In worldwide, many people do funeral to respect their beloved who recently died or to respect their ancestors. Preparing the tomb, the funeral ceremony, gathering all of relatives in order to give their final respect to the deceased or to their ancestors, and these become customs in society. In Indonesia, there are so many cultures and customs which also do funeral for their beloved people. For examples, Javanese people do the funeral by burying funeral and because of mostly Javanese-heritage people’s religion is Islam (Muslim), they do the funeral by burying and the deceased’s just wear one piece of cloth which called as “pocong”. Other culture in Indonesia is Balinese people who do the funeral by cremation way which called “ngaben”. There are also Chinese-heritage people in Indonesia who do funeral by following the Chinese funeral customs. There are two kinds of Chinese funeral custom: burying funeral and cremation funeral. In Chinese customs, funeral becomes one most important custom for Chinese people caused by: philosophy background, society belief, and social demographic.
The first cause is caused of philosophy background of Chinese people. The famous legend Chinese philosopher, Confucius, who really became the fundamental philosophy in Chinese people, supported those customs. He taught about respecting other people especially social superior including fathers and husbands as leaders of the family also in social hierarchy and to the leaders, and ancestor worship. These main points became main point of his teachings. Confucius taught about those main points in order to getting personal virtue and paying respect to ancestors naturally lead to political stability. Confucius’s famous quotes is : ”To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.” (Confucius - China's most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, 551-479 BC.
Chinese people’s society belief is also the cause of Chinese funeral customs. Most of Chinese people do not have religion. From research data, 96% are non-religion people but still believe in God, 3% are Christian and the rest is atheist. They do believe in Taoism belief in their daily live. For Chinese people, the family who’s deceased must do funeral ceremony for their one’s deceased, because the funeral is the symbolize for saying the last goodbye to the body of deceased and give the last honor respect to the deceased. Taoists believe that death is not the end of life. When death occurs, they believed the deceased will continue life into another phase, the phase of the soul. That is why Taoists perform rituals for the dead. It uses to guide the wandering soul to its new world. The family and relatives of deceased have to offer prayers and acts of penance for the dead. The livings believe that the ancestor's soul is always watching over them. They also did this customs in order to avoid ill fortune and disaster because not doing the funeral ceremony properly.
The spreading of Chinese people also caused the Chinese funeral customs. Many Chinese people moved from their homeland China because they were so misery in their homeland. Many wars, not stabilize politics, didn’t have any secure in their homes. Finally they got one lifetime chance to move to brand new area and got to take the risks, life or death. In early 1800, so many Chinese people came to Indonesia by ship and now have been growing and spread all over Indonesia; most of them stay in Java Island. Total population of Chinese-heritage Indonesia people is about 6 million of 222 million total Indonesian people in 2008. Because of so many Chinese heritage lives in Indonesia and believe in Confucianism teachings, these Chinese-heritage people still keep doing funeral customs. There are two kinds of Chinese funeral: burying funeral or cremation funeral. Burying funeral is a way to funeral the deceased body by burry the body under the dirt inside a tomb, usually using Chinese special tomb called bong pai on the graveyard. In other hand, cremation funeral is a way to funeral the deceased body by burn the body into ashes, and the ashes will be keep in a jar.
Some causes caused the Chinese funeral customs which are the philosophy background, society belief, and social demographic. Those customs have positive effects and that’s why most Chinese people keep doing the customs. In other hand, there are some negative effects from this tradition, which are don’t have any choices but straight rules and really take a great cost and efforts.
From all those customs above, there are some negatives effects of it. The first effect is people don’t have any choices to do but people must to follow the straight tradition rules. The rule clearly says that we must respect social superior like our parents, ancestors, and older generation because without them we couldn’t be standing right here or was born. The process of funeral is quite complicated. When doing funeral for someone who is social superior, for example for our grandparents whose aged 80’s above, we must prepare the decoration for the ceremony in “red”, because it means that they lived with long life and reflected our feeling about it (sorrow of losing him/her and happiness of they lived with long life). At the beginning of the ceremony, to show their respect, children and grandchildren of the deceased must entering the ceremony by crawling and bowing nine times in front of the altar. The Chinese people must do the burying or cremation in good day which can be found in Chinese calendar year.
Another effect of Chinese funeral customs is the burying funeral also takes a great deal of cost and efforts. If the family picked burying process, the family must buy a graveyard first with a good location. The location of the grave must in a fixed land, not near in river or water which can make it wet, etc. For the coffin, it should be the special Chinese tomb (bong pai) and must order it first and take a time almost 2 weeks for the production. The shape of the bong pai must be in round shape with three humps. The centre of humps which is the grave stone must show the deceased’s name and also the family’s member names. Carving on the stone of bong pai is the way how to write the family member names. The gold color represents the name of family member who have already died and the red color represents the name of family who still alive. In front of the humps, there is a place like a table where people can give their tribute for the deceased like fruits, cakes, teas, etc. The head of the deceased is placed on the back of the humps. The single bong pai is for the unmarried people or single people and the double bong pai, which much bigger than the single bong pai, is for the marriage couple or husband and wife. If we look from the humps, where we look the tomb from the head first, the position for the marriage couple is the husband is on the right side and the wife is on the left side. Last but not least, the coffin must locate with good feng-shui, so the soul can rest in peace. If not, it could affect the family of the deceased. They could get ill fortune or disaster.
We can see that there are several causes and effects of the Chinese funeral customs. The causes of the tradition are: historical background, society belief, and social demographic. In other hand, the effects are: don’t have any choices but follow the complicated rules take a great cost and efforts of the burying funeral. We can reduce the effects by we should open minded but still basic on the customs. The customs is important to the livings and the death one, but these tradition are done are not as important as the meaning in first place as the how the way the funeral done. If burying funeral have so complicated rules, the family of deceased can do the funeral by the cremation way. The cremation funeral takes cheaper cost, take less effort, and also not take so many lands which can be use more useful to the livings. The art of making the bong pai is also become a historical culture art. This art is passed from generations to generations.
