Page:Ports of the world - Canton (1920).djvu/46



OMBINING temple, cemetery, and morgue, the "City of Death." or "The City of the Dead," as it is variously known in Canton, is one of the strangest of the many strange places in this amazing capital of the province of Kwangtung, China.

There are scores and sometimes hundreds of dead bodies in coffins placed in stalls arranged along narrow aisles, which, in turn, are flanked by altars; banners inscribed with Chinese diameters; paper creations of many sizes and shapes, coated with gilt; porcelain jars, and masses of flowers whose heavy odor makes the air seem sickish sweet.

Some of the bodies have been in the "City of Death" for weeks, some for months, and some even for years. The sojourn of the dead in this gruesome place is determined, evidently, of the wealth of the respective relatives or friends who are called upon by priests and sorcerers to pay for the privilege of keeping the bodies in the stalls of the "City of Death."

The time for removal of the bodies from the "City of Death" is decided upon by the priests after solemn consultations. The time arrives, usually, when either the purse or the patience of the dead person's family is exhausted. One traveler relates that he viewed a coffin containing a mandarin's body which had been placed in one of the stalls immediately after death seven years before and had since remained there in charge of the Chinese priests.

There is no more morbid, unnatural place in the world than the "City of Death" in Canton, unless it be the catacombs under Paris, where the bodies of six millions of people are buried; or the ghoulish room in the European church, so graphically described by Mark Twain, where the walls are decorated with skulls and delicate frescoes made from human finger bones and where niches in the walls are occupied by mummified bodies of men long dead.

Probably the bodies of the dead would not remain in this combination of temple, morgue, and cemetery in Canton for so long, if some arrangements were made