Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 3/For Hong Kong, Care of Ah Leen and Co., This Side Up
FOR HONG KONG, CARE OF
AH LEEN AND CO., THIS SIDE UP.
While on a visit to one of our richest Australian gold-fields, at Castlemaine, a few months back, I was startled by a paragraph in one of the local papers, stating that the Chinese diggers had made a formal application to the authorities for leave to exhume the remains of a mandarin who had died some three years ago. It appears to be their custom to disinter the bodies of men of rank who die abroad, three years after burial, with a view to sending them home to the family tomb. The newspaper notice went on to say that the body was exhumed in the presence of the coroner and the parish sexton. Owing to the security of the coffin and the dry nature of the soil, the body was found in a state of wonderful preservation. It was removed from the coffin, all the skin, remaining flesh, and integuments were carefully scraped away with knives, and the skeleton was submitted to the action of fire, until burned or calcined (for the bones appeared beautifully pure and white); they were then broken into short lengths—every particular bone—even the very skull was so broken up that it was difficult to make out the several component plates afterwards. These bones were then deposited in a wooden box about two feet long by one broad, and about one foot in depth, and lined throughout with white satin. There I saw them on my visit to the cemetery. The box lay on a table in the tool-house at the cemetery gates. It was really hard to say which was whiter, the white satin or the white calcined bone heaped up within it. Although thoroughly burned, none of the integral structure of the bone was destroyed, and the spongy texture of the heads of the thigh bones, &c., presented a really beautiful appearance. In a corner of this wooden funeral urn—if I may be pardoned for the bull—lay a small octagonal tin box marked “matches,” and the manufacturer would have stared in amazement if he could only have foreseen its ultimate contents and destiny. The sexton gave me permission to open it and examine its contents. I did so, and I must confess my astonishment was quite as great as I could have fancied that of the tin match-box maker, could he only have peeped over my shoulder as I opened the lid. I had heard of silver urns before, containing hearts and so forth; but a tin match-box with such a lining was a matter I was little prepared for. On lifting the lid, I found within all the teeth of the deceased celestial together with his finger nails, which had been drawn out and off respectively, previous to the kiln-drying operation. The nails, it would appear, which were of the most absurd length, and more resembling the talons of some huge pterodactyle than anything else I can compare them to, were here encased as vouchers for his rank and station. None but the lower orders in China wearing short nails, these are obliged to do as we do—cut them, in order to be able to work with their hands for their daily bread. The sexton was, however, unable to enlighten my ignorance in the matter of the teeth; but I have no doubt there must have been some reason for boxing them up so carefully.
Ere this reaches you, the bones are with the mandarin’s family in the country of the children of the sun and moon.
