Ty Clark
Asia – 2000-130R
May 2023
Peiping Funeral Procession Final project
The photo I chose is titled Peiping Funeral Procession. This photo was taken in Peiping, China now known as Beijing. The owner of this photograph is Albert E Kane and this photo was created anywhere from 1932-1937. I chose this photo because it looked very interesting and the traditional hearse and large line of well traditionally dressed men caught my eye.
The image is depicting a Chinese funeral march that is displayed with a line of Chinese men wearing white hats escorting a funeral cart to its final resting place. After researching traditional Chinese funerals during this era I learned that the white hats the men were wearing symbolized the dead in Chinese folklore. Another tradition was this march itself. In this tradition members of the family and community carry the hearse to the final resting place. This march starts at the dead relatives home, it is led by the relatives family then a large band after that the community and hearse. During the march there are often lots of gifts brought to the site, this could be food, jewelry, etc,. It is also very common in Chinese tradition for the family to accompany the lost relative in their final journey to the afterlife; this is evident in the large group traveling with the hearse. Another aspect of the photo I noticed was the shading of clothing. The people associated with the funeral are all in dark colored clothing. With more research I learned that the closest members of the families would wear all white garments and distant relatives, members of the communities would wear blue, green, black. With this knowledge this gives the image a completely different tone as in the photo you can only see individuals in the funeral wearing dark colors certainly not white. This must mean that the family are ahead of the hearse and the photo must have been taken late. A picture of distant relatives and members of the community. Knowing that the hearse traditionally is last, we can say for certain that this is an image of the back end of the march.
Another interesting aspect of this photograph is the name of the city in the picture Peiping. After researching I learned that before peiping the Ming dynasty originally named the city Beiping meaning northern peace or northern plains this was the capital for awhile until 1403 when the 3rd Ming emperor Yongle moved the capital south to current day Beijing and changed the capital name to Peiping, some debate the spelling and spell it Peking. All this eventually changed in 1950 when the new “official Romanized spelling system for use in transcribing Chinese words in other languages. In the new (and current) system the old CHI and KI were replaced with JI, and, Běijīng was spelled “Beijing,” and not “Peking””(UCSD). That is when the new capital name of Beijing was changed.
The photographer was an American Journalist named Albert E. Khan he is famous for his book Sabotage, This book is about famous instances of sabotage carried out in the United states by Japanese and German soldiers during the 2nd World War. I couldn’t find any information on why he was in China when the image was taken. I am going to assume that it was a journalist trip. This trip was before he published his book so maybe he was doing research for his book.
In conclusion, this Image is deeper than a group of Chinese people carrying a hearse down a street. This image opened my eyes to the tradition of Chinese funerals and to the cultural structures of their society. Through this picture I learned about the history of the capital of China and learned about a Famous American journalist.
