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THE original intention of these notes on the Birth, Marriage, and Death Rites of the Chinese, was to limit the description to those in force in the Canton province.
It has, however, been found by experience that there exists no hard and fast rule as to their different observance in each province. There are no doubt some which are distinctly peculiar to a certain part of the country, but others are tolerably universal. In addition to this, the customs in force in a province vary to a great extent according to the district under observation, and a ceremony well-known in Canton would possibly be either ignored or denied by a resident in the north of the province. Even in the same town the practices are varied, the more superstitious naturally having the most ceremonies, and vice versa.
From these reasons it has been found to be impracticable to disentangle from the mass of information given by writers in the China Review, the Chinese Recorder, and other, periodicals, as well as in isolated publications, those customs which may be considered to belong specially to the Canton province; and the course pursued in these notes will therefore be to take the account of their ceremonies as given by natives of the province as a centre round which may be grouped such information as has been obtained from the previous
