The Reintroduction and Diffusion of Mummification Practices in Taiwan, 1959-2011 (original) (raw)
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Journal of Chinese Religions, 2006
It is well known that Han fear the metaphysical pollution they associate with death and especially corpses. Traditionally they believe family members of the recently deceased are temporarily polluted and those who work handling corpses are permanently polluted; people try to avoid such polluted others for fear that sickness or other unfortunate events may follow contact. Yet strewn across the countryside of both China and Taiwan, and scattered throughout accounts in Buddhist historical texts, are mummified corpses venerated as deities: granting requests, sending dreams, enshrined, worshipped, often gilded, sometimes installed inside or below a religious statue or decorated to look indistinguishable or nearly so from a statue. What happens to most bodily remains? How is it that most corpses are feared, whereas certain others are worshipped? Are these divergent evaluations of corpses due to conflicting religious systems, or does it depend mainly on the identity of the corpse? The following article focuses on these questions as they apply to contemporary Taiwan. First, I describe in detail corpses that are worshipped, since their existence is less recognized or is mistakenly assumed to be nothing but a Buddhist aberration within an otherwise universal pattern of corpse avoidance. Next, I describe corpses that are feared and show changing attitudes toward bodily remains. Finally, I suggest how divergent attitudes toward bodily remains can be placed into the broader context of Han religious beliefs. [Actual year of publication: 2006. Date on journal: 2005].
Close to Heart, Close to Home: Gravesites in Taiwan
In this contribution we attempt to clarify the relation between graveyards and popular cultures, focusing on the relations that exists between common peoples’ everyday life and graveyards. We show first that burials and tombs are quite popular in quite a number of senses of the word. Second, we show that graveyards can be very close to people, physically and mentally, depending on local customs, local histories and national or island-wide tendencies. Especially the origin of the graveyard and the development of settling and graveyard in mutual dependency can shape very different positions for a graveyard in local cultures and society. 在這篇文章中我們試圖探討墓與流行文化之間的關係，尤其昰一般大眾的日常生活與墓的關係。我們首先呈現喪葬與墓其實相當具有流行性；其次，說明墓其實在實質上與精神上都與人們有著相當緊密的關係，在不同的地方文化、地方歷史、以及全國性的趨勢下，有著不同的緊密程度。墓的起原與成形以及其後的趨勢走向描繪出多方的面相，墓園昰可以被解讀成地方社會的流行文化。
Mummification in Korea and China: Mawangdui, Song, Ming and Joseon Dynasty Mummies
BioMed Research International, 2018
Over the decades, mummy studies have expanded to reconstruct a multifaceted knowledge about the ancient populations' living conditions, pathologies, and possible cause of death in different spatiotemporal contexts. Mainly due to linguistic barriers, however, the international knowledge of East Asian mummies has remained sketchy until recently. We thus analyse and summarize the outcomes of the studies so far performed in Korea and China in order to provide mummy experts with little-known data on East Asian mummies. In this report, similarities and differences in the mummification processes and funerary rituals in Korea and China are highlighted. Although the historical periods, the region of excavation, and the structures of the graves differ, the cultural aspects, the mechanisms of mummification, and biological evidence appear to be essentially similar to each other. Independently from the way they are called locally, the Korean and Chinese mummies belong to the same group with a shared cultural background.
Burying, Repatriating, and Leaving the Dead in Wartime and Postwar China and Taiwan, 1937–1955
Journal of Chinese History, 2017
The burial of war dead was a key element of displacement and community formation during wartime and postwar China and Taiwan, 1937–1955. Reckoning with the physical burial and spiritual pacification of civilian as well as military dead posed practical and epistemological problems for the tens of millions forced to migrate amid shifting political and military boundaries. Various populations of living and dead refugees became increasingly politicized on the national and international levels, affecting local rituals and family burials. The accumulation of unidentified or lost bodies raised the stakes for the incorporation of the known dead into local, translocal, or national communities. The moral imperative of families and lineages to reconstitute themselves in the aftermath of war was made concrete via the extensive networks of locally-identified charitable organizations who worked to transport coffins back “home” from China's interior. The Nationalist government, meanwhile, prio...
Bury your Past, Shovel it under: Histories and Caterpillars on Taiwan’s Graveyards
In this paper we try to establish as a theme for future research and documentation the disappearance of gravesites from Taiwan's landscapes. We first show, that indeed, with a gravesite, something very important is lost. A gravesite, we will argue, is an information highway to the past of a community, in a world where most other gateways have eroded. Based on our documentation of over 400 graveyards and 30.000 tombs with more than 90.000 photos, we then set out to analyze and quantify this process. We identify first the dynamics behind this development as a) the general shift from inhumation to cremation, b) the storage of remains in bone-ash towers and c) the clearance of graveyards by Taiwan's local governments, and their mutually reinforcing relations. We then try to predict through extrapolation, how fast gravesites in Taiwan will disappear in the future. Based on these estimates we will sketch an image of how Taiwan will look like after caterpillars will have been parked. With this image in mind, one might start to wonder, and test empirically, whether gravesites are really removed without any awareness of what is lost, or on purpose, to actually get rid of something, that rooted in graveyards, opposes modern arbitrariness and manipulability.
The Tombs of Taiwan’s Mainlanders: Features of Memories, Power and Assimilation
In this paper we discuss the development of tombs of Taiwan's Mainlanders under the aspect of a hegemony exercised by a minority that through its cultural products, such as tombs, has to maintain a distinction in order to consolidate the established power relations. The tombs of the ruling minority are also expected to provide semantic means by which the dominated culture can be reinterpreted as belonging to the dominant culture. After discussing the different ways how tombs can change when entering into contact with a new society, we analyze some feature of Mainlander tombs in order to understand whether, how and why they have been changed. Features that identified all Mainlanders were firmly established on tombs through the use of placenames. The positioning of the placename on the tombstone, however, was adapted to the Taiwanese tombstone style, in order to identify the Taiwanese and Mainlander placenames as if they would have had the same history and the differences in their content would be a variation of the placename type used by the Mainlanders. We further argue, that the positioning of the coffin above the ground, as exercised by many Mainlanders, was a feature that was incompatible with the Taiwanese Han cultures and was thus abandoned. Not completely abandoned by Mainlanders was the rectangular tombstone. Although island-wide many Mainlanders slowly adopted the rounded tombstone form, Mainlander elites established the rectangular tombstone as a marker of their identity, together with inscriptions that in their use are limited to specific circles.