Qu Hui Cave Study Funeral Culture

This dissertation selects Qudong Village in Bonan Town of Yongping County in western Yunnan as the site for field work and their funeral culture as the research topic. Taking the functionalist anthropological theories as the framework for data analysis and employing literature review, field investigation, questionnaires and systematic analysis as methods, the author presents the picture of Qudong Hui people’s funeral culture from its behavioral, material and ideological dimensions, analyzes the structure and functions of the culture as well as their way of cultural adaption, so as to provide a case for the study of the funeral culture in a Hui community by revealing the connotations of the culture and its way of development.The first part of the dissertation outlines the research background, by introducing the literature review on domestic and foreign studies of the topic, methods and significance of the study. At present, the academic studies of the Hui people’s funeral culture mostly focus on introductions to the funeral rites or customs of the Hui people, or analysis of one aspect of the culture, lacking studies of the culture with anthropological theories from the holistic perspective. In this dissertation, the anthropological functionalism is employed to study the funeral culture of Qudong Hui people from the holistic perspective, analyzes its structure, functions and way of adaptation.The second part describes the form of Qudong Hui people’s funeral culture from its behavioral, material and ideological perspectives, based on the data collected from the field study and literature review. First, the behavioral form of Qudong Hui people’s funeral culture is described by writing about caring for the dying, the burial of the deceased and the memorial services for the deceased. Second, the material form of Qudong Hui people’s funeral culture is described by writing about the items, tools, places, and food people use before, during and after the funeral. Third, the ideological form of Qudong Hui people’s funeral culture is described by writing about their knowledge of and attitude toward death and the deceased, and about the taboos concerning language, behavior and materials. The combination of these three aspects of the cultural form constitute the whole picture of the funeral culture of Qudong Hui people, from which one can see the external manifestations and internal implications of this culture.The third part of the dissertation analyzes the structure, functions and adaptation strategy of Qudong Hui people’s funerary culture, revealing the culture’s meanings and way of development. The functionalist school of anthropology advocates that a culture’s function is to meet people’s various needs. These needs can be summarized as human biological needs, the needs to meet institutional requirements and the needs to integrate social relations. The funeral structure of Qudong Hui people is basically a culture of Islamic elements as the core of the culture integrated with Confucian elements as the outer part of the culture. Qudong Hui people think that a living human being is composed of a physical body and a soul and one dies when the body and the soul are separated; that death is just a pause and not the end of life; that everyone in the "Resurrection" will be restored to life, accepts Allah’s trial, and then some go to Heaven while some go to Hell, and since then, everyone will be alive forever. Qudong Hui people’s purpose of life is to pursue "happiness in this world and the afterworld" and the function of the funeral culture is to meet the need of the deceased to acquire happiness in the afterworld namely to live in Heaven after the resurrection and also to meet the demands of the living for happiness in the two worlds. There are two major social structures among Qudong Hui people. One is a religious social structure based on religious beliefs and the other is a secular social structure based on kinship ties. The functions of the funeral culture work through the two social structures. A choice-making mechanism exists in the funeral culture of Qudong Hui people, by which they interact with other cultures, adapt themselves to other cultures and have their changing needs satisfied.The fourth part is a summary about what the funeral culture of Qudong Hui people is, how it functions and how it adjusts itself. The findings of the author are also introduced in the summary. As an integration of the Islamic culture and the Confucian culture, the funeral culture of Qudong Hui people is essentially that the local Hui people practice the "Five Pillars" based on the "Six Faiths" of Islam from their outlook on life and death namely "to be happy in the two worlds" to do good and seek Allah’s forgiveness for the deceased, praying for him or her to get a chance to live in Heaven after the resurrection, and also to meet the living people’s needs "to be happy in the two worlds." In Qudong Village there are two kinds of social structures. One kind is the religious structure with ahungs being chief members based on the Islamic beliefs and the other is the structure of kinship with relatives of the deceased being the chief members based on blood ties. The funeral culture of Qudong Hui people functions through the two knids of social strucures to satisfy the needs of the individuals, the social groups and the community as a whole. The way Qudong Hui people adjust their funeral culture is to decide how to give up an old cultural element or absorb a new cultural element by taking the four bases of the Islamic laws as the criteria, ensuring the stabilitiy and openness of the culture. Based on the findings from the research, the author redefines the local Hui people’s Custom for Helping the Deceased, wishing that it might be a help for other scholars.