Postcolonial and feminist scholars have made much of the former Hindu practice of sutti, in which a grieving wife was immolated on her husband's funeral pire. The practice translates into one of marital piety and obedience, as well as sacramental rite.
Lesser known is the Northern Chinese Loess Plateau region's tradition of the "ghost bride," in which an unwed dead woman is buried with a bachelor to ensure he has companionship in the afterlife. Otherwise the bachelor will not rest in peace. The tradition itself may not necessitate the murder of the bride (women's corpses are either coincidentally available or dug up), but when brides are in high demand, the practice may provide a profit motive, especially given the shortage of single dead women (given China's one-child policy demographic).
The AP reports, based on a Legal Daily news article as a source, that two women in the region were murdered last year to serve as brides. The original article states, according to the AP, that "Authorities indicated that the killings last year were not isolated cases."
The ghost bride tradition is known as "minghun" or afterlife marriage. Sons who die beginning at age 12 are eligible for a ghost bride. When none is available for purchase, or the family has insufficient means to buy one (a ghost bride can cost as much as four years salary for an average farm family), the son is buried with a straw representation of a bride.
In last years' murders, the selling of young women as brides, another dark practice in rural China, was conflated with the ghost bride tradition. Per the AP's reporting of the original article:
"Yang Dongyan, 35, a farmer from Shaanxi province, said he had bought a young woman for the equivalent of about C$1,840 and planned to sell her as a bride...But then he met Liu Shenghai, who told him that the woman could command a higher price as a "ghost bride"...Yang killed the woman in a ditch, bagged her body, and sold her for the equivalent of C$2,390 to Li Longsheng, an undertaker, who said he could find a buyer, the paper said. Yang gave Liu a portion of the profits. Yang later went to the city of Yan'an and hired a prostitute he had used before, killed her and sold her for C$1,150 to Li because she was "less pretty." (AP)
From an article by Ping Yao in the Journal of Family History (vol. 27, issue 3, pp. 207-226, 2002) entitled Until Death Do Us Unite, we may infer that the practice began in the Tang Dynasty (618-906):
"Through a close examination of epitaphs, biographies, short stories, and archaeological discoveries, the author argues that (1) the minghun practice embodied Tang society's elaborate vision of the netherworld and new outlook toward death, enriched by the Buddhist idea of purgatory; (2) the transformed concept of afterlife and economic prosperity encouraged lavish burials and provided an opportunity for Tang parents to make up for their children's unfulfilled lives; (3) the changing perception of marriage during the Tang period, with less emphasis on the continuation of the family line and more emphasis on marital harmony and physical intimacy, led to the conviction that even deceased children deserve a marriage; and (4) minghun arrangements provided the living relatives alternate paths to form family connections, expand power, and display their wealth and social status."
For a detailed report on this rural practice, see New York Times Reporter Jim Yardley's "Married for the Afterlife in China" (October 4, 2006). Per Yardley, "Scholars who have studied it say it is rooted in the Chinese form of ancestor worship, which holds that people continue to exist after death and that the living are obligated to tend to their wants - or risk the consequences...In random interviews in different villages across the Loess Plateau, which spreads across parts of Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, everyone acknowledged the custom. People say parents of a dead son depend on an informal network of friends or family, or even a well-connected fixer, to locate a family that has recently lost a single daughter. Selling or buying corpses for commercial purposes is illegal in China, but these voluntary transactions, usually for cash, seem to fall into a fuzzier category and are quietly arranged between families."
Lesser known is the Northern Chinese Loess Plateau region's tradition of the "ghost bride," in which an unwed dead woman is buried with a bachelor to ensure he has companionship in the afterlife. Otherwise the bachelor will not rest in peace. The tradition itself may not necessitate the murder of the bride (women's corpses are either coincidentally available or dug up), but when brides are in high demand, the practice may provide a profit motive, especially given the shortage of single dead women (given China's one-child policy demographic).
The AP reports, based on a Legal Daily news article as a source, that two women in the region were murdered last year to serve as brides. The original article states, according to the AP, that "Authorities indicated that the killings last year were not isolated cases."
The ghost bride tradition is known as "minghun" or afterlife marriage. Sons who die beginning at age 12 are eligible for a ghost bride. When none is available for purchase, or the family has insufficient means to buy one (a ghost bride can cost as much as four years salary for an average farm family), the son is buried with a straw representation of a bride.
In last years' murders, the selling of young women as brides, another dark practice in rural China, was conflated with the ghost bride tradition. Per the AP's reporting of the original article:
"Yang Dongyan, 35, a farmer from Shaanxi province, said he had bought a young woman for the equivalent of about C$1,840 and planned to sell her as a bride...But then he met Liu Shenghai, who told him that the woman could command a higher price as a "ghost bride"...Yang killed the woman in a ditch, bagged her body, and sold her for the equivalent of C$2,390 to Li Longsheng, an undertaker, who said he could find a buyer, the paper said. Yang gave Liu a portion of the profits. Yang later went to the city of Yan'an and hired a prostitute he had used before, killed her and sold her for C$1,150 to Li because she was "less pretty." (AP)
From an article by Ping Yao in the Journal of Family History (vol. 27, issue 3, pp. 207-226, 2002) entitled Until Death Do Us Unite, we may infer that the practice began in the Tang Dynasty (618-906):
"Through a close examination of epitaphs, biographies, short stories, and archaeological discoveries, the author argues that (1) the minghun practice embodied Tang society's elaborate vision of the netherworld and new outlook toward death, enriched by the Buddhist idea of purgatory; (2) the transformed concept of afterlife and economic prosperity encouraged lavish burials and provided an opportunity for Tang parents to make up for their children's unfulfilled lives; (3) the changing perception of marriage during the Tang period, with less emphasis on the continuation of the family line and more emphasis on marital harmony and physical intimacy, led to the conviction that even deceased children deserve a marriage; and (4) minghun arrangements provided the living relatives alternate paths to form family connections, expand power, and display their wealth and social status."
For a detailed report on this rural practice, see New York Times Reporter Jim Yardley's "Married for the Afterlife in China" (October 4, 2006). Per Yardley, "Scholars who have studied it say it is rooted in the Chinese form of ancestor worship, which holds that people continue to exist after death and that the living are obligated to tend to their wants - or risk the consequences...In random interviews in different villages across the Loess Plateau, which spreads across parts of Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, everyone acknowledged the custom. People say parents of a dead son depend on an informal network of friends or family, or even a well-connected fixer, to locate a family that has recently lost a single daughter. Selling or buying corpses for commercial purposes is illegal in China, but these voluntary transactions, usually for cash, seem to fall into a fuzzier category and are quietly arranged between families."
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