ABSTRACT
The most expensive thing about a man in China is his funeral, and perhaps the least expensive thing about a child. There are certain contributions also made at the time of a funeral. It will be observed that these funeral rites are of four kinds: ethical, aesthetic, social, and economic. But the expensive funeral cannot be accounted for on ethical grounds alone. The family members all dress in white for some weeks or months, which, while it is in itself inexpensive, is an additional expense to what they would have but for this ceremony. The emperor Kuang Hsu was carried to his grave by not less than six hundred pole bearers, while the poor beggar who dies on the street may be carried out of the city on the shoulders of two men, though his body be twice as heavy as that of his late majesty.
