冥婚 mínghūn (afterlife marriage) [lj tag fixed. sigh I wish I still had a preview function :( ]

[koalathebear]

I started watching the Bones episode The Bride in the River and they touched on a strange Chinese custom that I had never heard of before - but which rather grossed me out at the same time it intrigued me. I haven't finished watching the episode yet but had to look it up

Comments

[ofparsnip]

I guess the idea of that practice doesn't make me sick so much as just, very sad. I can't imagine the grief of a parent losing a child to begin with, and then to add on the grief that the child died "incomplete" and might be incomplete and/or unhappy eternally? I can't imagine the magnitude of that grief on a very visceral level. (My mind doesn't seem to want to process the fact that these are corpses, being sold to be buried together, nor the sickening implication that sometimes these daughters might be considered to be worth more dead than alive...)

[koalathebear]

In the post on the episode itself, I posted about how I asked a colleague about the issue. What was hilarious is that she immediately called her mother to ask her about it in terms of rural villages. According to her, although the practice still exists, it is increasingly becoming more symbolic in nature and action rather than actually moving the human remains.

[greyeyedpixie]

Very unusual...I've never heard of anything like that before~

[koalathebear]

I hadn't either, but then I don't know much :P

[koalathebear]

I agree. I found it very interesting - but kind of spooooky.

[astridv]

I had never heard of that custom either... very interesting.

Gotta say, this is the first time a body on 'Bones' really grossed me out. Not even the infamous bathtub from last season managed to do that.

[koalathebear]

The body in the bath tub did get me I'm afraid. I was deeply grossed out by the Oozey Person Soup. *shudders* What compensated for that was the banter and jokiness around it. With this episode, the mystery of the week was soooooooo sad that even the banter couldn't quite distract me from the grossness :D But enough of that, I'll do my proper episode post in a moment. Without any images of the body. *shudder*

[amaliestar]

I've heard of that before and also of the custom in feudal times (hopefully well and truly died out now although who knows...) of women who were still alive being married to dead men - thus living their entire lives as childless widows and thus outcasts - all for the sake of the spirit of a dead man.

[koalathebear]

Ewww, that sounds like the stuff of ghost movies. *shudder*