Why did the Chinese return their friends and family to China for burial as noted in the book, On Gold Mountain?

The Chinese believed that the only pathway to the spirit world was through the soil of China. In Dimtao, proper burial customs were followed, such as the dying body placed by a door “so that his or her free spirit might find free air” (117). Wind and water were tested at possible burial sites for signs the dead could use these currents to help the living, and tables of food were set for the dead and other spirits. While many of these burial practices could not be kept in Los Angeles—there was only one cemetery that allowed burial of Chinese—the custom of sending the bones back to China was kept. This required the digging up of the bones, and, as See notes, “the white press embellished the more gruesome aspects of this custom, reporting on the rotting human flesh, the scraping clean of fleshy remnants, the open and smelly coffins, and queues left lying about the gravesites with bits of scalp still attached” (64). The alternative of staying in the soil at Los Angeles, for Chinese, was akin to dooming the spirit. Even in the constant flux of position in the transcontinental railroad work, the burial sites were noted so the bones could be dug up and sent back to China for a proper burial.