The bright moon and the empty courtyard are like water like a Chinese year

Chapter 79
No matter what you say in Shanghai, the Song family is a wealthy family. In addition, the newly opened "Mingyueju" in Guangzhou, with the help of the apprentice (Master Dai) of Master Yao, the imperial chef in the late Qing Dynasty, business is booming. ) the money spent on the kidnapping has been returned. In addition, the Song family is married to the famous Qi family, and the ancestor was a family of officials during the Qing Dynasty. Naturally, the funeral of Mrs. Tai (Li Yue) cannot be arranged casually.

Because the wife of the Song family (Li Yue) passed away due to illness, before she died, she announced that everything in the family would be managed by the elder of the Song family (Yaoguang), so the elder of the Song family (Yaoguang) handed over the funeral to the elder wife of the Song family (Hui Yi) dealt with it, and the second concubine (Yiyi) also passed away from "sudden illness", so the third concubine (Minxiu) assisted in handling it.

In addition, due to the sudden death of Mrs. Tai (Li Yue), the marriage between the eldest daughter of the Song family (Ruoli) and the second young master of the Tao family (Yunjin) can only be postponed temporarily.

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During the period of the Republic of China, marriage customs and funeral customs were generally referred to as wedding and funeral customs.

According to the general custom, as long as the funeral is a normal death, it can also be called a white wedding, which can avoid the hard work in the world and reach bliss or heaven early.

After the founding of the Republic of China, equality for all was advocated, and kneeling worship was banned.

The "Ritual System" published on August 1912, 8 stipulated that men should take off their hats and bow, and in funerals, they should take off their hats and bow three times, while women should only bow without taking off their hats. The new fashion was affirmed in the form of laws and regulations, which had a certain impact on changing customs, but there were few executors in society at that time."

In 1920, "Oriental Miscellany" published an article "Funeral System" signed by Jing Zang, proposing to eliminate the hypocrisy of ancient rituals and new superstitious practices in the funeral process.

There are superstitious practices: one is to pay attention to geomantic omen for the burial site, and the other is to promote the exposure of burials due to heavy burials and stop burials. Cremation should be promoted.

Warlords, bureaucrats, down-and-out politicians, wealthy businessmen, and gentry families, in order to show their prestige, status, and power, they tried their best to show their prestige, status, and power. cumbersome form.

Customs vary with different regions, and there are also differences between "big households" and "well-off households".

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The preparation work is very troublesome. As soon as the person dies (here refers to the death of the bereaved old man, who is enough to do a lot of funerals) the bereaved family immediately finds close relatives and close friends to study and deal with it.

All preparations are nothing more than ways to spend money, including please, set up, find, rent, order, purchase, manufacture and other items.

The sequence is as follows:
1.Please be the manager——The manager is the person who prepares for the funeral. He must have experience in doing this kind of thing and be able to contact relevant industries in the society.

2.It is also necessary to have several deputies to listen to the dispatch of the general manager (some called the prime minister), so as to pick up the burden in an orderly manner.

Whether the funeral affairs of the funeral home can be run smoothly has a lot to do with the manager.

3.Set up an accounting room - mourning families usually ask relatives and friends to act as accountants.

He is in charge of all kinds of expenses in funeral affairs, and set up accounts, including registering funeral ceremonies and elegiac couplets, sacrificial curtains, plaques, wreaths, paperwork and "Original Scriptures" sent by relatives and friends, etc. Clear the expenses and pay the labor fee.

3.Looking for a bar room - the first is to ask for an auspicious board (mortuary board), which is called disobedience.

This board is painted with lacquer gold, Jinshou characters, and there are also golden flower patterns on the two stools.

4.Carving coffins—there are two situations. One is that the house has long saved "materials" for the elderly; Made by shop workers.

There are also north-south differences in the style of longevity materials.

Burials cost a significant amount of money just for the coffin.

The most exquisite and precious (and rare) is gloomy wood, followed by golden nanmu and cypress. Generally speaking, it can be said that thirteen rounds of fir are used, that is, a coffin is carved with thirteen fir trees.

Except for the ones that have already been painted, they are all put into the coffin with white stubble, and then painted (the big lacquer is baked with charcoal fire once), and then writing (white flat characters) will be written on the head of the coffin, and lotus flowers will be painted on the back of the coffin.

5.Looking for a shed shop - there are several kinds of sheds for funerals, some only build flat sheds, and some pay attention to building "spine sheds" with flower work.

Some set up warm sheds, two thin mats, set up patios, and hang blue cranes from the ceiling.

The shed at the gate needs to be built across the street building, the building and the ridge are erected, and colorful nets are hung.The sheds in the courtyard are equipped with multicolored glass windows, some have moon gates with railings, and brocade brocade brocades on the platform (lingtai) have railings.

In addition, in order to entertain relatives and friends who pay condolences, a guest shed and a small stove shed are built in the open area of ​​the alley, and the price of the shed is quite expensive.

6.Renting tables and chairs—tables, chairs and stools for funerals, as well as utensils such as five offering plates, teapots, and tea bowls placed on the spirit table, should be rented from Baihuo Shop.

7.Finding a waiter—it is also very important to find a waiter for funeral affairs. On the surface, they come to serve the guests, but in fact, during the few days when the mourning family is inactive, they will play a very important role when encountering sutras.

Therefore, the waiter must be familiar with the funeral procedures and various etiquettes, and also understand the relationship between the male with filial piety and the deceased. The number of "work" channels.The waiter should be the most cautious in these activities, and every detail must meet the etiquette requirements, and there should be no slight negligence.

In funerals, every kind of work should be counted as money, such as sending filial piety clothes, another part for chanting scriptures and salutes, and as long as there is one activity such as door sacrifice, road delivery, and funeral reception, you will get a part of the money.

8.Look for Baihuo Shop—that is, rent things used in the funeral process in Baihuo Shop, such as funeral list racks, and all funeral flags, gongs, umbrellas, fans, snow willows, and various funeral utensils and things for funerals.

9.Invite drummers—there are two types of drummers, one is the team playing "Dayue", using suona, trombone, big drum, big gong, etc., and its tunes include "Shang Awen Wang Xu" and so on; the other is the team of fine music , musical instruments include sheng, pipe, flute, gong, etc., commonly known as "Shifanle".

10.Binding color—that is, making paper people, paper horses, etc., some are finely made, as tall as a real person, with silk, linen, silk and other clothes, and there are gold and silver mountains, trees, and houses, indoor furniture, etc. , are made according to the needs of the situation.

11.Find a tailor shop - everyone pays attention to making filial piety clothes before the person dies.

There is a difference in filial piety. People who should wear filial piety in the house do not wear bald stubble at the hem of the filial piety, while relatives with other surnames wear filial piety.

In addition, the male and female servants in the house are all given a piece of filial piety, and the edge is closed.

All filial piety will not be taken back by the host family after the funeral.

The tailor shop will do it immediately upon notification.

12.Order banquets - the mourning family must prepare meals for guests from the day of the funeral, which will be cooked by the chef of the house. There are not enough meals on weekdays, but there must be at least eight dishes.

During the last three days of reading scriptures, seeing off the road, and sending out the invitation, tables must be set up to entertain guests. Some of them have as many as a hundred tables. They are all high-quality banquets with delicacies from mountains and seas. seat.

These are all made in advance by inviting the master to come to the house to install the stove in the big restaurant.

13.Sporadic purchases—such as small oil lamps, clay pots (also called mourning pots, which are dropped by filial sons when the coffin comes out), birthday pots, wrapped with red strings, and held by the housewife in the arms of the funeral; followed by white bone hairpins, White head rope (for tying the head) and so on, and so on.

14.Rent a white sedan chair and rent a horse-drawn carriage—the white sedan chair is for filial women to ride in funerals, and the horse-drawn carriage is for relatives and friends of old and young women who send funerals.

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The shrouds surrounding the dead are complex.

Since the Republic of China, regardless of whether the deceased had "fame" or not, the general wealthy families wore "official clothes" (official clothes of the Qing Dynasty).Men wear a total of seven pieces: a cloth jacket with single trousers, a silk cotton-padded jacket and trousers with the characters "Shou" on it, a blue silk long robe with the characters "Shou", a gown with embroidered flat gold flowers, and a natural-colored jacket. one piece.The jackets have no collars, no buttons, and red tasseled official hats on their heads, court boots, cotton socks inside, and court beads.It is even more troublesome if you have a reputation in the past, and military officers are worn by generals.

There are also seven pieces for women. They wear cloth trousers and jackets, cotton trousers jackets, large cotton jackets, cloaks, and skirts. The outer garments are all flat gold embroidered. One, and a pair of earrings set with pearls, all of which are of pure gold.Its phoenix crown is made of jade pearl flowers, and its nine rings are made of sandalwood.

Pearls have many uses, such as nailing one on the toe of men's and women's shoes, and putting one in the mouth.Then there is the so-called "spreading gold and covering silver".One piece of yellow silk cotton quilt with Shou character, one white silk bedding sheet with Shou character, and one sea quilt and sea quilt, all of which are red and green silk embroidered with flat gold, embroidered with sea water and river teeth (Ya), divided into seven clouds and nine. Clouds, the more clouds there are, the more expensive they are.There is a round hole on the top of the sea quilt, which can expose the face of the dead. On top of it is a Fudara quilt (printed on yellow silk with patterns of Buddha statues and reincarnation spells, etc.), and then the headrest and footrest are all made of yellow silk. Three-dimensional, floating lotus, and wrapped in various colors on the lotus petals.The women's shrouds are Han costumes, and some are dressed in the costumes of Qing palace queens.

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Regarding the arrangement, the sequence is as follows:
1.Indoor layout - After death, all the mirrors, hanging calligraphy and paintings, and copper work on the cabinets in each room are covered or pasted with white sheets, and the decorations with colorful flowers on the table are turned to the back, and the sheets in the house are heavy , Door and window curtains, chair covers, etc. are all replaced with white cloth, but in the granddaughter-in-law's room, they must be replaced with "reliable" colored cloth.

2.Outer room layout - all the doors of each room are sealed in the center with white paper, like pasting Spring Festival couplets.The door frame and door center of the street gate were also sealed with blank paper.

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Regarding notifications, the order is as follows:
1.Announcing the funeral - After everything is arranged, start reporting the funeral to relatives and friends.

The funeral post is a pink note, posted in the name of the old servant in the family, and the content is: the master of the family (or the old lady, the old man, the big lady) taboo that XXX died at X on X, X, X, X, X, and it is scheduled for X The big funeral at X hour on X day, I hereby report to you.family XXX kowtow
Go to the printing bureau (or mimeograph yourself) to print several copies of the posts, and distribute them to relatives and friends (issue a "liuzi" in advance and deliver them by name and address), so as to welcome those who mourn.

2.Set up the funeral list - the funeral list looks like an old-fashioned big hat mirror, with a flower tooth on the hat, about 5 feet high and 3 feet wide, with white paper written in the center and placed inside the gate.

3.Hanging Zuomo paper - black lacquered wooden pole, with cupronickel ruyi hook on the head, hanging a strand of white paper (money seal carved on the top), each string of three, connected at the corners, and the lower end cut into a pointed shape (male) or concave shape ( female last name).The number depends on the age of the deceased.

Insert it on the wooden base, and put it on the right side of the male left and female right.

4.Standing flag pole - use three fir poles outside the gate, paint white powder on them, men stand on the left and women on the right, and a paper "boy riding a crane" is placed on the top of the pole.

Another point is: if the deceased has both parents alive, the door is not closed, and the flagpole is not erected, the coffin cannot be parked in the main room, but in the side room.

Chapter 79 (End)
Note: The ones with () are just to inform the readers of their respective identities.When reading, you can remove the name in () by yourself.

(End of this chapter)