A Traditional Thought

Discuss in ONE page DOUBLE SPACED document how your culture deals with death and dying. Are there any traditions?

A Traditional Thought

In Chinese culture, people are very sensitive on the topic of death. Due to traditional thought, a word of death is represented bad luck. Chinese people do not like to mention word of “death” because of they believed this term is unfortunate. In addition, Chinese people dislike the number four. In Chinese Pinying, four (shi) has similar pronunciation of death (shi). Instead, they like number eight (Fa) means wealthy. In china many local stores named as “Yi Lu Fa” English translate is “Always Being Wealthy”.

In China, most of the people are believed in Buddhism. The way they deals with death is related to the religions. After a person passed away his or her spirit would return underworld. His or her spirit would get judged by god or goddess. God or Goddess would punished a person based on the level of sins. For example, if a person had killed someone then this person would also feel the pain of killing. Hence, the family would invited master to pray for death and hope god or goddess for forgiveness. The praying events would hosts for two weeks or more. The praying events would host longer if the death has more sins.

China is a very traditional and religions country. People are extremely superstition on their religions. In early time, Chinese people believed illness are come from ghost or monster. When a person is dying, the family would invited Taoist priest or monk to catches the ghosts. Another example, people would go to temple pray for amulet and hope it could save a person life.