Why It Is Necessary to Study Suicide in Chinese Culture

While drafting new chapters for my Brief History of China, cases of suicide kept appearing in the most diverse circumstances. Ministers and wives who allowed themselves to be buried alive to accompany kings to the next world; generals who took their own lives to avoid the humiliation of defeat; officials who did so to show the sincerity of their political convictions; Buddhist monks who immolated themselves as an ultimate sacrifice, freeing themselves from the body that prevented them from reaching nirvana; women who killed themselves in fear of being raped during military campaigns; widows who ended their lives rather than remarry; and desperate citizens—labeled political enemies—who committed suicide amid the violence that followed the establishment of the communist regime in the twentieth century. Most of these stories reflect traditional Chinese culture and show that the motives, the social perception, the settings, and even the methods of suicide were deeply shaped by this country’s history.

To my surprise, when I continued researching out of curiosity, I found no comprehensive work on the subject. Only a handful of books and academic studies have been dedicated to widow suicides during the last dynasty or to the self-immolation of Buddhist monks in medieval China, but none describe and analyze suicide across the broad spectrum of Chinese history and culture. There are studies emphasizing its importance in religion, history, and culture, exploring the meaning of life and death in different historical periods and under various philosophical or religious systems, but none that bring all this information together in a single volume. Over a century ago, J.J. Matignon (1936:61), who devoted much of his book to suicide, already noted: “One could write a considerable volume on suicide in China, for there is probably no country where this crime is more frequent. It is found in all classes and at all ages.”

Materials related to the study of suicide also provide alternative views of key concepts in Chinese thought or highlight details usually overlooked. Through them we better understand loyalty to the sovereign or to one’s husband, ritual sacrifices for rain, violent death as a path to deification, the drama of gender-based violence, Daoist techniques of self-destruction, and Buddhist practices of self-immolation. Above all, they shed light on the atmosphere that led millions to sacrifice their own lives for their ideals, for the good of the people, to preserve a good name, or to escape suffering.

Studying suicide in China is a complex task, covering nearly 4,000 years and enormously varied situations. Yet it is also a fascinating process, offering the researcher (and the reader) fresh and thought-provoking interpretations of history and society, new angles from which to understand religion, and overlooked data that open new windows onto the lives of those who shaped history. Each facet of suicide raises more questions than answers, creating new fields for cultural inquiry. For this reason, my aim in this book has been to place historical events related to suicide within the religious and cultural frameworks that help explain them, giving readers the tools to understand why people took their own lives in different historical and social contexts. But books have a life of their own and sometimes chart their own course. This is one such case, and I could not ignore the evidence presented by my own research: it became necessary to explain how Chinese attitudes toward suicide became one of the decisive factors in the fall of the Qing dynasty—and with it the imperial system.

Historians, as well as specialists in religion and society, will find in the study of suicide new perspectives from which to examine their subjects, illuminating archaeology, art, literature, and ritual life, all of which were shaped by these acts. Scholars of Chinese religions already know that violent death—whether in war or through suicide—was central to the creation of dangerous spirits or ghosts who, unlike deceased family members who become protective ancestors, roam the world and can bring disaster to the living. The struggle against these spirits is at the heart of Chinese religious life.

If this topic interests you, I recommend my book The Culture of Suicide in China and the Fall of the Imperial Regime (La cultura del suicidio en China y la caída del régimen imperial)