951, B242-1-48951, SMA. 60. Report, FBTA, 19 May 1953, S440-4-2, SMA. 61. Annual report, 1954, S440-4-2-18, SMA.

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62. John Gardner, “The ‘Wu-Fan’ Campaign in Shanghai: A Study in the Consolidation of Urban Control,” in Chinese Communist Politics in Action, ed. A. Doak Barnett (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 477–539. 63. On the changing policies of the CCP toward the Chinese capitalists, see Kuisong Yang, “The Evolution of the Chinese Communist Party’s Policy on the Bourgeoisie (1949–1952),” Journal of Modern Chinese History 1, no. 1 (2007): 13–30. 64. Minutes, 2 June 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 65. Minutes, 21 July 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 66. Report, 30 January 1957, S440-4-23, SMA. 67. Gao, Communist Takeover of Hangzhou, 308. 68. Minutes, 23 July 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 69. Work report, FBTA, July 1955, S440-4-21, SMA. 70. The survey of assets was standard procedure in the transformation of private companies. Gao, Communist Takeover of Hangzhou, 166. 71. Minutes, 11 August 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 72. On the larger process in Shanghai, see Feng Xiaocai, “Zhengzhi shengcun yu jingji shengcun: Shanghai shangren ruhe zoushang gongsi heying zhi lu?” [Political survival and economic survival: How Shanghai businessmen took the road to joint private-public ownership], in Zhongguo dangdaishi yanjiu [Research on Chinese contemporary history], ed. Han Gang and Wang Haiguang (Beijing: Jiuzhou Chubanshe, 2011), 91–138. 73. Minutes, FBTA, 6 December 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 74. Minutes, FBTA, 10 December 1955, 12 December 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 75. Joint letter (shenqingshu), funeral companies, 15 December 1955; Letter, Shanghai Shi Binyiguan Jigui Yunzang Shangye Tongye Gonghui, 16 December 1955, S440-4-23, SMA. 76. Shanghai shi binyi jigui yunzanye qingchan hezi shishi banfa (FBTA), 27 April 1956, S440-4-23, SMA. 77. Joint letter, funeral companies, 18 June 1956, S440-4-23, SMA. 78. Minutes, FBTA, 19 March 1956, 19 April 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 79. For examples, see the following files: S440-4-24, S440-4-25, S440-4-26, S440-4-27, SMA. 80. Minutes, FBTA, 30 May 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 81. Minutes, FBTA, 15 June 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 82. Minutes, Qingchan Hezi Xiaozu, 26 January 1956–11 February 1957, S440-4-23, SMA. 83. Datong and Anle had a total capital value above 110,000 yuan and Xieqiao stood at half this value. Three companies averaged about 10,000–12,000 yuan and the others were below 5,000 yuan. “Binzangye heyinghu zhangmian yu zigu shu’e he bai fen zhi bi” [The accounts, asset self-evaluation and percentage of funeral joint private-public businesses], 16 May 1956, S440-4-23, SMA. 84. Minutes, FBTA, 9 July 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 85. Letter, Bureau of Heavy Industry No. 1, 13 January 1956, Q1-6-437, SMA. 86. Letter, MZJ to Shiweihui, 26 June 1956, B2-2-73, SMA.

448

Notes to Chapter 9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

87. Minutes, FBTA, 9 July 1956, S440-4-8; Work report, 19 December 1956, S440-4-21, SMA. 88. Minutes, FBTA, 9 October 1956, S440-4-8; Report, 30 January 1957, S440-4-23, SMA. 89. Minutes, FBTA, 9 July 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 90. Minutes, FBTA, 3 March 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 91. Minutes, FBTA, 9 June 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 92. Minutes, FBTA, 19 August 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 93. Ibid. 94. Letter, Anle Funeral Parlor to FBTA, 20 August 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 95. Minutes, FBTA, 20 October 1955, S440-4-8, SMA. 96. Minutes, FBTA, 27 July 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 97. Minutes, FBTA, 3 March 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 98. Report (huibao), MZJ, 30 January 1957, S440-4-23, SMA. 99. “Shanghai shi shouqi shouyi shangye tongye gongshouhui guanyu biangeng binyiguan fudai jingying shouqishouyi de yijianshu” [Proposals of the Trade Association of Funeral Artifacts of Shanghai municipality on reforming the sale of funeral artifacts by funeral parlors], September 1956, S439-3-33-15, SMA. 100. Minutes, FBTA, 11 February 1957, S440-4-8, SMA. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid. 103. Minutes, FBTA, 9 October 1956, 20 October 1956, S440-4-8, SMA. 104. Minutes, FBTA, 24 May 1957, S440-4-8, SMA. 105. Ibid. 106. Minutes, FBTA, 11 February 1957, S440-4-8, SMA. 107. Ibid. 108. Minutes, FBTA, 24 May 1957, S440-4-8, SMA. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid. 111. Minutes, FBTA, 11 February 1957, S440-4-8, SMA. 112. Minutes, FBTA, 24 May 1957, S440-4-8, SMA. 113. Ibid. 114. Ibid. 115. Minutes, FBTA, 17 June 1957, 21 June 1957, 24 June 1957, 23 July 1957, S440-4-8, SMA.

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erupted in handling the issue of the Ningbo Graveyard. Eventually, the guild removed all the remains to a new location, though not without a fight.57 Yet in most cases, when graveyards got in the way of roadwork or construction or simply due to a private transaction, negotiations prevailed. Yet it was not always exempt from tensions. In March 1873, the Tongrentang decided to rent out a graveyard located along the Rue du Consulat, near the police station. It entrusted the Tongren Fuyuantang with the removal of the remains to its Luojiawan graveyard. The affair appeared in an article that criticized the association for renting out the land for money it did not need.58 In 1922, the French Municipal Council required the Tongrentang to vacate another 6.6-acre (40-mu) graveyard and to relinquish the land for the construction of the Franco-Chinese Municipal School. The opposition to the removal of the graves did not come from the benevolent association itself, but from community leaders who considered the Tongrentang did not have the right to dispose of the land. The polemical debate that erupted in the meetings spilled over in the press. The graveyard had been established in 1797 in rural land, but 130 years later even the Chinese authorities admitted it was out of place in the urban environment. This dispute emphasizes how sensitive the issue of displacing mortal remains was for some Chinese who contended that economic reasons did not justify troubling the buried bodies. The remains of the 328 buried bodies, mostly men, were eventually removed with great care, down to their hair.59 The issue of removing graves was not limited to the foreign concessions. In September 1907, merchants and literati wrote jointly to the Shanghai City Council to open a new road to connect the West Gate Road and the Xujiahui Road. The area had become very congested and the existing road was crowded with carts and people, while the French-built tramway was bound to create even more traffic. The road would cross a 5-acre (30-mu) graveyard the Tongren Fuyuantang owned. The association had exposed itself to criticism for placing coffins, some hardly buried, which in the view of the city council was a matter of public health. The charity approved the removal, but its chairman reminded the council of three precedents of conflicts about graveyards and questioned why Chinese graveyards were displaced from residential areas, whereas the French cemetery (Baxian qiao) was never challenged. The Shanghai daotai himself recommended a middle course as substantial opposition subsided.60 In November 1914, the Shanghai City Council again planned to condemn a charity graveyard for children to open a new road, but it failed to obtain the transfer of the land. In 1920, the issue was still under discussion.61 The Shanghai xian magistrate was more successful in obtaining the removal of another Tongrentang cemetery to make way for the new local court of justice.62

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157

figure 4.2. View of a charity cemetery near Fuzhou. Source: Lucy Bird, Chinese Pictures: Notes on Photographs Made in China, 1900, 60; no copyright

people from making use of them. The newspaper suggested that local authorities organize proper cemeteries similar to those in Western countries so people with limited means would have access to a decent place for burial.68 This did not fundamentally change the practice of aboveground coffins in charity cemeteries.69 All around Shanghai, the local governments continued to proceed with regular sweeps of unburied coffins, especially before the hot season.70 One cannot generalize from a few cases, but obviously the repetition of incidents tends to point to a certain pattern. Charity cemeteries were exposed to abuse from outside. Sometimes, when they came to be surrounded by houses or factories, the benevolent associations would erect a fence to isolate the place and protect it from intrusion by people or animals. This did not prevent trouble. In 1882, a construction company stored all the discarded materials of its housing project in a Tongren Fuyuantang graveyard.71 A more appalling case illustrates the fate of dead bodies in charity graveyards. In 1878, the Tongrentang discovered that pigs had penetrated its graveyard and turned up the coffins to eat the human remains. Other animals—cows, sheep—had also trampled the whole area. 72 A reader wrote to the Shenbao about a case in 1889 where dogs fed on corpses placed in damaged coffins left aboveground.73 Theft was definitely also a curse.74 In 1926, thieves entered graveyards of the SPBC and Tongren

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures and tables. “aboveground coffins”: animals disturbing, 157, 167; attempts to ban, regulate, 147–48, 156–57; attempts to modernize customs, 167–68; in charity cemeteries, 157–58; “clan graves” as alternative to, 158–59; as common custom in 1800s, 146–51, 147; concerns about disease, 149–50; due to unaffordable burials, 294; and grave robbers, 157–58; moving to private cemeteries, 158–66, 164; presumably awaiting burial, 146–47; regulations to protect and maintain, 149–50; seasonal burials of, 286; as shirking of filial duty, 148–49; for unidentified remains, 158; and wandering ghosts concerns, 286; Wang Yiting initiative, 151. See also charity graveyards/cemeteries; cremation administrations of Shanghai, 11 ancestral halls, 159 Anle Funeral Parlor (Anle Binyiguan), 134, 357 Anping Repository, 119 A. Olsen and Company, 96–97, 280 Ariès, Philippe, 3 automobile hearse, 98, 280 “bad deaths,” 243, 282 Baoshan Guild, 87 BAS (Bureau of Social Affairs), 118, 131, 151, 167–68, 318 beriberi, 39, 378n78 boat, coffin transportation by, 77, 100, 116, 123–28 bodies: cost of burial, 296–301, 297, 299, 300; cost of shipping, 302, 302–3; preparing for burial, 96, 261–62; price for storage, 294–96, 295; taboos regarding death, 261–62; use of modern science in preparing, 97. See also exposed corpses bronchitis, 39 Brook, Timothy, 311

Bubbling Well Cemetery, 178, 183–84, 188–89, 200–205, 220–21, 221, 297, 297–98 Bubbling Well Crematorium, 208, 312–14, 315, 319–20, 325, 327 Buddhism, 162, 212, 311, 312–13, 316, 319 Bureau of Civil Affairs, 188, 301, 330, 339, 353, 355 Bureau of Public Health: approving Jewish cemetery, 211; banning open coffins, 63, 88, 90, 130–31; and cemeteries after 1949, 184–87; “cemetery zones” concept, 184; and coffin shipping rates, 302, 302; compulsory vaccination, 38; cremation issues, 131–32, 134–35, 137–38, 151, 180, 318–20, 324–35; and FBTA, 121–23, 131–32, 137, 342; forced eviction of cemeteries, 173–74; and foreign cemeteries, 216; and funeral parlor rates, 291–93, 292, 293, 298; inspection fees, 90, 119; installing “corpse collecting boxes,” 256; and Lingnan Cemetery, 181; and locations of repositories, 113, 115, 118; and loss of Russian cemetery, 213; and municipal cemeteries, 168–70, 175–78; new regulations in 1950s, 344, 348; and Penang Station, 116, 126; and plunder of Japanese cemetery, 184; postwar crackdown by, 118, 120, 129, 134, 140; and private cemetery rates, 300, 300; public health groups and, 21; and Qian Zongfan, 351; records of, 20, 243, 254, 256; refugees occupying repositories, 135–36; registration of guilds, repositories, funeral parlors, 88, 165, 181; reinstituted after war, 118, 129, 137, 151, 181–82, 214; reviewing cemetery applications, 163; and Sikh gurdwara issue, 316; under socialism, 351–54; taking over International Cemetery, 170; three-stage coffin plan, 138–39; unburied coffin surveys, 150

Index

Bureau of Social Affairs (BAS), 118, 131, 151, 167–68, 318 burial: ban on graves outside cemeteries, 171; as Chinese practice, 143–44; customs in Shanghai area, 144–45, 167–68; duration of graves, 178–79; individual tombs, 145–46; second burial of bones, 179; during Sino-Japanese War, 107. See also “aboveground coffins” Butchers’ Guild (Rouzhuang Gongsuo), 87 cancer, 39–40 catafalques, 271–72, 272 causes of death, 39–40, 378n78 CCP (Chinese Communist Party), 144, 340– 42, 348–49, 359, 364–65 cemeteries. See graveyards/cemeteries, guild cemetery riots (1874, 1898), 65, 77, 80–83, 217–18 Central Funeral Directors, 98 Chang’an Coffin Shipping Company, 128 Changzhou Guild, 57 Chaohui Guild, 63, 71, 77 Chaozhou Guild, 54–55, 60, 88, 278 charities providing free coffins, 49, 50, 96 charities providing free coffin shipping, 77, 78 charity graveyards/cemeteries, 16, 18, 151– 58, 154, 157; and abandoned corpses, 226–27; appearance of, 156, 157; attempts to restrict, relocate, 79, 155–56, 162, 170, 180–90, 218–19; and Bureau of Public Health, 137; cost of funerals, 306; and cremation, 318, 329; encroachment on, 85; establishment after disaster, 403n53; first public cemeteries, 145; funeral shops and, 91; for Guang-Zhao natives, 54; guild loss of charity status, 139; guild usage of, 51, 57, 68, 71–72, 75–76; intrusion by animals and people, 157–58, 182–83; mixing of bodies in, 5; in nineteenth century, 47; time limits in, 179; unburied coffins in, 156. See also Federation of Corporations, Guilds, and Cemeteries; Jingjiang Gongsuo Chen Gongbo, 88, 117–18, 172, 323–24 Chen Yafu, 170 Chen Zhaoquan, 342, 352 Chen Zizhen, 342 childbirth, death during/after, 16 children: in abandoned coffins, 231, 236; cremation of, 175, 312, 321–22, 324,

334, 336, 364; death-related costs for, 78, 291, 292, 297; deaths during Sino-Japanese conflict, 321; exposed corpses of, 17, 226–30, 231, 235, 236, 237, 241, 242, 252, 420n15, 420n27; foreigners, 29; in funeral processions, 113, 277; health stations for, 21; mortality rates of, 18–19, 19, 39–40, 231, 232, 234, 236–37; records of dead, 233–34; in repositories/ graveyards, 57, 66, 69–70, 73–75, 155, 177; and starvation, 228; susceptibility to disease, deprivation, 22, 28–29, 234, 361. See also infants/young children China Casket Company, 97 China Cemetery (Zhongguo Gongmu), 160 China Funeral Home (Zhongguo Binyiguan), 98–99, 105, 134, 291, 292, 304 Chinese municipality: extraterritoriality of foreign settlements, 114; funeral parlors in, 102; “necropolis” in during SinoJapanese War, 84, 106–16, 110, 111, 112; repositories in/near, 83–85, 110 Chinese People’s Relief Association, 345 cholera: death rates from, 16, 28–29; infection from corpses, 82; lack of treatment for, 23; major epidemics, 32–34, 34, 41; pattern of deaths, 33, 39–40; public health response to, 27, 32, 80; registration of, 28; vaccination for, 31, 37–38, 41 Chonghai Guild, 58, 90–91, 119, 137 City God, 286–89; Temple of the City God, 287–88 “clan graves,” 158–59 coffins: under CCP, 354–55; coffin shops, 263, 264; cost of storage, 60, 74–75, 134, 294–96, 295; free, 50; grades of, 98, 262–63; provided by guilds, 47–51, 96; retrieval of, 71–72, 77, 87–88, 129, 132, 134, 138–39, 140, 181, 327. See also “aboveground coffins”; funeral parlors; funeral processions; repositories coffin shipping, 48, 76–79, 83–84, 84; certificates for, 122–23; major shipping lines, 125; to native place, 83, 124; Penang Shipping Station, 109, 116, 124–27; private shipping companies, 128; wartime disruptions of, 84 commoditization of death, 95–96; in 1900s, 96–99; and funeral business, 121–23; reorganization of coffin shipping, 123–28; ­

476

Index

477

Ebrey, Patricia, 311 enteritis, 40 epidemics, 9–10; cremation in response to, 313; drinking water and, 22, 32; effects of poverty on, 42; effects of urbanization on, 21–23; effects of war on, 21–22, 42; guild reactions to, 73; patterns of, 39–40; records of, 32–36, 36; refugee population and, 21; and unburied corpses/coffins, 80, 82, 149, 262; vaccination, 37–39. See also public health measures exposed corpses, 225, 231, 236, 238, 360, 419n1; “corpse collecting boxes,” 256; cremation of, 108–9, 328, 424n103; French Municipal Council and, 232, 234, 236, 236–37, 239–42, 240, 241; geographic location of, 238–42, 240, 241; of infants and children, 17, 226–30, 231, 235, 236, 237, 241, 242, 420n15, 420n27; Ningbo/Ningbonese, 227, 243, 250; post-Sino-Japanese War, 254–55; Public Works Department collection of, 253–54, 427n149; records of, 226–27, 230, 233–34, 256, 345; residents’ complaints regarding, 249–50, 253; sex ratio of, 229, 236; Shanghai Municipal Council, 230; during Sino-Japanese War (1937), 232, 239, 247; social “erasure” of, 255; and time of year, 238; in twentieth century, 13, 226. See also Bureau of Public Health; charity graveyards/ cemeteries; SPBC; Tongren Fuyuantang

Dachang Cemetery, 57, 176, 178–79, 187–89 Dalu Funeral Parlor, 113 Dapu Guild (Dapu Huiguan), 57 Datong Jijiusuo, 98 de Groot, Jan Jakob Maria, 3, 229, 260, 262–64, 269–73 Descottes-Genon, Eugène, 281 development in/near cemeteries, 155, 179– 80, 217–18 diarrhea, 29–30, 40 Dinghai Shanchang Guild, 64, 75, 89 diphtheria, 28–29, 31, 378n78 Dongting Dongshan Guild, 57, 77 Doolittle, Justus, 3, 260 Duan Qirui, 282–84 Durand-Fardel, Maxime, 25 Du Xigui, 284 dysentery, 30, 40, 378n78

Farr, William, 28 FBTA (Funeral Business Trade Association), 121–23; acting on behalf of government, 122; under CCP, 340–44, 349–50, 359; and cremation issue, 327; data collection by, 123; decline and demise of, 344–45; established to eliminate stored coffins, 119–20, 121, 137–38; issuing certificates, 122–23; issuing official rate list, 292–94, 293; and joint shipping company, 120; new charter, 122; objections to mandatory cremation, 130–32, 137; and Qian Zongfan, 351; and refugees occupying repositories, 135–36; reorganization under Communists, 343; rewriting of history by, 342; and socialist transformation, 351– 58; and taxes, 348, 350; and troops occupying funeral parlors, 136

­

in Shanghai’s “necropolis,” 106–16, 128– 39; in wartime, 99–106, 117–21 Cormack, Annie, 260 corporations (gongsuo), 44 cremation, 335–37; in 1940s–1950s, 328– 35; as alien practice, 312–14; among Buddhists, 311, 312, 319; and Bureau of Public Health, 131–32, 134–35, 137–38, 151, 180, 318–20, 324–35; and charity graveyards/cemeteries, 318, 329; of children, 175, 312, 321–22, 324, 334, 336, 364; in China historically, 310–12; in Chinese municipality, 325–29; compulsory in French Concession, 108; of exposed corpses, 108–9, 328, 424n103; French Municipal Council, 108, 248, 321; during Great Leap Forward, 331–34; of infants/young children, 320–21, 324, 333–36; International Settlement/First District, 248; by Japanese, 314, 316–17; neighborhood protests regarding, 322–23, 328; of paupers, 324; and Public Health Department, 317; versus repositories, 324, 326–27; in response to epidemics, 313; Shanghai Municipal Council, 108, 208, 313, 316–17, 320–23, 326, 336; shortage of combustibles for, 323; by Sikhs, 314– 15; and Sino-Japanese War (1937), 208, 309–10, 319, 320; SPBC and, 244, 248, 320–24, 333; of war dead, 321 Crowley, John, 280 Cumming, K. M., 323

478

Index

Federation of Benevolent Associations, 151 Federation of Corporations, Guilds, and Cemeteries (Gongsuo Huiguan Shanzhuang Lianhehui), 345–47, 346 Federation of Guilds, Gongsuo and Charity Cemeteries, 329 Federation of Guilds and Corporations (Huiguan Gongsuo Lianhehui), 87 Federation of Trade Unions, 345 feng shui, 144, 146–47, 159 First District. See International Settlement/ First District First Municipal Cemetery, 169–70, 174, 175–76, 178, 187, 298, 305 flu (influenza), 28, 378n78, 421n28 foreign cemeteries, 199, 201; and colonialism, 196–97, 207–9; conditions of, 216; conflict with preexisting land use, 217– 22, 221; death rates, 196–97; desecration and squatters, 214–17, 215; disinterment to accommodate, 202; ethnic cemeteries, 207; extraterritoriality of, 114; French Concession extension issue, 198, 217; funeral services, 96–97; in International Settlement, 201, 211; Lokawei Cemetery, 202–3, 203; for non-Christians, 209–12; for paupers, 212–13; Pootung Cemetery, 198–99, 214; records of, 9–10; restricted to Christian burials, 205–6; Shantung Road Cemetery, 197–99, 214; “Soldiers’ Cemetery,” 200; unburied coffins outside of, 84; war refugees in, 99; Zikawei Cemetery, 202–3, 203. See also Pahsienjao (Baxianqiao) Cemetery French Concession: tracking of epidemics, 28, 29 French Concession/French Municipal Council, 4, 11, 11, 14, 80–81, 129; bans on burials, storage, 82, 105; Baxianqiao Cemetery, 178; burials, 105, 200, 205–6, 208; cause of death (1937), 40; CCP changes to funeral services, 364–65; cemetery riots, 65, 77, 80–83; cemetery rules and practices, 206; cemetery security, 182–83; cemetery spaces (1900s), 202–3, 203; charity cemeteries, 153–54, 154; cholera (1937), 34, 34; coffin shipping, 77; coffin storage, 60–61, 65, 77, 82–83, 103, 104, 111, 112, 420n19; coffin storage during wartime, 132; coffin transfers to International Settlement, 108–10, 110, 115; collecting of exposed corpses, 232,

234, 236–37, 236, 239–42, 240, 241; collective cemeteries, 174; coordination with Public Health Department, 30; cremation, 108, 248, 321; duration of graves, 178–79; funerals, 97, 103, 104, 105, 113; ghosts and wandering souls, 286–88, 287, 288; graves in new development, 155, 217–18; guild cemeteries, 53; infant deaths in, 17; land use issues, 55, 80–81; and Lokawei Cemetery, 202–3, 203, 213; map of cemeteries, 201; municipal service proposed, 254; and Muslim cemetery, 209; official funerals/processions in, 275–77, 276, 280–83; and Pahsienjao Cemetery, 198, 202; pauper burials, 213; policies on death, 195–96; population density in, 23, 24, 196; and preexisting cemeteries, 80, 218; preventing mosquitoes, 25–26; rates for burial space, vaults, 297, 297–98; repositories banned in, 105, 115; Russian burials, 213; sex ratio in, 18; smallpox (1938–1939), 30, 35–36, 36; and SPBC, 246, 248, 254; Tongren Fuyuantang in, 244, 248, 250–51; tracking infectious disease, 26, 28–29; transfer of remains, 180; treaty rights to expropriate land, 81; unclaimed bodies, 100–101; undeclared coffin transit from, 127; vaccination, 30, 34–35, 37–39; Vietnamese burials, 213; water quality, 25, 32; and Zikawei Cemetery, 202 French troops, 200 Fujianese community, 44–45, 52–53, 63, 72, 80, 217, 271–73 Funeral Business Trade Association. See FBTA funeral parlors (binyiguan): as alternative to repositories, 95, 100–101; under CCP, 348–58; and funeral services, 97; illegally storing coffins, 120; rates for services, 291–303; regulation of, 114, 117–19; on rented land, 134; in residential areas, 114; during wartime, 100–102, 102. See also China Funeral Home funeral processions, 268, 269, 272, 273, 279; basic structure of, 270–74; children in, 113, 277; coffins concealed during, 135; for commoners, 278, 279; of Duan Qirui, 282–84; in French Concession, 275–77, 276, 280–83; funeral service packages, 292; of Fu Xiao’an, 282–83; in International Settlement, 275–77, 276,

Index 282–83; “memorial assembly,” 266–67; prostitutes in, 288–89; publicizing of death, 266; regulation of, 283–85; of Ruan Lingyu, 277–78; of Sheng Xuanhuai, 274–77; and Western military, 280– 81; and women, 113, 261, 272, 278 funerals: elements of, 47; funeral garb, 263; literature on, 260; as public performance, 265–70, 267; regulating of, 283–85; as rituals, 261–65, 265; unaffordable for many, 259, 303–6, 306 funeral shops, 96 Fu Xiao’an, 58, 88, 117, 282–84 Gao Huaizhi, 341 Garment Guild (Yizhuang Gongsuo), 78, 90 gongsuo (corporations), 44, 98 Goodman, Bryna, 3, 7, 44–45, 80, 82, 217 Granet, Marcel, 261 grave robbers, 157–58, 182, 250, 328 graveyards/cemeteries: in 1950s, 184–91; carrying stigma of poverty, 144–45; crowding in, 190; foreign, 201; guild, 51–58, 52, 53; municipal, 166–72; plundering and desecration of, 182–84, 190; private, 300, 300–301; removal of graves from, 178–82; under socialism, 144–45, 301, 357–58; wartime emergency, 107. See also charity graveyards/cemeteries; foreign cemeteries; private cemeteries Gray, John, 260 Great Britain, 79, 144, 199–200 Guang-Zhao Guild, 48, 54–56, 61, 71, 77, 160, 179–80, 299, 347, 440n56 guilds (huiguan), 43, 104, 111, 112, 346; and corporations, 44, 47–50; demise of, 345–47, 346; economics of, 47–48; Federation of Guilds, Gongsuo and Charity Cemeteries, 329; Federation of Guilds and Corporations, 87; funeral services offered by, 47–48, 49; graveyards run by, 51–58, 52, 53, 92; list of ones managing death, 46; provision of coffin storage by, 48; services offered by, 49; under socialism, 339. See also individual guilds Gu Jiegang, 269–71, 273, 277, 304 Guoji Funeral Parlor, 295, 295 Guoyutang, 152–53, 156 Haichang Guild, 87 hearse, 98, 271 heart diseases, 39–40

479

Hebei Guild, 133, 163 Henderson, James, 23, 32 Ho, T. K., 106 Hokari, Hiroyuki, 3 Hongfang Gongsuo, 119 Hong Kong, 78 Hongqiao Cemetery, 107, 176–77, 187, 213, 222–23 Hou Yanxing, 7 Huang Chujiu, 161 Hua Ronghai, 341 Hubei Guild, 87–88 Hudong Gongsuo, 98 huiguan. See guilds Huining Guild, 57, 59, 87 Huizhang Guild, 77, 88 Huizhou Guild, 64, 66, 79 Huizhou Ningguo Guild, 74–75 Hunan Guild, 58, 63–64, 68, 129 Hundred Flowers Movement, 340, 342, 356 Hungjao Cemetery, 203–4, 210, 216, 219, 297, 297. See also Hongqiao Cemetery Hu Yuxiang, 358 Huzhou Guild, 18, 19, 63, 68–69, 72, 73, 75, 78–79, 129 infants/young children, 361; baby towers for, 229, 229–30, 420n20; burial costs, 297–98; clinics, kindergartens for, 256; conditions of compared to England/ Europe, 376n51, 420n15; cremation for, 320–21, 324, 333–36; exposed corpses of, 17, 230, 252, 420n27; male/female death ratio, 237; matting instead of coffins for, 263; mortality rates of, 17, 21, 41, 175, 226, 228, 231, 234–37, 236, 348; poor records on, 16; susceptibility of to infectious disease, 237; temples for, 420n27. See also children influenza, 28, 378n78, 421n28 International Cemetery (Wanguo Gongmu), 159–61, 170–72, 175, 177–78, 211 International Funeral Directors (Wanguo Binyiguan), 97–98, 136, 277, 280 International Settlement/First District, 11; charity cemeteries in, 154; and cholera epidemic (1937), 34; coffin repositories/ funeral parlors in, 99–100, 102–5, 103, 104; coffins from other districts, 105, 109–10, 115–16; coffin shops in, 263; corpses entering from outside, 108–9, 115–16; cremation in, 108, 248; death

Index

Jamieson, Robert Alexander, 16 Japanese crematorium, 317 Japanese military: controlling Penang Station, 126; controlling right of passage, 95, 100–101, 116, 124–27, 171; disallowing municipal services to Buddhists, 212; evacuation of Shanghai (1941), 12; forced evictions of cemeteries, 172–74, 192; health concerns about coffins, 116; smuggling concerns of, 116, 124. See also Sino-Japanese War (1937) Jewish burial grounds, 201, 207, 209–11, 216 Jianghuai Funeral Parlor, 295, 295 Jianghuai Guild, 100, 137, 313 Jiang Jieshi, 171, 303 Jiangxi Guild, 57, 160 Jiating Cemetery, 299, 299 Jing’ansi. See Bubbling Well Cemetery; Bubbling Well Crematorium Jingjiang Gongsuo, 46, 86, 87, 346 Jing Runsan, 159 Jinting Guild, 74 Johnston, Linda, 13 Joint Coffin Shipping and Burial Company (Lianye Yunjiu Yingzang Gongsi), 120 Jordan, J. H., 114 Kelambi, D. W. S., 212

Laqueur, Thomas, 266 Leutner, Mechthild, 260 Li Bozhi, 149 Lingnan Cemetery, 54–55, 63, 180–81 Li Ting’an, 318–19 Liu Jiping, 301, 329 Loch, Granville, 146 Loh, Stone, 228 Longhua Crematorium, 301, 331–34 Lowe, H. Y., 260 MacDonald, Thomas, 280 malaria, 25, 30 Mao Zedong, 357 Marine Carpenter Guild (Shuimu Gongyesuo), 57, 72 measles, 28–29, 40, 378n78 Medhurst, W. H., 197 meningitis, 28, 378n78 Miaohang Cemetery, 172–76 military funeral processions, 280–81 Milne, William Charles, 229 mourning hall, 262 municipal cemeteries, 87, 166–72, 177 Municipal Senate, 131–32, 211, 327 murder as “bad death,” 282 Muslims, 180, 207, 209, 223, 301 Nanshi Funeral Parlor, 293, 293 Nationalist government: designating “cemetery areas,” 204; Duan Qirui state funeral, 282; and Japanese crematorium, 317; military billeting in graveyards, repositories, 136; modernizing handling of death, 99, 144–45, 166–67, 282; new regulations by, 122–23, 166–67, 364; promoting cremation, 309, 318, 336; reducing public spending, 26; and zones of exclusion, 54, 254. See also FBTA native place and native-place associations, 44–46, 91–93, 100, 117; acknowledging coffins never going to, 132; boats taking coffins to, 116; custom requiring, 145; importance of, 78; during Japanese occupation, 116; private cemeteries as alternative to, 158; tax policy under Communists, 347. See also Penang Shipping Station “necropolis,” 84, 106–16, 110, 111, 112, 117 New Cemetery. See Pahsienjao (Baxianqiao) Cemetery ­

International Settlement/First District (continued) rates in, 108, 196–97; fees, 90, 292, 296– 98, 302, 323; foreign cemeteries in, 201, 211; funeral processions in, 275–77, 276, 282–83; Hot Water Guild in, 85; Hunan Guild in, 63; Japanese occupation of, 101–2, 126, 135, 211–12; “necropolis” in, 106–16, 110, 111, 112; Ningbonese in, 60; pauper burials, 212–13; Pingjiang Guild in, 61; plunder of tombs, 184, 190; records, 108, 230–32, 231, 236–37, 239, 246; “refugee coffin” population in, 109– 10, 110, 362–63; river clogged with coffins, 116; sex ratio of bodies, 69; Siming Gongsuo and, 132–33; and SPBC, 243– 47; time limits for graves, 178; tracking of epidemics, 28; Wandering Ghosts Festival, 287, 287, 288; Zhe-Shao Guild and, 133. See also Public Health Department; Shanghai Municipal Council; SPBC “invisible” bodies, 226. See also exposed corpses; unburied/abandoned coffins

­

480

Index

Office of Funeral Management (Binzang Guanlisuo), 135, 189, 329–30, 333, 342, 354–57 Pahsienjao (Baxianqiao) Cemetery, 198–99, 199, 202, 212, 297, 297–98, 304 palanquin, 268 pallbearers, 271–72, 272 Pan Hongsheng, 284–85 Penang Shipping Station, 109, 116, 124–27 Philips, M., 115 Piaoshui Shuilu Gongsuo, 60–61, 79, 119 Pingjiang Guild, 61, 100 pneumonia and bronchopneumonia, 29, 39–40 political instability and noncompliance, 129 Pootung Cemetery, 188, 198–99, 199, 214– 15, 215 “price of death,” 290–91; burying the body, 296–301, 297, 299, 300; funeral parlors, 291–94, 292, 293; shipping the body, 302, 302–3; storing the body, 294–96, 295 private cemeteries, 184–91; as commercial enterprises, 158–66, 164; International Cemetery, 159–61, 170–72, 175, 177–78, 211; protests against, 165 Protet, Auguste Léopold, 280–81 public cemeteries, 145, 159, 162–63, 166– 68, 171 Public Health Department (International Settlement), 30, 321; attempts to regulate repositories, 114–18, 123; and Bubbling Well Cemetery, 200, 205; and coffins at cotton mill, 250; and corpses entering from Chinese municipality, 109; and corpses entering from French Concession, 115; and cremation, 248, 313–14,

316–17, 320–24; and definition of resident, 205; encouraging inoculation, 35; faulty notification process, 253; finding smuggled goods in coffins, 124–26; and Hungjao Cemetery, 219; inspection fees per coffin, 90; inventory of stored coffins, 110–13, 111, 112; investigating Hong qiao, 107; and Jewish burial grounds, 210; monitoring of disease by, 28, 40; and Penang Station, 124–27; on religion and burial site, 205, 210–12; reports of open coffins, 249; and SPBC, 245, 247 public health measures: in Chinese population, 29; in French Concession, 26; lack of coordination, 30, 41; tracking of epidemics, 26, 28 Pudong Gongsuo, 57, 160 Puyi Cemetery, 63, 75, 79, 129, 244 ­

Ningbo Guild, 50, 99, 120, 132, 139, 156, 160, 206, 347, 424n99 Ningbo/Ningbonese, 125, 390n219; cemetery riots, 65, 77, 80–83; coffin shipping for, 128, 303; free coffin services, 50; French issues with graveyards, 54–55, 80–83, 155; handling of exposed corpses, 227, 243, 250; repositories/cemeteries for, 45–46, 57–58, 60–61; as sojourners, 70, 70, 77, 82. See also Siming Gongsuo; SPBC Ninghai Shanchang Gongsuo, 90 Ningshao Gongsuo, 90

481

Qianjiang Guild, 61 Qian Zongfan, 341, 351 Qingming festival, 138, 148, 167, 174, 286–87, 335 rabies/hydrophobia, 31, 378n78 Rajabally, R., 209 Rawski, Evelyn, 2 repatriation of dead, 43 repositories (jijiusuo), 49, 58–76, 89; in 1950s, 138–40, 140, 186, 343, 344, 350, 352, 357, 359; admission to, 69; architectural layout of, 62, 62, 64–67, 67; and Bureau of Public Health, 113, 115, 118; and cemetery riots, 65, 77, 80–83; charities providing free coffins, 49, 50, 68; children in, 57, 66, 69–70, 73–75, 155, 177; coffin removal from Zhabei, 127; cost of storage, 60, 74–75, 134, 294–96, 295; disputes with authorities, 79–86; establishment of, 59–60; exceeding capacity, 87–88; expense of, 51, 58; fire damage to, 64; in French Concession, 206; handling of unclaimed coffins, 51, 76, 130, 133–34; high- and low-class storage, 75, 292, 294–96, 295, 305; income of, 105–6, 106; in/near Chinese municipality, 83–85; International Settlement/First District, 99–100, 102–5, 103, 104; length of stay in, 71–73, 87–88; locations of, 60–61, 101–5, 103, 104, 117; maintenance costs of, 75–76; for Ningbonese, 45–46, 57–58, 60–61;

A Final Resting Place

161

a cemetery even generated offers for land sales. In September 1926, an announcement proposed land in Jiangwan suitable for “factories, cemeteries, and gardening.”100 In October 1927, the Wannian Cemetery joined the chorus of those that competed for the attention of potential customers in search of burial lots. The initiator of the cemetery, Huang Chujiu, had initially bought a very large track of land near Caohejing to build houses. The housing project occupied less land than planned and left much vacant land. Eventually, Huang decided to turn the remaining vacant land into a cemetery.101 Quite interestingly, Huang Chujiu was the co-founder of the Small World entertainment palace, which Wang Guozhen, the widow of his former business partner, succeeded to take over. Wang had established the successful International Cemetery in 1919. Huang followed suit, although his advertisement made no reference to the “Wanguo model.” From then onward, private companies opened cemeteries in close succession. In August 1929, the Yong’an Cemetery announced its opening on Great Western Road on 38 acres (100 mu) of land, followed in November by the Hudong First Cemetery.102 In November 1930, the Chang’an Cemetery started running advertisements in the press, followed by the Pu’an Cemetery in November 1932 and the Ji’an Cemetery in March 1936.103 The competition slowed down but did not stop the movement. In 1940 the Miaohang Cemetery opened near the small Miaohang town on 19.3 acres (52 mu) of land,104 In April 1940, Zhou Ganru, a native from Anhui, applied for the right to open a Dalu Cemetery near Zhenru.105 Yet there was no further trace of the project in the application and the Dalu Cemetery did not appear in any records. What this trend shows is that something was changing in the funeral practices of the Shanghai residents. Before the state intruded with determination after 1927 to change social mores, a movement had started that made modern cemeteries an increasingly acceptable place to bury the dead. The emergence of several major cemeteries within a few years between 1925 and 1927 confirmed that the path opened by the International Cemetery offered a promising commercial opportunity at the same time as it also contributed to alter the perception of the population. The recurrent articles that debated the advantages of cemeteries but even more the proliferation of advertisements for cemeteries must have gradually impregnated the mind of the people. Although there remained a genuine longing for burial in the native place, the realities of economics made it more and more acceptable to be buried where one had lived. A grave was a permanent place, whereas, as one author argued, a coffin in a guild repository was exposed to the danger of fire, especially after urbanization caught up with the repositories.106 The advertisements emphasized their exquisite

Index Siming Gongsuo, 49, 50, 52–53, 59, 68, 71, 75, 77, 80–82, 90. See also cemetery riots (1874, 1898) Sinn, Elizabeth, 78 Sino-Japanese War (1937), 12, 232; blocking access to cemeteries, 95, 180; coffin storage during, 95, 175, 206; cremation during, 309–10, 319, 320; effect on guilds, 63, 68; evacuations and resettlements during, 14; exposed corpses during, 239, 247; funeral parlors during, 95, 101; no gurdwara cremations during, 208 smallpox, 27–29, 31, 32, 35–38, 36, 39–41, 80 Small Sword Society, 13, 63, 310 socialism: FBTA under, 340–45, 348–58; guilds and charities under, 345–47; managing death under, 339–40, 358–60; reforming funeral industry, 347–51 sojourners, 4–5; burial in ancestral land, 43, 78–79, 83–84, 91–93; burial locally, 46; foreign cemeteries in Shanghai, 197–200; free coffin wood for, 48; in French Concession, 383n50; fundraising among, 50; high ratio of unmarried, 17; importance of guilds to, 139; length of stay of, 70, 70; majority of Shanghai population, 43–44; poverty of, 362; processing of the dead, 67–68; repositories for, 45, 51, 60, 113; sex ratio among, 69; during wartime and occupation, 100. See also native place and native-place associations; Ningbo/Ningbonese Song Qingling, 190, 335 SPBC (Shanghai Public Benevolent Cemetery), 256, 321; advertising by, 230; burial of soldiers, 423n85; clinic and school run by, 419n8; collecting exposed corpses, 238, 242; collection reports from, 17, 227, 230–34, 231, 247, 321; cost increases, 426n139; and cremation, 244, 248, 320–24, 333; Dachang cemetery, 422n63; distributing free coffins, 244; history of, 227, 243; land owned by, 244–45; press coverage of, 227–28; problems with animals, grave robbers, smells, 157–58, 250, 328; as quasi-official organization, 244; and rules for collection of corpses, 250; staff and equipment, 251, 253, 426n131; subsidies for, 246, 254; temporary bypassing of, 253–54 Suzhou, private cemeteries in, 162–63 Suzhou Guild, 285

483

taboo, death as, 261 Taizhou Guild, 75, 89, 90 Thomas Macdonald and Company, 96 time limits for coffin storage, 71, 77, 87, 137, 179, 203, 325 Tonghai Repository, 98 Tongren Fuyuantang: and Bureau of Public Hygiene and Assistance, 250–51; complaints regarding, 155–56; end of, 345, 365; graveyards owned by, 152–55; history of, 227, 230, 242–44, 246, 248, 249; land owned by, 244–45; problems with trash, animals, grave robbers, 157–58; as quasi-official organization, 244; reports from, 232–34, 236, 242, 321; services provided by, 96, 148; and Shanghai Municipal Council, 218–19; staff and equipment, 251–53, 252, 253, 422n62; subsidies for, 246, 254; supervision of, 256 Tongrentang, 148, 151–53, 155, 157, 242 tongxiang, 51, 59, 81 Treaty of Nanking, 195 tuberculosis, 28, 39–41, 361, 378n78 typhoid fever, 28–30, 31, 39–40, 378n78 typhus, 30, 31, 313 unburied/abandoned coffins, 231, 236, 419n1; cremation of, 137; due to disruptions, 84; geography of, 238; records of, 233; shaming of relatives for, 148. See also exposed corpses; repositories; SPBC; Tongren Fuyuantang unclaimed coffins: announcements of, 87; burial of, 57–58, 61, 64, 71, 129, 341; buried in charity cemeteries, 72, 76, 79; Communist policy on, 128; cremation of, 127, 130–31, 137–38, 309, 326–27, 337; duration of storage, 51, 71–72, 87, 91, 344; excavation of buried, 245; in private repositories, 130; relatives searching for, 79; shipping to native place, 57, 71–72, 76 urbanization: claiming cemetery/repository land, 54, 61, 81; and epidemics, 21–23 Vietnamese, 179, 202, 207–8, 213 Wan’an Coffin Repository, 114, 136, 295, 295–96 Wandering Ghosts Festival, 151–52, 243, 285–90, 287, 288 Wang Beiwu, 341 Wang Fang, 330

484

Index

Wang Guozhen, 159–61 Wang Shengsan, 160 Wang Xiaolai, 87 Wang Yiting, 151, 243 Wang Zhongliang, 357 Watson, James, 2 Watson, Ruby, 7 Wenzhou Native-Place Association (Wenzhou Tongxianghui), 50–51 White Palace Funeral Parlor (Baigong Binyiguan), 134, 302 women: death during/after childbirth, 16; exposed corpses of, 229, 236; in funerals and processions, 113, 261, 272, 278, 288–89; funerals for, 284; occupations of, 17–18; prenatal care, 21, 256, 376n51; in repositories, 66, 69–70, 73; suicides by, 373n37 Women’s Federation, 256 Wu Liande, 310, 318 Wuxi Guild, 100, 392n8 Xibaoxing Crematorium, 333–34. See also Japanese crematorium

Xie Baohua, 357 Xijin Guild, 54, 59 Xinlu Crematorium, 333 Xue Wencai, 357 Xu Langxi, 284 Yan Fuqing, 188 Yangzhou Guild, 67, 100 Yanping Shanzhuang Guild, 75 Yanxu Shanzhuang, 61, 72, 140 Yizhuang Gongsuo, 68, 74, 78–79, 90, 129, 136 Yu Xiaqing, 58 Zhaiyi Crematorium Company, 325 Zhang Yimou, 362 Zhao Rongkang, 321 Zhejin Gongsuo, 75 Zheng Zhengqiu, 278 Zhe-Shao Guild, 72, 76, 87–88, 89 Zhou Enlai, 190 Zou Rong, 267 Zou Yiren, 10, 13