Jiao wei deng, the lamp at the feet
The moment someone stops breathing a bean-oil lamp is lit at the feet, a bowl of rice beside it called the dark meal, and the lamp must not go out.
Pronunciation jiǎo wěi dēng｜Rites of life｜One entry in the Chaoshan glossary
What it means
When the breath stops the body is laid out on a bier and a bean-oil lamp is lit at the feet: the lamp at the feet. Beside it goes a bowl of rice, called the dark meal. The lamp is not there to light a road but simply not to go out — putting it out is the worst of the old prohibitions, and someone must sit up all night to keep it filled.
The watcher sits by that lamp through the night, incense unbroken and lamp unextinguished, until the body is coffined.
When you see it
From the death to the coffining, without a break. After the coffining the lamp is moved in front of the spirit tablet and kept there with the censer.
Words easily confused
It belongs with the ever-burning lamp before the tablet, only in a different place: one at the feet of the body, one before the tablet. It is not the water lantern of the seventh-month rites, which lights the way for those with no one to sacrifice to them.
Custom in Chaoshan funerals; this page describes only, and neither endorses superstition nor urges anyone to follow it.
Read next: Funeral custom: from reporting the death to the raising of the tablet.
See also: Rites of life: the five thresholds side by side.
Same group: reporting to the earth god, assuming mourning dress.
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Last revised: 4 November 2026