Grandmaster's Notes: Parakeet

On Funeral Rites Rich families spend fortunes on elaborate funerals and three years of mourning to show filial piety. Poor families, struggling just to survive, can't afford a burial plot or coffin. They wrap their dead in straw and burn them, mourning just three days. People say the rich know proper respect, while the poor lack filial love. But does having no money mean you don't love your parents? Is this the "propriety" that man Kong preaches? Does he truly not realize that ten thousand strings of cash are but a feather to the wealthy and that a straw mat and brief mourning are everything to the poor? Confucian funeral customs are so complex that they burden the living more than honor the dead. An utter absurdity!