Chinese Culture - #3

View Chinese Culture - #1 for an explanation of this series.

Chinese Tradition: If someone in your household dies, you cannot visit another home or have company over for 7 weeks.

I'm not exactly sure where the '7 weeks' duration comes from. If I find out, I'll update this post. But as for not having visitors or visiting another home, this appears to originate as a voluntary quarantine.  Someone in your home dies, especially in ancient times, you would not necessarily know from what. If it was contagious, the best way to stop the spread would be to quarantine the household away from everyone else. Today, this does not mean you can't go to work or to the store to buy things, but you cannot socialize until the 7 weeks are up. Then you can be sure you wouldn't be spreading whatever it was to others.

Often times, like with the H1N1 and Bird Flu outbreaks we see here, I wish we had a tradition like that. I see sick people, very sick people, all the time out eating in restaurants, coughing and hacking on airplanes, shopping, etc. Seriously. Can't it wait? Or can't you ask someone else to do your shopping just that once?