Chinese Cemetery Rituals in Victorian Cemeteries

CHINESE CEMETERY RITUALS IN VICTORIAN CEMETERIES

by Carol Holsworth

Ch’ing Ming, a Chinese words meaning, “Sweeping of the Graves”, is an annual Chinese celebration when families gather at cemeteries to leave offerings for the dead spirits and to clean the family graves. This ceremony still occurs in some old Chinese sections in our Victorian goldfield cemeteries during the first week of April.

The Ch’ing Ming festival encourages families to visit both local and distant family graves at least once a year. This is a wonderful tradition that the Chinese have upheld for hundreds of years, even when they have travelled far from China,  because it has  practical and functional community values. Christians also used to have a traditional day called All Soul’s Day when the graves around churchyards were cleaned and repaired.

Chinese ‘Sweeping of the Graves’ occurs in spring in the northern hemisphere just when weeds are starting to appear and dead grass from the previous season is lying about. In Victoria over the past centuries there was considerable concern about summer grass fires which could sweep through a cemetery and cause considerable damage to the wooden headboards and the wooden picket fences surrounding many private graves. So in the early days, the Chinese had to keep the weeds down in their pagan section well before the Ching Ming festival.

 In Bendigo, formerly known as Sandhurst Chinese burials occurred at White Hills, Kangaroo Flat, Bendigo and Eaglehawk Cemeteries as well as at a few unconsecrated burial grounds. It became a well known attraction for Caucasian to go to the back of a cemetery on Sunday afternoon to watch the strange practices of the “Celestials”.

In 1858 a newspaper described the scene “Sunday afternoon is the time which they generally select for honoring their dead after the fashion of their country. The forms which they observe in paying respect to the shades of their ancestors are so repugnant to European ideas, as to treat the greatest disgust and indignation among the European spectators. A crowd of men and boys assemble round the unconscious Mongolians, and express in no measured language their disapprobation of the whole proceedings. The juveniles regard the salaams of the Chinese – their offering of pork, and the discharge of fire-arms, as an excellent farce, while the fathers of the children consider the noise occasioned by such practices as an insult to the dead in a Christian burial ground.”                                          

It is interesting to note that at the White Hills Cemetery in Bendigo was probably the only cemetery in Victoria with a special notice board, written in Chinese, informing the many Chinese visitors of the Cemetery rules and regulations, especially in regard to the burning of incense, the lighting of firecrackers and candles. This cemetery was so close to the Chinese Ironbark camp and therefore had many Chinese burials.

Only one Chinese grave in the White Hills cemetery is now visited at this special time. These visitors do not even use the old funeral tower but bring their own catering size tin-can to burn their traditional paper money offerings right beside the tombstone. I suppose they don’t want to have to walk around all the mounds or through the weeds and sand. Some changes to tradition also occur with the laying of fresh flowers together with the more traditional items.

 No attempt is made by Chinese descendants or any of  the present Chinese community to do any cleaning or sweeping let alone raking or filling in new rabbit diggings. What a shame old traditions are being forgotten or done away with.

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