Journal of Chinese Australia, Issue 2, October 2006

Departed friends

Michael Williams

For most of those who left their homes and villages in southern China to journey around the Pacific or in Southeast Asia, the ideal of eventual return was prominent.

All … returned home to get married; remitted money home and sent their local-born sons home for education; returned home for visits and went home during the Depression and the second world war. They had the bones of their deceased villagers sent home for proper reburial.[1]

Many returned after a few years with money and the 'honour' that accompanied this, others returned only after many more years and sometimes as poor as when they had set out. Still others died far from home. Yet even in this last case, their own and their fellow travelers' sense of fitness ensured that the return of these 'departed friends' to the place of their birth was achieved more often than not.[2] The shipment of bones, which took place from at least 1855 until the mid-20th century, is one of the most consistent behavioural patterns of the huaqiao and one that demonstrates attachment to the qiaoxiang, as well as changes to this attachment overtime.[3]

What follows here is unfortunately not as full an account of the ceremonies and celebrations that accompanied these departed friends as might be wished. The records of officials and the accounts of various, usually non-Chinese witnesses have, as these types of sources often do, stripped the histories of the feelings of respect that undoubtedly were accorded such departed friends. However it can be hoped that by detailing the 'bare bones' (sorry) of numbers and organisation, others with greater knowledge of ceremony and the personal that accompanied this aspect of people's lives and deaths, will contribute in the future.

The practice of returning the bones of the dead to rest in the soil of their ancestors was a fundamental one in Chinese culture and played an important role in the bond with the qiaoxiang.[4] In the qiaoxiang, funeral associations were common and probably provided a model for this kind of activity in the destinations.[5] Reverend William Young reported bones being returned from Melbourne in 'small wooden cases, or carpet bags' in 1868.[6] Concern that bodies not be lost was so strong that 'the putting of coffins on board vessels going to and fro in case a Chinaman dies' was common by the 1890s.[7] New South Wales Royal Commissioners were told in the 1890s that it cost '£10 to remove a man's bones from the country' and that Way Kee's society (Dongguan and Zengcheng people) paid £529/19/2 to 'raise 84 bodies'.[8] Money was also donated by the huaqiao to the Tung Wah Hospital of Hong Kong to support its role in the transfer of bones to the qiaoxiang.[9]

The tongxianghui (same place associations) played the dominant role in the return of bones and so forged and maintained the links between the huaqiao and their qiaoxiang.[10] The Royal Commissioners described them in the 1890s as, 'benevolent institutions, formed on the basis of 'cousinship', and displaying their charity in the transport of old men and the bones of their deceased countrymen to China'.[11] Political pressure may have had a role in the early formation of associations in San Francisco but in New South Wales (NSW) the wish to organise bones removal appears to have been the prime motivation. In 1862, three Pearl River Delta counties are mentioned in reference to the first large-scale removal of bones in NSW, Dongguan, Zengcheng and Zhongshan.[12] Two of these counties had a joint organisation at the end of the nineteenth century in Sydney, while 'Hsiangshan' (Zhongshan) county had one of its own. These associations may have begun by organising the return of bones but they soon grew to do more, such as fund raising for temples and organising accommodation for new arrivals.[13] According to Yuen Tak of the Koon Yee Tong, the associations raised their money from subscriptions. Nobody was 'allowed to pay less than £1, but many of the merchants paid as much as £5, £10, and £50'.[14]

Like such organisations in Australia, the Hoy On Tong of Hawaii would give members $10 when returning to the qiaoxiang; it also supported those too old or sick to work and provided $100 for funeral expenses.[15] 'The society also provides for the sending of the bones back to China. Relatives of the dead person may take care of this, but nearly all want the society to do this for them. The society has to do this – it is one of the things the society promises to do when a member joins. The Lung Doo Society sends a shipment of bones to China every five years.'[16]

The significance and organisation of the return of bones is illustrated in an advertisement that appeared regularly in the Chinese Australian Herald in the early twentieth century. The ad was placed by people concerned that the home village of some Chinese buried in Townsville in northern Queensland could not be identified and describes the universal regret felt for those who remained apart from their ancestral soil. The ad requested information about the identity of the dead so that their bones could be returned to their villages and listed stores in Sydney and Queensland as contact points for passing on the information (see Figure 1). The clearest record concerning the return of bones over a long period comes from the 'Old Chinese Section' of Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney. At the period of most active exhumation and shipment of bones, from 1875 to the late 1930s, a peak of 75% of burials in the 'Old Chinese Section' were, 'returned to China', with an average of 55% to 65%.[17]

In other Pacific ports the concern for departed friends was just as great as in Sydney, although such clear statistics are not available. As in other matters, organisational detail could also vary. In Sydney the huaqiao used a section of cemetery controlled by a Christian church. In San Francisco the Chinese Benevolent Association directly controlled the Chinese cemeteries which were first located in the city and later at Colma to the south of San Francisco (see Figures 3a-e for pictures of various Pacific huaqiao cemeteries). These cemeteries were divided into sections according to the 'companies' or tongxianghui, which made up the membership of this umbrella organisation. Between 1856 and 1876, a total of 7,782 bodies were reported to have been shipped from San Francisco, including 600 by private friends.[18] In Hawaii, cemeteries, like the huaqiao communities themselves, were scattered around the islands. Two cemeteries near Honolulu were predominately of Zhongshan huaqiao and distinguished according to being Hakka and non-Hakka (These were the Manoa Cemetery and that near the Punchbowl, which also includes Hakka from San On County. See Figures 3a-e.).

Figure 3a. Manoa Cemetery, Hawaii, July 2000

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Figure 3b. Zhongshan gravestone, Manoa Cemetery, Hawaii, July 2000.

[the author]

Figure 3c. Ossuary, July 2000.

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Figure 3d. Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney

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Figure 3e. Si Yi Cemetery Colma, San Francisco

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Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery statistics in Figure 2 show an increase in exhumations in the last decades of the nineteenth century. After this there was a gradual reduction in the proportion of burials that were exhumed as well as a fall in total burials as the huaqiao population declined in the 1920s and 1930s. There was a tapering off of returns after 1930, and after 1938 there were very few removals until after World War II. Many of those who died after 1931 were exhumed between 1946 and 1948, after which only 10 more were removed in 1950, with the last recorded exhumation from this section of Rookwood Cemetery in 1962.[19] These statistics on departed friends can be seen to follow the general pattern of huaqiao history. Numbers of returns grew as the huaqiao became more organised in the destinations, declining as their population fell and disrupted during the Japanese occupation before a final period of renewal just before the abrupt severing of links in 1949.[20]

Figure 2. Rookwood Cemetery exhumation statistics

It is bones rather than bodies that are always referred to, as the usual practice was to bury a body for several years then to collect the bones of a number of huaqiao at the same time, to be 'returned to China'. The Lung Doo (Long Du) society in Hawaii sent bones back every five years: ' we would dig them up at the end of five years, box'em up, and put them in that building out at the cemetery. Then when the ship comes in that we want to send them on, we take them down and ship them to China.' 'But the Bd. [Board] of Health says that we can't dig up until the end of 7 years. That is the new rule.'[21] The Long Du Association of Sydney published regular requests in the Tung Wah News in order to keep a register of burials for exhumation at regular intervals.[22] Those who were buried in Sydney sometimes had to wait quite a time to return to the qiaoxiang. Ah Chung was buried in 1892 but not returned until 1923, while Ah Sing, who was buried in 1884, was finally removed only in 1946.[23] However, the average time in the ground for those whose bones were exhumed from Rookwood, at least, was six to seven years, though ten or fifteen years was not unusual. An alternative to this wait, for those who could afford it, was to be embalmed, as Hong Wong was in 1901. His body was accompanied to the home village by his sister Ah Ching.[24]

Various accounts of the ritual when exhuming these burials give us a rough picture. According to an eyewitness account from Hawaii in 1917: 'Taking mouthfuls of wine, the man sprayed it all over the area as a purification ritual before he removed bone by bone and wrapped each with a piece of white cloth amidst burning incense. He labelled the bones as he went along in order that the remains would be in their proper positions when reburied in a sitting position in a large urn.'[25]

Clarence Glick observed these urns at Manoa Chinese cemetery many years later. 'Upon these shelves there were between thirty and forty various containers. The most common form was a porcelain jar about 15 inches in diameter, and 24 inches deep'. 'The jars were white with blue borders here and there. On the sides, in bold black forms, were Chinese characters indicating the name of the person whose bones were inside, the age, the date of death, the name of the village and district from which the person came, etc'.[26]

[the author]

Glick also observed an exhumation in 1931:

As we passed the vault we noticed that a ceremony was being held there. I had not observed before that there was a small altar a few feet from the door to this vault. Relatives of the person who had died in the auto accident had brought the bones from the graves to the vault, where they were now lay [sic] on the tray in the doorway. Food and wine had been placed on the altar and many punks [incense sticks] were burning. Relatives were in the act of shooting off several firecrackers while many people, including ourselves, looked on. A wooden box which had formerly contained two five-gallon Standard Oil cans lay nearby as the container into which the bones would be put before being sent on the journey back to an ancestral home…[27]

Glick had observed another exhumation earlier that same day.

These observations seem to show a relatively callous treatment and this was perhaps the impression of others that day also:

The Chinese women standing around the entrance seemed to be particularly affected by the spectacle; they made little effort to conceal their emotional reactions, distorting their faces with painful looks, while some burst into tears. Some of these at least were not relatives of the deceased, since a few asked who the woman was.[28]

Others also told Glick:

If a person is buried here, in five years the grave is opened and all the bones are taken out – all the bones, not just some of them. These bones are put in a box and then deposited in the concrete building you can see there at the cemetery (Manoa Chinese Cemetery) and kept there for another five years. At the end of that period they are sent back to China.[29]

Concerning costs in the 1930s, 'the usual charge … was $20. That was for digging up the grave, drying the bones, and keeping them in the concrete vault until the relatives were ready to ship them back to China.'[30]

In Sydney, 'the bones were known by Gaoyao/Gouyiu county people as xian you [friends of the immortals]'.[31] Other methods were employed. 'The bones would be washed, wrapped in blankets and placed in an iron coffin about one metre long and 30 centimetres high'.

Having left the places of death, the remains were sent to Hong Kong where the Tung Wah Hospital had, from the 1870s, handled the return of most bones to their qiaoxiang.[32] In the qiaoxiang themselves, organisations such as the Yushan Tang in Shekki would be responsible for collecting bones from the Tung Wah Hospital and distributing them to the families, often through notices in the newspapers. Names and villages would be listed under the title 'Departed Friends' and a relative would then pick up the bones for return to the village and a ritual internment.[33] Associations in the qiaoxiang also paid 'funeral money' to the relatives of those who died in a destination.[34] When twenty-two sets of bones were sent from Vegetable Creek in New South Wales, to the Tung Wah Hospital in Hong Kong and then onto Shekki, two 'se ling dan' or £2 sterling was also given to the relatives.[35] The system seems to have worked even better than the families anticipated on some occasions. At one point the remains of 104 huaqiao were uncollected and remained waiting in the Shekki Yushan Tang.[36]

Such records of the return of bones from Sydney's Rookwood or Honolulu's Manoa Cemeteries and elsewhere do not record the feelings such arrivals generated in the villages of the various qiaoxiang. Young Koon Nuen remembers his uncle's bones being returned from Australia. The father of Liu Rubin was dead in San Francisco three years before his family even knew what had happened to him, he having last left the village when his son was three months old.[37]

The reason why so many huaqiao spent the majority of their lives working in the various Pacific ports (bu) and other destinations, despite their desire for prestige within their qiaoxiang, was because the prestige and social status they desired was not just an individual matter.[38] Family and 'clan' status were equally important and this provided the motivation for much of what the huaqiao were prepared or induced to do. This sense of group prestige was often expressed in terms of being 'laughed at', with the individual's shame or wrong doing bringing scorn on the group. Thus for Hon Way it was necessary for his sons to donate to the village watchtower so that others would not 'laugh at us'.[39] Rose Hum Lee described how pressure to comply with certain funeral arrangements and other duties was based on the need to give 'face' to other family members.[40] For similar reasons a sworn brotherhood in Hawaii included the curse, if you 'let others laugh at us, you would die on the roadway'.[41]

What motivated so many huaqiao to ensure that their bones, if not themselves, returned home is nevertheless a difficult question; one with perhaps as many answers as there were individual huaqiao. Overseas Chinese history has suffered from an Orientalist tendency to impose uniform answers in keeping with a 'one China one culture' approach that has ignored the immense diversity that existed and still exists within the nation China at the local level. A tendency to ignore local diversity is also a characteristic of Chinese historiography.

Overseas Chinese developed new ways of dealing with the unique situations so far from their land of birth. The cultural traits they brought with them were also not necessarily universal. As people came from a number of localities with different local traditions, the diversity of ceremonies and behaviours is only to be expected. As one recently arrived huaqiao explained to Clarence Glick in 1931: 'In my part of China, though, they don't have cemetery associations like this. There is no particular place to bury the dead. If you see a place where you would like to bury someone, you go to the man who owns the land and ask him to let you have it.'[42]

It is hoped that this rather patchy overview of some aspects of the transfer of bones back to the villages helps to further our understanding of huaqiao diversity. While similar aims and organisational responses were at work around the Pacific, statistics and outsider accounts overemphasise similarities. A greater knowledge of the ceremonies and procedures that accompanied the movement of the departed friends is an area deserving a great deal of further research and one which would certainly help us to understand the huaqiao at their most significant level, the local.

Glossary of Chinese characters

References

[1] Woon Yuen-Fong, 'An emigrant community in the Ssu-yi Area, Southeastern China, 1885-1945: A study in social change”, Modern Asian Studies, vol.18, no.2, 1984, p.283.

[2] For the Chinese, both pinyin and characters of such terms as 'departed friends' please see the glossary.

[3] A shipment of seventy dead to China was recorded in San Francisco in May 1855; see Dorothy H. Huggins, Continuation of the Annals of San Francisco, California Historical Society, San Francisco, 1939, p.43. For Australia see Michael Williams, Chinese Settlement in NSW - A Thematic History, Heritage Office of NSW, Sydney, 1999, available online at http://www.heritage.nsw.gov.au, pp.16-17. And for Hawaii, Clarence Glick, Sojourners and Settlers: Chinese migrants in Hawaii, University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1980, p.247. Both huaqiao and its usual translation, 'Overseas Chinese', have a variety of meanings with historical and political implications; the best discussion of the general history of the term huaqiao and its changing meanings is that by Wang Gungwu, 'South China perspective's on overseas Chinese', The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no.13, 1984, pp.69-84. Qiaoxiang can be translated as, 'native land of one who is away' and refers to a person's home village, district or county, depending on which they choose to identify with as their place of origin.

[4] Maurice Freedman, Lineage Organisation in South-East China, Athlone Press, London, 1970, pp.139-140, on the role of bones in ancestor worship. Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity, Oxford University Press, New York, 1989, p.18, considers that concern for the dead was 'paramount' for overseas Chinese.

[5]Li Guoruan, “Changshengshe yu Changshengdian” (Long Life Associations and Long Life Shops), Zhongshan Wenshi, no.30, 1994, pp.274-276.

[6] 'Report on the condition of the Chinese population in Victoria by Rev. W. Young, 1868', in Ian F. McLaren, The Chinese in Victoria: Official Reports and Documents, Red Rooster Press, Victorian, 1985, p.50.

[7]Report of the Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling and Immorality and Charges of Bribery Against Members of the Police Force, Government Printer, Sydney, 1892, p.55, line 2113. Sinn, Power & Charity, pp.108-9, also refers to coffins placed on emigrant ships to prevent the dead being thrown overboard.

[8]Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling, p.15, lines 486-7 and p.57, line 2232.

[9]Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling, p.70, lines 2724-28.

[10]Sinn, Power & Charity, p.18, says concern for the dead was, 'a keystone of community leadership and influence'.

[11]Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling, p.28.

[12] State Records NSW, Col Sec 4/3476, 62/4222, Molison & Black to Colonial Secretary, 26 August 1862.

[13] C.F. Yong, The New Gold Mountain : The Chinese in Australia, 1901-1921, Raphael Arts, Richmond, 1977, p.191.

[14]Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling, p.117, line 4697.

[15] University of Hawaii, Hamilton Library: Dr Clarence E. Glick Archives (uncatalogued as of February 2001), Card File: Interview with Ling, 12 March 1931.

[16] Glick Archive, Card File: Interview with HQ Pang, 16 March 1931.

[17]'Returned to China' was written in red ink to indicate exhumed plots. Anglican Trust, Rookwood Cemetery: Register of Burials in the Necropolis at Haslem's Creek, under the Necropolis Act of 1867, 31 st Victoria, no.14, 'Chinese Section of General Cemetery'. See Figure 2.

[18] Benjamin S. Brooks, Appendix to the Opening Statement and Brief of B. S. Brooks on the Chinese Question (San Francisco: Women's Co-operative Printing Union, 1877), p.117.

[19]Anglican Trust, Rookwood Cemetery: Register of Burials 'Chinese Section of General Cemetery'.

[20]For an outline of this historic pattern see Michael Williams, Destination Qiaoxiang - Pearl River Delta Villages & Pacific Ports, 1849-1949, PhD thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2003, Chapter 1, 'Wading 10,000 li', pp.30-66.

[21] Glick Archive, Card File: Interview with Lee Kau, 16 March? 1931.

[22]Tung Wah News, various advertisements 1904-10.

[23]Anglican Trust, Rookwood Cemetery: Register of Burials, 'Chinese Section of General Cemetery', Ah Chung, 1892 & Ah Sing, 1884.

[24]National Archives of Australia (NAA), SP42/1, C47/2369, Wellington Wing Ning, Charles Wong Wing Kau, statutory declaration by Ah Ching, December 1914.

[25] Lew Violet Mebig Chan, 'A sentimental journey into the past of the Chan and Jong families', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol.28, 1988, pp.118-19.

[26] Glick Archive, Box 2: Clarence E. Glick, 'Malihini observations at Ching Ming, Manoa Chinese Cemetery, 5 April 1931', pp.4-5.

[27] Glick Archive, Box 2 : Clarence E. Glick, 'Malihini observations, 5 April 1931', p.9.

[28] Glick Archive, Box 2 : Clarence E. Glick, 'Malihini observations, 5 April 1931', p.4.

[29] Glick Archive, Card File: Interview with HQ Pang, 16 March 1931.

[30] Glick Archive, Box 2 : Clarence E. Glick, 'Malihini observations, 5 April 1931', p.9.

[31] Ann Stephens, The Lions of Retreat Street - A Chinese Temple in Inner Sydney Powerhouse Publishing/Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1997, p.70, interview with Harry Chong Choy.

[32]Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling, p.105, line 4169: 'they send some money to the Chinese Hospital in Hong Kong, the Tong Wah Yee Yuen'. Sinn, Power & Charity, p.6, refers to general huaqiao links, p.71, n.119, mentions links with Sydney in 1887 and p.73, refers to membership by Australian organisations.

[33]Zhongshan Renyan News, 15 November 22, p.8; Xiangshan Southern News, 8 November 1924, p.4 and interview Young Koon Nuen, 20 May 2000, Long Tou Wan, Tape 1, (10).

[34] For payments, Xiangshan Renyan News, 2 June 1925, p.8.

[35]Renyan News, 2 June 1925, p.8. See also Renyan News, 3 June 1925, p.7 for a notice of 30 bones being returned from Japan.

[36]Zhongshan Renyan News, 15 November 22, p.8.

[37]Young Koon Nuen, Long Tou Wan, 6 July 2000, Tape B, 55 and Liu Rubin, Yuen Han, 12 December 2000. The delayed news was the result of the Japanese War.

[38]See Williams, Destination Qiaoxiang, Chapter 4, 'Returning home with glory', pp.135-64, for a discussion of this aspect of huaqiao life.

[39] NAA: A1/15, 35/7020, Letter from Hon Way to Heg Ning and Heg Joong, 3 June 1915.

[40] Rose Hum Lee, The Growth and Decline of Chinese Communities in the Rocky Mountain Region, Arno Press, New York, 1978 [1947 thesis], p.245.

[41] Glick Archives, Disclosures as to Chinese Secret Societies, Honolulu, 1884 [translation of confiscated 'flags'], p.2.

[42] Glick Archive, Box 2 : Clarence E. Glick, 'Malihini observations, 5 April 1931', p.7.

About the author

Michael Williams has been researching the history of the movements of Chinese people in the 19th and early 20th centuries with particular reference to ongoing links with their villages of origin in south China and the impact this had on people's lives. His doctoral thesis, entitled: 'Destination Qiaoxiang - Pearl River Delta Villages & Pacific Ports, 1849-1949', examined these links around the Pacific with particular reference to the people of Long Du locality in Zhongshan County, south China. Michael is currently living in Taipei working as an independent researcher.

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