A Passport to Eternity--Chinese Ancestral Spirit Tablets

When noted industrialist Pao Chao-yun, late owner of Chung Hsing Textile, passed away in 1989, a solemn "spirit tablet ceremony" in accordance with ancient rites was held by his family and staff at the Pao residence on Yangmingshan. As something of a rarity today, the ceremony attracted much attention.

The spirit tablet is a wooden tablet inscribed with the names of family ancestors for their male posterity to venerate.

Although veneration of spirit tablets is less universal in today's society than it used to be, these ancestral "toeholds" are still a frequent sight in modern living rooms. The present generation probably still remembers how, every Chinese New Year or anniversary of a parent's death, a feast would be set out before the spirit tablet, incense would be burned and prayers addressed to the tablet inviting the soul of the departed to join the feast, together with other family ancestors. A deceased parent was treated just the same as in life, following Confucius's dictum "serve the dead as you serve the living."

Spirit tablets loom large in popular ghost films; sometimes a ghostly bride causes the male lead to marry a spirit tablet, or a male or female ancestor will suddenly manifest his or her spiritual power through the spirit tablet and do battle with a ghost that is troubling one of their descendants. Certainly the image of spirit tablets that arises from superstition and far-fetched tales is a distorted one, but it shows what an important place they occupy for the Chinese hoi polloi.

How can a little wooden tablet be a sanctuary for ancestral spirits? And what role did these play in China's Confucian society? Such questions must be approached via the tradition of ancestor worship.

Chinese ancestor worship dates from the mists of earliest antiquity. Professor Tung Fang-yuan of Taiwan Theological College, who has been researching folk beliefs for 20 years, thinks ancestor worship stems from the idea that the soul is not extinguished at death, for the Chinese hold that man has both a spiritual soul that resides in heaven and an animal spirit that resides in earth. This concept is set out clearly in the Li-chi (Book of Rites). At death, so people believe, the soul is not annihilated but simply migrates to another world. The living may communicate with souls of the deceased and pray to them for good fortune.

An ancestral spirit must have a place of sanctuary for veneration by male descendants, which is why spirit tablets came into being.

Wooden spirit tablets are said to date from the Chou dynasty. The "Basic Annals of Chou" in the Shih-chi (Records of the Historian) states: "King Wu of Chou made a wooden tablet for King Wen and transported it on his campaign against [the Shang tyrant King] Chou." Folk legend, however, prefers to trace them back to the story of Ting Lan, one of the "twenty-four filial sons." The story goes that Ting Lan of the Han dynasty served his parents with the utmost filial piety, and when both died prematurely he was moved by grief to carve wooden images of his parents for veneration in the ancestral temple.

But it is not enough simply to carve a wooden tablet with an ancestor's name for their spirit to inhabit it. The Tso-chuan records that the sons must perform a rite for the soul of the deceased before a wooden spirit tablet can serve as a symbol of the ancestor's spirit. In due course this rite evolved into a ritual of "exorcising the spirit and dotting the character chu."

Upon the decease of a parent, the mourners first erect a paper tabletas a temporary home for his spirit. Meanwhile a wooden tablet is prepared with the parent's name and the conventional funerary inscription written on it, all except for the dot on top of the final character chu. This dot must be added by someone well acquainted with the deceased and of impeccable virtue, whereupon the paper tablet is incinerated.

When dotting the character chu, the person invited to do so faces towards the east and breathes on the tip of the brush before applying the dot. At the very moment of applying the brush he must hold his breath and dwell on a mental image of the deceased, as if his soul was indeed concentrated in that single dot.

The east is considered to be the direction associated with life. Chinese people hold that the east belongs to the element Wood, for it is from the east that the spring breezes blow which revivify plants and trees after the winter.

While superficially redolent of idolatry, the veneration of ancestral spirit tablets is more essentially bound up with Confucian ethical philosophy.

Professor Tung maintains that when Confucius spoke of "respecting ghosts and spirits but holding them at a distance," it was not that he didn't believe in their existence, rather that he was opposed to superstitious practices that had come down from the Shang period. At the same time Confucius placed great emphasis on filial piety, as evidenced by sayings such as "filial affection is fundamental to man" and "in life, serve them with propriety, and in death bury them with propriety and venerate them with propriety." For Confucians, a son's veneration of his deceased parents was as important as his treatment of his living parents. As the Confucian Analects puts it: "Be attentive to perform funeral rites to parents, and let them be followed when long gone with the ceremonies of sacrifice."

"Of course ancestor worship also drew the clan together and served a consolidating function in a patriarchal society," elucidates Professor Tung.

Mingchuan College of Management lecturer Hung Po-hsien has published an analysis of Chinese ancestor worship. He agrees that ancestor worship in ancient China served educational and political functions in society by reaffirming the clan ethos and maintaining social stability.

In traditional China there was a strong emphasis on the here and now, and among the upper classes ancestor worship tended to be functional rather than religious in nature. The same naturally held true among the lower classes, where for ordinary people with little familiarity with classical writings ancestor worship was seen in terms of personal gain. "Ancestral sacrifices were not just a time to remember the dead, there was an element of self-interest too," Hung explains. After all, it was normal to pray to the ancestors for prosperity and protection from harm.

When spirit tablets were introduced to Taiwan they underwent certain changes and developed a complex symbolic signification too.

Traditionally a spirit tablet represents a single ancestral soul, while those seen in Taiwan today tend to be collective in nature. These are either Japanese-influenced shrine type tablets, or combination "parental tablets" with the single ancestor's name being replaced by a phrase such as "all deceased ancestors of the X family."

The Chinese may believe in the soul not being annihilated at death, but there are differences between northerners and southerners in their concept of what the soul is. Professor Tung Fang-yuan maintains that northerners were more influenced by Confucianism in their belief in a spiritual soul that goes to heaven and an animal soul that remains on earth, whereas southerners had a more eclectic view of the next life in which ideas from Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism were combined. While the Confucian concept provided their basic framework, there was an admixture of Buddhist ideas of "cause and effect ex tending through past, present and future" and the cycle of transmigration, together with an acceptance of Taoist notions about the spirit world.

Taiwan's early Chinese settlers were largely Hokienese from Fukien and Hakkas from Kwangtung, who brought with them a pronounced southern tradition of ancestor worship as evidenced by spirit tablets set up in homesand ancestral temples erected in local neighborhoods.

Popular ancestor worship may have exhibited ethical traits associated with patriarchal society, but in essence it all boiled down to fear of the dead. In Taiwanese folk belief the souls of the dead are either "good ghosts" or "evil ghosts." The former receive eternal veneration from male descendants, and finding sanctuary after death are able to protect their descendants. Such is the theoretical basis for the power of ancestor worship to ensure a family's prosperity.

Evil ghosts on the other hand, failing to receive veneration from male descendants, become hungry mendicant ghosts in the afterlife. Unable to bear their suffering they steal into the mortal world to search for food and to do harm to man and beast.

With their belief in three spiritual and seven animal souls, Taoists claim to find sanctuary for the three spiritual souls through certain rituals. The first re-enters the cycle of transmigration, the second begins a new life in the underworld, and the third dwells in the "parental tablet" at home.

Venerating the spirit tablets is the duty of the eldest son and eldest grandson, so if a family has no male offspring expedients such as adoption are necessary to ensure that family ancestors are not deprived of their due.

Besides orthodox spirit tablets to patrilineal ancestors, veneration of ancestors of a different surname is also found in Taiwan today. This comes about through a husband marrying into his wife's family and inheriting her wealth, or through a bride from a family without male progeny being married off together with her own ancestral spirit tablet. Both solutions offer a way out for families with no male child.

In Taiwanese folk belief someone who dies young leaving no one to perform veneration will haunt the world as a lonely ghost. If a man leaves no progeny the situation can be redeemed through adoption, but a woman must first be married before she can be included in the spirit table of her husband's family. If she dies before marriage her spirit cannot even be venerated by her own family and her soul will be exposed to a precarious situation, which is why Chinese ghost stories so often feature female ghosts.

The parents of a deceased unmarried woman may install her spirit tablet in a special type of shrine. They may also arrange for their late daughter's spirit table to be married into another family, along with a dowry, so as to ensure that her spirit will be venerated by the husband's family.

"Ghost marriage" has a superstitious tinge, but from a psychological angle it can compensate for a sense of loss. After all, people expect "a man to find his proper station, a woman her proper home," and this is simply extending this same idea to the dead. These days ghost marriages are a rarity, and other superstitious aspects of ancestor worship are disappearing. Yet the humanistic concepts of venerating one's parents long after their deaths, treating the souls of the dead with kindness, and providing a place for them to rest in eternal peace, continue to exist in Chinese society.

[Picture Caption]

In Taiwanese custom the ancestral tablet is usually placed to the right of the god's image to ensure communication with the "celestial court" via the ancestral spirits. (photo by Arthur Cheng)

When descendants emigrate, the ancestral tablets accompany them overseas. These overseas Chinese in Hawaii have entrusted their spirit tablets to a local temple. (photo by Arthur Cheng)

Every Chinese New Year or anniversary of a parent's death, Chinese families usually set out a feast and light incense to invite the ancestral spirits to partake of it.

The Chinese value filial piety and insist on observing proper burial rites and sacrificing to ancestors long after their death. In Taiwanese families it is customary for male descendants to wear hempen mourning capes and carry the ancestral spirit tablet in a rice tub to bring the soul back home. (photo by Diago Chiu)

Wherever there are Chinese you will find ancestral tablets. This ossuary has been specially set up in Yokohama's Chinese cemetery for their veneration.

When descendants emigrate, the ancestral tablets accompany them overseas. These overseas Chinese in Hawaii have entrusted their spirit tablets to a local temple. （photo by Arthur Cheng）

Every Chinese New Year or anniversary of a parent's death, Chinese families usually set out a feast and light incense to invite the ancestral spirits to partake of it.

The Chinese value filial piety and insist on observing proper burial rites and sacrificing to ancestors long after their death. In Taiwanese families it is customary for male descendants to wear hempen mourning capes and carry the ancestral spirit tablet in a rice tub to bring the soul back home. （photo by Diago Chiu）

Wherever there are Chinese you will find ancestral tablets. This ossuary has been specially set up in Yokohama's Chinese cemetery for their veneration.