Afterlife Beliefs of Ancient China
What happens to you after you die? It is a question that has continually captivated human kind on a worldwide basis and over the past millenniums many vast ancient cultures have established complex belief systems as a way of explaining the indefinite mysteries that surround death and the hereafter. China is one of the most ancient civilizations on earth, and Chinese religion is one of the oldest forms of religion known, evidence of burial practices has been dated to as early as 5000 BCE.
For the Chinese culture the search for immortality and the belief in the ‘afterlife’ was a very prominent aspect of their lifestyle, and the preservation of their tombs and artefacts has led to a generation of theoretical insight that enables us to see how the philosophy of life after death was represented throughout this Ancient culture. Socrates had a belief that death can be one of two things, either it is ‘annihilation and the dead have no consciousness of anything’; or, like the ancient Chinese philosophy, ‘it is really a change; a migration of ones soul from one place to another’.