Chinese culture, a civilization with a long history, 5,000 years of history and culture has made us a country of etiquette. In the Chinese nation, traditional culture is like a continuous thread, closely linking generation after generation, one historical stage with another.
This identity and continuity constituted the profound values, moral beliefs, institutions, and ways of behaving of ancient China. As a part of traditional culture, funeral culture not only embodies the social production structure, behavioral and psychological characteristics, universal values and broad cosmology of ancient China, but also deeply rooted in each individual and nurtures the national consciousness and emotions of each individual.
It plays a vital role in people's moral cultivation and social order. Therefore, Professor Wu Fei of the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Religious Studies of Peking University emphasized that the importance of traditional funeral culture cannot be ignored, and without traditional funerals, there is no hope for the future of Chinese culture.
Mencius has a saying that the beginning of the royal road begins with the people's survival and death. Professor Wu Fei believes that the funeral system contains people's emotions, so as to promote the return of morality to purity.
He believes that love and respect are interdependent, with the former being the cornerstone of the latter, and the latter being the manifestation and guarantee of the former. Without the solemn and serious "respect" of the latter, love would be difficult to guarantee.
For modern China, it is precisely the overemphasis on the former and the neglect of the latter that leads to the inability of love to be guaranteed.
In a social community, everyone is in harmony with the surrounding environment and ecology, and builds their own values and behavior patterns. Morality is reflected in social life and in group life.
Funeral ceremonies not only convey and reinforce the concept of collectivity, but also contain the emotions and moral character of the ethnic group. The complex symbolic structure of the funeral reveals the death and suffering that human beings cannot face directly, but it conveys the existential theme of "love" and "respect".
Therefore, the funeral culture has been recognized and inherited by people for a long time, and it is precisely because the funeral system inherits the feelings of love and respect and plays a role in the hearts of the people.
Professor Wu Fei pointed out that historical experience shows that funeral rites play an important role in the improvement of customs, but modern society no longer pays attention to the etiquette system. If the culture of funeral is not talked about at all, ethical corruption will manifest itself.
It can be seen that the funeral system has a positive role in promoting the development of ethics and morality. From ancient times to the present, although the funeral system has continued to evolve, the concept of honoring parents has always been inherited.
In traditional Chinese culture, the affection between family members is the most important emotional experience, and the family is the basic unit of society, so the family has become the foundation of social ethics and morality.
The poem "Xiaoya and Liao" mentions that "body" and "family" were inseparable in ancient China, and "Lü's Spring and Autumn Period" also emphasizes that the funeral system is an important tool for maintaining traditional Chinese society.
Professor Wu Fei pointed out that traditional funeral rites are an important connection point between modern Chinese and traditional Chinese ritual and music civilization. If traditional funerals disappear, traditional Chinese culture will also be threatened.
Traditional funerals are not only a part of culture, but also a microcosm of China's cultural diversity, which reflects the political, cultural, religious and social structure of ancient China, and is closely related to individual values, behavior patterns and psychological characteristics.
The reason why the funeral system is so important is that on the one hand, it is a customary code of conduct in the social life of Chinese, which enriches the connotation and practicality of etiquette, and on the other hand, it also meets the requirements of official Confucianism to integrate the relationship between the individual, family and the state.
The funeral culture system has a constant and collective nature, which connects the deceased generation and the living generation, if the funeral culture is lost, a group culture will be lost, that is, the Chinese culture will be lost.
Therefore, we should cherish and inherit the traditional funeral culture to protect our traditional culture.
Over the past decade or so, Chinese society has undergone rapid transformation, with comprehensive and progressive economic, political and cultural development, which has also led to complex changes and restructuring of rural society.
However, what is worrying is that in the face of the strong impact of modernization, globalization and urbanization, Chinese traditional culture is being severely squeezed, and a series of alienation phenomena have emerged, especially in rural society.
In Anqing, Anhui Province, for example, the forced funeral reform has triggered a series of contradictions and shocking incidents. According to reports, many elderly people have committed suicide in order to be buried before cremation.
This is not an isolated phenomenon, similar incidents occurred in the nineties. In order to combat this kind of behavior, the local ** even encouraged reporting, and finally led to the fact that after some people reported it, they dug up the body and poured gasoline on the spot and burned it, causing greater disputes and conflicts.
In some places in Guizhou, ** has also taken a series of tough measures due to the funeral reform, arresting and sentencing violators. However, these measures have also led to the antipathy of the locals towards **, and some people even do not hold funerals at all, only secretly digging a pit to bury their deceased relatives, and do not have a grave.
Conflicts over funeral reform have intensified, especially in rural areas. And sometimes overly forceful measures are adopted to make the contradictions more intense.
In response to the contradictions caused by the funeral reform, Professor Wu Fei believes that the current funeral reform treats people's corpses as garbage and the funeral department as a human garbage station, and its purpose is to dispose of the corpses as soon as possible, rather than maintaining family affection and reminiscing about the past.
This negative guiding ideology is worrying. Professor Wu Fei pointed out that the biggest problem in the reform of today's funeral system is the lack of humanistic care, and people are completely treated as objects.
The traditional funeral system entrusts deep emotions and is a cultural way to pursue the distance cautiously, which is difficult to be replaced by a simple modern funeral system. To solve these contradictions, we must learn from and make use of the factors in the traditional funeral system that adapt to modern society, so that the modern funeral system can not only treat the deceased with dignity, but also bring comfort and sustenance to the family.
Professor Wu Fei suggested that a more humane bereavement leave system should be introduced to meet people's needs during bereavement. He pointed out that the current statutory bereavement leave is too short to adequately meet people's needs for mourning and recovery.
He suggested that bereavement leave should be appropriately extended to help the bereaved through this difficult period. In addition, Professor Wu Fei also proposed that the funeral industry should also pay more attention to humanistic care, such as by holding modern memorial services, or setting up traditional funeral models in funeral homes to meet the needs of different groups of people.
This model of combining modernity and tradition has been successfully practiced in some large cities and is worth learning from other places.
Although there is currently no perfect solution to the conflict of funeral models, we can choose burial to solve the existing dilemma. Although burial poses a challenge to urban and rural development in the future, for thousands of years, the Chinese nation has always upheld a rich national emotion and national consciousness, making the traditional funeral culture system become our spiritual bond and closely bind us together.
Therefore, traditional funeral culture occupies an important position in Chinese culture, as Wu Fei, a professor at Peking University, said: "Traditional Chinese funeral culture is an important part of Chinese culture and is our spiritual bond. ”