Text丨 Weisheng Xiaoyun
Editor丨Weisheng Xiaoyun
Preface
It is estimated that everyone has seen a very strange scene in the TV series, that is, "selling himself to bury his father".
Some people are asking for money to deal with their family's funeral, so they sign a "deed of sale" and become maid servants.
But it's also strange, it's just digging a hole, so why not dig it yourself? Actually, there is a big reason behind it.
Why "sell yourself to bury your father"?
In ancient TV dramas, we often see some distressing pictures of a woman wearing a sackcloth and a filial piety hat on the street, kneeling on the ground.
Beside her lay a corpse wrapped in a straw mat, and in front of her lay a wooden sign that read "Sell your body to bury your father".
Most of these women are poor in their families, and after losing their breadwinners, they cannot afford the funeral expenses, so they have to put down their self-esteem and go to the streets to beg for money in order for their relatives to be buried in the ground.
If anyone was willing to pay for them, they were taken away and used as buyers or servants, or they were sold to work as coolies in distant lands.
In fact, the reason why they sold themselves to bury their fathers was because most of them were helpless at this time, and they could be regarded as finding a way out by becoming servants.
After all, at that time, there was a large gap between the rich and the poor, and many poor people might not even be able to eat, so they went to work as servants in large households, so that they could have something to eat.
And in addition to this reason, some people are very strange, why don't they dig a pit and bury it themselves, and then go to find something to do by themselves?
Even if you don't sell your body to bury your father, there should be some places that will recruit servants, right? And there is no need to sign a deed of sale, and there is still a monthly money to get every month.
There are several reasons for this, one is that the price of this type of person who sells her body to bury her father is low, and she can often be bought for a lifetime with a little money.
The second is that the woman's strength is relatively small, and it is estimated that she has not buried the pit even if she digs it by herself, and the ancient people believed in the afterlife.
They feel that the world after death is also important, so burying the deceased well can also bring good luck to the descendants of the deceased.
If it is just a place to be hastily buried, the descendants may be affected, and the deceased may not have a good life in the afterlife, so even the poor hope that the death can be handled well.
However, everyone has also seen men selling themselves to bury their fathers on TV, and people like this generally have their own physical strength, but in ancient times, filial piety was emphasized.
At that time, the social class was obvious, and many men could only work for the landlord's family, and the wages were very low, so such families could not afford to hold funerals.
The quickest way to do this was to hope that the rich man would recruit him as a domestic servant, because many families at that time might only have enough money to eat, let alone save money.
Although I have to be a servant to others all my life, I can at least feel stable in my heart, after all, filial piety comes first.
And analyzing men and women, it seems that women in general are more likely to fall into the situation of selling their bodies to bury their fathers, because women themselves are weak.
Men can still struggle and find ways to raise money, but ancient women are not virtuous, have few skills, and are not allowed to show their heads.
In this case, it is basically difficult for them to survive, and this is their last resort.
However, with the development of the times, women have more and more choices of their own, which is also worth sighing from another aspect.
When it comes to funeral methods, there are actually many regulations, especially in ancient times, where the process may be more cumbersome.
Funerals cannot be hasty
In ancient times, both rich and poor attached great importance to funerals, and some had to invite Taoist priests or monks to chant sutras, hoping that they could smoothly enter another world.
According to the identity of the person, a suitable cemetery and coffin should be selected, and before the burial, the relatives should also carry out a "vigil" to accompany the deceased.
After the funeral, let the deceased enter the earth for peace, out of the funeral, the front person is generally holding a statue, the back of the person silently follow the hearse, around the deceased lived in a circle.
And there are a lot of folklore related to funerals in ancient times, that is, the first seven, people think that the departed person will come back at some time after the burial, at this time people can not cry, for fear that the other party will not feel at ease.
After that, there is an annual festival or a festival of worship, where you can offer some food to express your remembrance and pray for blessings and good luck for future generations.
However, these rules cannot be generalized, after all, China is a vast country, and there are many regions, and the funeral ceremonies in many places are different because of different regions, nationalities and eras.
For example, in ancient times, people in the Central Plains were usually buried in the ground, and the rituals were more cumbersome and complicated, while in the south, because of the special geographical environment, people preferred water burial or boat burial, putting the body of the deceased in the boat and drifting with the tide, implying the cycle of life.
The funeral customs of different ethnic groups are also very different, the Han people pay attention to sacrifice and commemoration, and after the death of the deceased, a series of sacrificial activities should be carried out, such as burning paper money, incense, and toasting, to express nostalgia and respect.
Ethnic minorities such as the Tibetan people have "sky burial" and the Yi people have "cremation", and they all have their own understandings.
In fact, we don't advocate burial anymore, and there are actually a lot of reasons behind it, and it should be that burial is too much land now.
Housing prices in cities are getting more and more expensive, the development areas are getting bigger and bigger, there are more and more people, and land has become particularly valuable, and burials have to take up a lot of land.
Therefore, in contrast, more people have begun to choose cremation, one is to save land, and the other is more environmentally friendly.
Because during burial, the decomposition of the body in the soil will produce harmful substances that may contaminate the soil and water sources, while cremation also has exhaust emissions, but through scientific treatment, these effects can be minimized.
In addition, with the change of people's ideology, more and more people accept and recognize other funeral methods.
They feel that cremation can better express respect and remembrance for the deceased, and with the progress of society and the increase of environmental awareness, some new funeral concepts are becoming more and more popular, such as ecological burial and sea burial.
Many people may not have heard of ecological burial, in fact, this method is particularly environmentally friendly, such as tree burial, which refers to burying the departed person at the root of the tree, so that it will rot into nutrients after a period of time.
It can also be understood as growing with trees, which can be regarded as a kind of sustenance, and the other is the sea burial that has always been there, which is also a common ecological burial method.
Sea burial is the scattering of the ashes of the deceased into the sea, which has actually been seen by many people in some TV series.
In fact, foreign countries have also invented some strange methods, such as ice burial, which refers to freezing people and crushing them.
However, these methods are strange, and some people may not be able to understand it, and at present, cremation is still used more.
After a person leaves, it is indeed necessary to consider some places to be settled, after all, it is also a way of remembrance for the living.
epilogue
Seeing this, it is estimated that many people can understand why this way was present in ancient times.
In fact, the times are different, and many times people's choices are different, especially in ancient times, where there were many restricted places, and many people had no other way but to sell their bodies to bury their fathers.