Stealing Lifespan

In the countryside, elders place great importance on celebrating longevity at the right time: seventy is a minor birthday, eighty a major one, and anything beyond that is considered a gift from the heavens. There are several taboos surrounding these feasts.

At seventy, guests must not take anything from the host—not a single bowl or chopstick. If anyone does, it’s a grave offense, enough to drive families to dig up ancestral graves in retaliation. At eighty, however, the opposite is true: the more you take—rice bowls, wine cups—the happier the host will be. At funerals for elders who die at an old age, the family will provide even more bowls and chopsticks for people to “steal.” Customs differ between the north and south, but the meaning remains largely the same.

They call it “stealing longevity.”

By taking the longevity of an elder who lived to a ripe old age, one’s own family could hope for good fortune and long life. I’ve stolen quite a few longevity bowls over the years; even now, I still eat from a vintage enamel bowl I took when the village chief’s father celebrated his eightieth birthday.

The story began when the village chief’s father was celebrating his hundredth birthday—the first time I truly witnessed the act of stealing longevity.

But to return to the main point: the longevity banquet is held at eighty, rarely at ninety; for most, eighty marks their last celebration, and few live to see a hundred. The chief’s father was exceptionally long-lived. People came to celebrate from our village and several neighboring ones, and on the d