Aug. 27th, 2007 10:09 am
Hungry like a ghost
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muckefuckAs far as I can tell, the Ullambana Festival is a purely East Asian affair, ultimately deriving as it does from a Chinese Mahayana scripture. We actually studied the sutra in Stir-Fry Civ because it represents an early attempt to reconcile the ideals of Buddhist non-attachments and Confucian filial piety. The incarnation of the festival most widely recognised in the West is probably O-bon; I think many have also heard of the Chinese (Hungry) Ghost Festival even if they are unclear on when it is observed. (I know it always sneaks up on me.) But the Korean Baekjung (백중--the hanja used are variously 百中, 百種, or 白中) and the Vietnamese Vu-lan-bồn are so obscure that they're only known to me from books. I suppose that's not surprising since these are much more thoroughly religious festivals than holidays like New Year's or the Autumn Moon Festival, primarily observed out of the public eye in Buddhist temples.
As I mentioned before, the only Chinese cemetery I know about is located in the southwest corner of Rosehill Cemetery, near the intersection of Western and Balmoral. It's relatively new (I can't remember if it was there when I moved to Chicago) and divided into roughly four sections. Approaching from the east, one first passes an even newer, Jewish section called הר ורד or Har Vered--"Rose Hill" in Hebrew. (The older Jewish section has been located at the south end for a long time, and it is gorgeous.) On the other side of the hedge is the Teochew section, followed by the Korean section, a landscaped pond, and finally, on a bit of raised ground across an access road, another Chinese section.
Two things struck me about each of these areas: First, the orientation of the graves varies from section to section. In both the Chinese sections, they face east, but the Korean headstones are oriented toward the south. Near the pond, there isn't any consistency; the smattering of graves on the east side face out over the water, but the walled-off sections to the south have orientations both to the south and the north. Second, each section seems to be identified by a particular marker.
When I saw the Chicago Teochiu Society (美國伊州芝加哥潮州同鄉會) marker in the first section, I was sceptical. After all, the romanisation used on all the stones was Vietnamese, which would indicate to me Hoa Kiều or the Chinese minority of southern Vietnam, the vast majority of which were Cantonese. Now, in China, the concept of 鄉 xiāng or "native place" is very important; in fact, it's considered more important than your birthplace which, after all, could simply be an accident of timing. (For instance, I was born in Baltimore and not Ames only because my parents happened to be attending a wedding--but it was my father's brother's wedding, so I ended up being born in my "native place" after all.)
Most of the Chinese tombstones at Rosehill list the native place of the deceased. All of those in the first section gave locations in Guangdong Province, but the only one I recognised--南海 Nánhǎi--is one of the "Three Districts" (三邑) in the Cantonese heartland. The Teochew, however, originate from the far eastern edge of Guangdong on the border with Fujian. So I set about jotting down the names of the other prefectures (縣) named on the stones--普寧、潮陽、澄海、揭陽、etc.--with the object of looking them up later. When I did, I found that all lie within the traditional Teochew-speaking region after all. One of the exceptions, 番禺 Pānyú is a coastal district of Guangzhou, so perhaps there's a long-standing Teochew settlement there.
I may have written about the Korean section before. It features a handsome Korean-style gazebo next to which is a stele designating the area the 한인장미공원 or "Koreans' Rose Garden". Despite this, there aren't actually any roses, and not that many tombstones either. A couple have their own version of "native place". For instance, one tombstone for a deceased Lee listed the surname as 성주이씨 whereas one for another former Mr Lee bore the inscription 전주이씨. It took me a while to puzzle out what these meant, since the characters before 이씨 ("Mr/Ms Lee") were definitely not their given names.
Again, Confucianism is the key. As you know, the majority of Koreans are surnamed "Lee", "Kim", or "Park". Traditional Confucian strictures forbid marrying within your family, which would make finding a spouse in pre-modern Korea hard indeed if not for the fact that bearers of each surname were divided into clans (본관 bon'gwan) which are treated as different family lines for this purpose. These clans are identified by their ancestral seat. This means that the children of the first Lee, whose "native place" is Seongju in North Gyeongsang Province, can happily marry the children of the second Lee, who traces his roots to Jeonju in North Jeolla Province (and is thus considered a distant relative of King Sejong the Great).
It wasn't until I reached the recent graves on the shore of the pond that I saw signs of offerings being left. One grave had a plate of cookies and a cardboard tray with a cup of coffee (with water back). A few had spent incense sticks and several had ashes from ghost money being burnt. On one pair of graves, the bills were stacked neatly and weighted down with stones.
The marker in this area is unusual in being completely blank--perhaps it doesn't make sense to call it a marker at all. A short cobblestone path turns from the road and terminates in a small paved court with four square pillars on it reaching to chest height. At the far end of this tiny court is a stone gateway. It looks like it may have been designed as a grandiose family plot, but every surface is completely blank. It's the same with almost all of the stones in the landscaped section adjoining the south end of the pond. There's something rather eerie about stepping within the low wall enclosing two stone benches and a headstone and find that this is as smooth and featureless as a granite countertop; you half expect to see your own name flicker there for a moment in the misty twilight.
A particularly impressive stele claims the westernmost section for the 芝城華人義莊. According to Wikipedia, these last two characters represent a fancy term for a "coffin depository", a place where bodies are kept until such time as they can be shipped back home for burial. Be that as it may, the graves surrounding the marker looked pretty permanent, furnished with the same huge headstones as elsewhere. What I found particularly interesting were the fruits: At the base of the stele were about four or five oranges and four or five apples. Every gravestone in the section had either one or two of these fruits sitting in front of it. They looked recently placed there--not a lot of rot for something sitting on the ground in late summer-- and I assume, given the uniformity, by someone working for the Chi-Town Chinese People's Coffin Home.
For the most part, I didn't come across any remarkable names, though two did stand out. One is "Ear Khim", whose Chinese name isn't anything that could remotely be romanised that way. (I suspect that he adopted a Cambodian name that bore no direct phonetic relationship to his Chinese name, in much the way that Chef Jeff uses a Thai name that has no obvious resemblance to his Teochew one.) And then in the Teochew section there was a "Vivathnea Thor". Again, the rendering looks Khmer-influenced (I'm assuming a relationship to the Thai name commonly romanised Vivathana), but there was no Chinese on the stone for purposes of comparison. Edit: Oh, and there was one stone with the curious words "Pháp danh: Thiên-trí". Turns out pháp danh is the equivalent of 法名 fámíng--i.e. "dharma name" or (Buddhist) "name in religion".
As I mentioned before, the only Chinese cemetery I know about is located in the southwest corner of Rosehill Cemetery, near the intersection of Western and Balmoral. It's relatively new (I can't remember if it was there when I moved to Chicago) and divided into roughly four sections. Approaching from the east, one first passes an even newer, Jewish section called הר ורד or Har Vered--"Rose Hill" in Hebrew. (The older Jewish section has been located at the south end for a long time, and it is gorgeous.) On the other side of the hedge is the Teochew section, followed by the Korean section, a landscaped pond, and finally, on a bit of raised ground across an access road, another Chinese section.
Two things struck me about each of these areas: First, the orientation of the graves varies from section to section. In both the Chinese sections, they face east, but the Korean headstones are oriented toward the south. Near the pond, there isn't any consistency; the smattering of graves on the east side face out over the water, but the walled-off sections to the south have orientations both to the south and the north. Second, each section seems to be identified by a particular marker.
When I saw the Chicago Teochiu Society (美國伊州芝加哥潮州同鄉會) marker in the first section, I was sceptical. After all, the romanisation used on all the stones was Vietnamese, which would indicate to me Hoa Kiều or the Chinese minority of southern Vietnam, the vast majority of which were Cantonese. Now, in China, the concept of 鄉 xiāng or "native place" is very important; in fact, it's considered more important than your birthplace which, after all, could simply be an accident of timing. (For instance, I was born in Baltimore and not Ames only because my parents happened to be attending a wedding--but it was my father's brother's wedding, so I ended up being born in my "native place" after all.)
Most of the Chinese tombstones at Rosehill list the native place of the deceased. All of those in the first section gave locations in Guangdong Province, but the only one I recognised--南海 Nánhǎi--is one of the "Three Districts" (三邑) in the Cantonese heartland. The Teochew, however, originate from the far eastern edge of Guangdong on the border with Fujian. So I set about jotting down the names of the other prefectures (縣) named on the stones--普寧、潮陽、澄海、揭陽、etc.--with the object of looking them up later. When I did, I found that all lie within the traditional Teochew-speaking region after all. One of the exceptions, 番禺 Pānyú is a coastal district of Guangzhou, so perhaps there's a long-standing Teochew settlement there.
I may have written about the Korean section before. It features a handsome Korean-style gazebo next to which is a stele designating the area the 한인장미공원 or "Koreans' Rose Garden". Despite this, there aren't actually any roses, and not that many tombstones either. A couple have their own version of "native place". For instance, one tombstone for a deceased Lee listed the surname as 성주이씨 whereas one for another former Mr Lee bore the inscription 전주이씨. It took me a while to puzzle out what these meant, since the characters before 이씨 ("Mr/Ms Lee") were definitely not their given names.
Again, Confucianism is the key. As you know, the majority of Koreans are surnamed "Lee", "Kim", or "Park". Traditional Confucian strictures forbid marrying within your family, which would make finding a spouse in pre-modern Korea hard indeed if not for the fact that bearers of each surname were divided into clans (본관 bon'gwan) which are treated as different family lines for this purpose. These clans are identified by their ancestral seat. This means that the children of the first Lee, whose "native place" is Seongju in North Gyeongsang Province, can happily marry the children of the second Lee, who traces his roots to Jeonju in North Jeolla Province (and is thus considered a distant relative of King Sejong the Great).
It wasn't until I reached the recent graves on the shore of the pond that I saw signs of offerings being left. One grave had a plate of cookies and a cardboard tray with a cup of coffee (with water back). A few had spent incense sticks and several had ashes from ghost money being burnt. On one pair of graves, the bills were stacked neatly and weighted down with stones.
The marker in this area is unusual in being completely blank--perhaps it doesn't make sense to call it a marker at all. A short cobblestone path turns from the road and terminates in a small paved court with four square pillars on it reaching to chest height. At the far end of this tiny court is a stone gateway. It looks like it may have been designed as a grandiose family plot, but every surface is completely blank. It's the same with almost all of the stones in the landscaped section adjoining the south end of the pond. There's something rather eerie about stepping within the low wall enclosing two stone benches and a headstone and find that this is as smooth and featureless as a granite countertop; you half expect to see your own name flicker there for a moment in the misty twilight.
A particularly impressive stele claims the westernmost section for the 芝城華人義莊. According to Wikipedia, these last two characters represent a fancy term for a "coffin depository", a place where bodies are kept until such time as they can be shipped back home for burial. Be that as it may, the graves surrounding the marker looked pretty permanent, furnished with the same huge headstones as elsewhere. What I found particularly interesting were the fruits: At the base of the stele were about four or five oranges and four or five apples. Every gravestone in the section had either one or two of these fruits sitting in front of it. They looked recently placed there--not a lot of rot for something sitting on the ground in late summer-- and I assume, given the uniformity, by someone working for the Chi-Town Chinese People's Coffin Home.
For the most part, I didn't come across any remarkable names, though two did stand out. One is "Ear Khim", whose Chinese name isn't anything that could remotely be romanised that way. (I suspect that he adopted a Cambodian name that bore no direct phonetic relationship to his Chinese name, in much the way that Chef Jeff uses a Thai name that has no obvious resemblance to his Teochew one.) And then in the Teochew section there was a "Vivathnea Thor". Again, the rendering looks Khmer-influenced (I'm assuming a relationship to the Thai name commonly romanised Vivathana), but there was no Chinese on the stone for purposes of comparison. Edit: Oh, and there was one stone with the curious words "Pháp danh: Thiên-trí". Turns out pháp danh is the equivalent of 法名 fámíng--i.e. "dharma name" or (Buddhist) "name in religion".
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no subject
That reminds me of a book I saw in a library once; IIRC, it was either "German for speakers of Chinese" or "Chinese for speakers of German". What struck me about the book was that the proper names used in some examples were in Vietnamese romanisation; I presume that the author was Hoa.
the vast majority of which were Cantonese.
The Wikipedia article says that though of course that doesn't say whether the "second largest group" makes up 40% of Hoa or 4%.
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