Research on Mortuary Practices in Han Dynasty of China From the Perspective of ‘Rites of Passage’: Death, Identity Transformation and the Reconstruction of Social Order

Death signifies not only the end of life but also a disruption of an individual's established identities, social relationships, and continuity of social life. This study examines Han Chinese mortuary practices through the lens of rites of passage, exploring how death was transformed into a socially recognized event through ritual and how mortuary practices responded to changes in identity, emotion, and social relationships brought about by death. The findings show that Han mortuary rituals did not merely serve to dispose of the deceased but transformed biological death into a process of social repositioning through a series of ritualized practices. Mourning dress embodied both kinship relations and the expression of grief, transforming the bereaved from ordinary family members into mourners with specific ritual identities. Tombs and grave goods, while spatially separating the living from the dead, preserved and reconstructed the deceased's social identity, facilitating the gradual transformation of the deceased from a "dead person" into an individual incorporated into the ancestral realm. Han Chinese mortuary practices thus reveal the coexistence of "separation" and "continuity": although death ended the bodily co-presence of the living and the dead, it did not simply terminate their social relationship. In this sense, Han mortuary practices were not only institutional expressions of social order but also important cultural mechanisms for negotiating death and grief, transforming identities, and sustaining relationships between the living and the dead.