The Politics of Mourning in Early China
After the death, the first thing that was done was the calling back of the soul of the dead, in which they would climb on top of a building and face north, holding the clothes of the deceased and calling their name. After this, there was a three day period during which corpse would be prepared. The chief mourner (the son of the deceased) was expected to be prostrate with grief. After this the mourners would wear mourning clothing for a variable amount of time, officially three years, yet often less. They were supposed to live beside the tomb and be isolated from society, eating gruel, abstaining from alcohol and sex.
If the deceased were very important, courtiers and high ranking people would pay their respects, and give gifts after the encoffining of the body. It might take some time to put the coffin in the tomb, because a tomb needed to be constructed, and people from far off places might come. Sometimes a stele, with an inscription, might be erected outside of the tomb.
Some of the rhetoric in the eulogies and funerary steles may imply that some did not believe in the afterlife. (Death as the "pervasive darkness," "sinking into great obscurity."
Aside: There were jesters at imperial courts in ancient China, for example, Dongfang Shuo.
One source mentioned is Ying Shao's Fengsu Tongyi, which is about many things, but contains a fair amount of gossip and hatin'. Ying would complain about people who did not mourn enough, or were too calm ("when facing internal devastation, one is calm on the outside; this is to conceal forcefully the truth of one's feelings. It is the height of falseness.") He had many complaints in general, some of which the author characterizes as "mean-spirited."
Aside: "The Eastern Han court was divided between the inner court, which included the emperor and eunuchs, and the outer court, composed of the consort clans."
Oddly, there are more accounts of men mourning only their mothers than accounts of men mourning only their fathers. The author speculates on this as possibly expressing the conflict between official service and personal feeling.
There's an extensive part in the book about funeral steles. "Han eulogists saw no failure too dismal to be written up as a success or a sign of spiritual purity." Someone's indistinguished career could be spun as a form of virtuous seclusion.
