Early colonial state intervention in Chinese death practices in Hong Kong (1856-1880)

Abstract

This paper discusses the colonial state’s early interventions into death practices of the Chinese and the resulting paradoxes. These early interventions included regulations on burial practices and sites since 1856 and the introduction of a death registration system in 1872. However, while regulating Chinese burial practices and tracking mortality figures, the colonial state failed to provide official cemeteries to the Chinese until the 1870s and largely left the process of death management to unofficial Chinese institutions. These state regulations also created fear within the Chinese population and many of them remained uncooperative towards these regulations. As the Chinese were separated from the colonial system of death management, a colonial 'Orientalist' discourse on Chinese death practices was developed and reinforced by the colonizers. This discourse became increasingly negative as the European colonists had growing anxiety towards the uncooperativeness of the Chinese. Chinese death practices were often placed against Western modernity. The practices were viewed as unsanitary, superstitious and lacking affections in contrast to Europeans' modern sanitation, Western medicine and emotional concerns for the dead