Till death do us wed
In a tiny village temple in the hills behind Sha Tin in 1969, gongs sounded and incense rose as a man and woman were married. The bride had died seven years earlier during the great famine in Guangdong. The husband-to-be, a distant clansman and New Territories villager, had passed away many years earlier.
Relatives feared that restlessly roaming the afterlife, both were lonely. So a 'ghost marriage' was held to unite the couple, who had never met. It was a strangely joyful occasion. I witnessed it with a friend who participated in the ancient custom of marrying the dead.
Like many old folk customs, ghost marriages are (forgive the pun) a dying tradition. As recently as the 1970s, such ceremonies were still relatively common. But as village communities withered and clan bonds weakened, it has become rare.
In China during the Cultural Revolution, such semi-religious practices were banned, and even with the freedoms of today they are uncommon.
Throughout the New Territories, there are ample reminders of marriages of the dead. If you climb to the columbarium behind the Leisure and Cultural Services headquarters building near Sha Tin railway station, you will see plaques where the dates of people's marriages were recorded long after the dates of their deaths.
Chan Kwok-shing, of the Chinese Civilisation Centre of City University, says the ceremonies are still sometimes carried out.
'Many people who do it want to continue a relationship,' Professor Chan explains. 'This is especially so if their loved one was killed in an accident. This is more a local tradition rather than a mainstream, religious orthodox practice.'
Selina Chan Ching, associate director of the Contemporary China Research Centre of Shue Yan College, said ghost marriages were very popular in overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan, up to the 1970s. The ceremonies and reasons for the marital links vary widely. In most, both parties are deceased. In others, one partner may be dead, and grieving relatives seek to placate the spirit by marriage to a congenial and willing living partner.
In other cases, the families of two dead people may agree to a link between a man and a woman who never knew each other.
Belief in after-death weddings is a peasant folk custom handed down for at least 17 centuries. It is based on the idea that a lonely, wandering spirit may be roaming the afterworld, distressed and unsatisfied. The marriage brings contentment to the restless ghost and solace to its living relatives.
Key to much of the belief is that a woman who is not married has nobody to worship her life and spirit. Once married, even in death, her status changes.
She becomes a lawfully married woman and, as part of her husband's family, will be worshipped in his ancestral hall. And, of course, united in marriage for eternity, the couple can care for each other in the afterlife.
Fascinated academics and anthropologists who studied ghost marriages in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the years after the second world war reported that chickens were often used as stand-ins for a missing bride or groom. With full regalia and trappings of a normal wedding, the living partner would stand up in a village temple with the dead partner represented by a fowl.
In times of tragedy, the custom continues. Last month in Tai Po, a pair of teenage lovers jumped hand-in-hand to their deaths. The 17-year-old girl was pregnant. Both sets of parents are talking about a ceremony to unite the boy and girl in a postmortem marriage.
I hope the ceremony brings the troubled youngsters more joy and happiness in the next life than they found in this one.
Kevin Sinclair is a Hong Kong reporter who lives in the New Territories
