KIPNIS ANTHROPOLOGY | ASIAN STUDIES In rural China funerals are conducted locally, on village land by village elders. But in urban areas, people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives to conduct funerals. Chinese urbanization, which has increased drastically in recent decades, involves the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, WANG OF MR. FUNERAL THE and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of Mr. Wang examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals, the funerary industry, and practices of memorialization. It analyzes changes in family life, patterns of urban sociality, transformations in economic relations, the politics of memorialization, and the echoes of these changes in beliefs about the dead and ghosts. “This book is highly original and addresses a topic of central importance to understanding Chinese family life and the limits of a party-state’s regulatory THE FUNERAL OF MR. WANG power over the society and individual citizens. Original and systematic field- work is expertly used to illustrate core arguments. To my knowledge there is no competing ethnography.” LIFE, DEATH, AND GHOSTS IN URBANIZING CHINA Deborah Davis, Professor Emerita of Sociology, Yale University ANDREW B. KIPNIS “The Funeral of Mr. Wang is a vivid portrait of how the transition from life to death is negotiated in the midst of a rapidly transforming urban Chinese so- ciety. Showing how death in contemporary China generates interconnected processes of cultural recombination among family members, funeral service providers, bureaucratic regulators, strangers, and ghosts, this book will be crit- ical reading for all students of China and of death in contemporary societies.” David A. Palmer, coauthor of The Religious Question in Modern China IN URBANIZING CHINA URBANIZING IN LIFE, AND DEATH, GHOSTS ANDREW B. KIPNIS is Professor of Anthropology at The Chi- nese University of Hong Kong, coeditor of Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, and author of From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat. A free version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Cover design: Sandy Drooker. Cover illustrations: Photographs by Andrew B. Kipnis. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS WWW.UCPRESS.EDU Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Sue Tsao Endowment Fund in Chinese Studies. The Funeral of Mr. Wang The Funeral of Mr. Wang Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China Andrew B. Kipnis UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press Oakland, California © 2021 by Andrew Kipnis This work is licensed under a Creative Commons [CC-BY-NC-ND] license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Suggested citation: Kipnis, A. B. The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.105 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kipnis, Andrew B., author. Title: The funeral of Mr. Wang : life, death, and ghosts in urbanizing China / Andrew B. Kipnis. Description: [Oakland, California] : University of California Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2021001644 (print) | lccn 2021001645 (ebook) | isbn 9780520381971 (paperback) | isbn 9780520381995 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Funeral rites and ceremonies—China—21st century. | Death—Social aspects—China. | Social change—China. Classification: LCC GT3283.A2 .K57 2021 (print) | LCC GT3283.A2 (ebook) | DDC 393/.9309510905—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001644 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001645 Manufactured in the United States of America 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix 1. The Funeral of Mr. Wang 1 2. Of Transitions and Transformations 18 3. Of Space and Place: Separation and Distinction in the Homes of the Dead 28 4. Of Strangers and Kin: Moral Family and Ghastly Strangers in Urban Sociality 52 5. Of Gifts and Commodities: Spending on the Dead While Providing for the Living 71 6. Of Rules and Regulations: Governing Mourning 92 7. Of Souls and Spirits: Secularization and its Limits 111 8. Of Dreams and Memories: A Ghost Story From a Land Where Haunting Is Banned 129 Epilogue 145 Notes 149 References 153 Index 163 List of Illustrations MAPS 1. Chinese cities mentioned in this book xi 2. Nanjing 33 FIGURES 1. Varieties of spirit money 11 2. Paraphernalia stalls at cemetery 16 3. Grave relocation compensation notice 36 4. Wall burials at the Garden of Merit 41 5. Gravesites at the Garden of Merit 41 6. Grave of Communist martyr at the Garden of Merit 41 7. Humanism Memorial Museum 43 8. Section of New Fourth Army Memorial 44 9. Chen Duxiu’s tomb 45 10. Wall burials in Fu Shou Yuan 45 11. Children’s section of Fu Shou Yuan 46 12. Tombs in a non-elite graveyard 48 13. Trash in a non-elite graveyard 48 14. Tombstone with names painted in red and black 60 15. Sign near Tianjin graveyard 106 16. Carved depiction of filial piety at cemetery 124 17. Graffiti 131 Acknowledgments Like all projects this one could not have succeeded without help. Many institu- tions have given support, including the Australian National University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Nanjing University, Beijing University, and Yangtze Uni- versity. Individuals at these and other institutions showed an interest in my work, provided introductions and research assistance, and listened to my presentations. As I completed my research on this project between 2013 and 2019, I could sense the academic environment at many Chinese universities deteriorate. Talks that I was scheduled to give were canceled or moved to venues where few could attend. Already completed, already under-contract translations of my previous books were blocked from publication. More and more people began to self-censor what they said and wrote. As I finish this book while living in Hong Kong, the Commu- nist Party has imposed its “National Security Legislation” that criminalizes “col- laboration” with foreigners who advocate the division of the Chinese nation. As supporting Taiwanese or Hong Kong independence, or even less repressive poli- cies in Xinjiang or Tibet, could constitute dividing the nation, many Hong Kong academics fear that any remaining semblance of academic freedom in Hong Kong will vanish. What will happen is anyone’s guess, but these circumstances make me hesitate to name any of the scores of Chinese academics and graduate students who have helped me with this project, regardless of whether they are currently located inside or outside of China. Those who allowed me to interview them, or simply put up with my presence and questions, likewise deserve to be named, but I am not willing to do so. Purely academic debts are easier to acknowledge. When I first started this proj- ect, two bright young scholars, Lucia Liu and Ruth Toulson, welcomed me into their circle of anthropologists interested in funerary ritual. Much of this book has ix x Acknowledgments been worked out in conference panels that they helped organize, and their feed- back at various forums has proven invaluable. Adam Chau, Tom Cliff, Deborah Davis, Judith Farquhar, Zoe Hatten, Ian Johnson, Reed Malcolm, David Palmer, Robert Weller, and Angela Zito have provided feedback, encouragement and support. Colleagues at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, including Gordon Matthews, Sealing Cheng, Teresa Kuan, Leilah Vevaina, Sharon Wong, Ju-chen Chen, Hsuan-Ying Huang, Sidney Cheung, Venera Khalikova, Wyman Tang, and Weng Cheong Lam endured several presentations from this book and asked stim- ulating questions at the right moments. Grants awarded by the Australian Research Council (DP140101294 and DP140101289) and the Hong Kong Research Grants Council General Research Fund (Project Number 14604318) helped fund research undertaken for this book. Parts of chapter 3 appeared in Review of Religion and Chinese Society (Kipnis 2019), parts of chapter 5 in Modern Asian Studies (Kipnis and Cliff 2020) and PoLAR (Kipnis 2018), and parts of chapter 7 in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory (Kipnis 2017). Thanks always to Kejia, Jonathan, and Elliot. Love to my parents, whom I mourn, and my cousin Peter, whose death led me to experience grief for the first time. Map 1. Chinese cities mentioned in this book. 1 The Funeral of Mr. Wang Mr. Wang died of cancer at the Nanjing Municipal Hospital of Chinese Medicine during the wee hours of the morning on December 14, 2014. He was eighty-four years old and had been at the hospital for almost two weeks. Before coming to the hospital, he saw a series of doctors about pain in his legs and hips, but checked into the hospital when the pain increased. About five days before his death, a doctor at the hospital told his younger daughter that a prostate cancer had spread to his bones and become incurable. The news was a bit of a shock to his family, who had imagined that his pain stemmed from some sort of arthritis. The family did not tell Mr. Wang of the prognosis, but he guessed from their demeanor and asked them to contact his middle child, who lived abroad. His treatment consisted pri- marily of pain relief, though no opiates were used and Mr.