Dutch sinology
During De Groot’s first stay in China, he was but a young man. He had first studied Chinese in Leiden, where Dutch people were educated to serve as interpreters for the Chinese in the Dutch East Indies, the home of many overseas Chinese. The beginnings of Chinese studies in the Netherlands were peculiar: the main driving force behind it was not direct contact with China, but with the Chinese in Indonesia.
The Chinese in Indonesia had a special position in the colonial government. They served as middlemen, interacting with the local Indonesian population and the Dutch ruling class. The judicial treatment of Europeans was very different to the Indonesians and Chinese, and the Chinese formed an interesting group in between.
Interestingly enough, the importance of the Dutch East Indies resulted in a few remarkable developments, with the choice of language being of most interest. The Dutch interpreters did not learn Mandarin Chinese, the language spoken by the officials and the imperial family in the north of China. Instead, they learned Hokkien and Hakka, languages spoken by the Chinese diaspora in the Dutch East Indies.
Nevertheless, De Groot believed that there was room for improvement in the academic study of China. He wrote to the Dutch government that after the short lived English occupation of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1815, the Dutch government turned to the concept of ‘knowledge is power’ and thus should give their students of sinology more time to study the customs of the Chinese.
In 1885, De Groot was granted a three-year period of study in China. Between 1886 and 1890, he studied Chinese customs. Through his research, De Groot noticed the importance of hair in mourning practices.
(...)Both in ancient and modern times, the treatment of the hair during the period of mourning was in China subject to certain rules. We have now to direct the reader’s attention to the details of this matter.
Now-a-days, in a case of death, the principal mourners of the male sex remove the braiding threads from their cues when they go out into the street to receive the empty coffin, and also during the burial, on both of which occasions they wear also the very deepest mourning attire. The long hair, quite dishevelled, flows down over the back in disorder. After the burial the cue is always braided up, even on occasions when the sack-cloth is put on; but the threads used may not be of silk until the end of twenty-seven months. They are of white linen or cotton during the first year, and of blue during the second.