EVEN IN DEATH, DENG BUCKS DEEP TRADITIONS.

Byline: Seth Faison The New York Times

In a country that savors ceremony and invests great symbolism in public events, China's formal farewell to its paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, is a big deal.

So it attracted a fair amount of attention, the day after Deng died last week, when authorities announced that he would be cremated before the memorial service is held Tuesday. That precludes the usual practice of displaying the deceased in a bed of flowers, to be circled by those who come to say a final goodbye.

Even more surprising, the announcement specified that the Deng family wanted to respect the patriarch's wishes that his corneas be donated to an eye bank and body parts offered for medical research.

That may have shocked the Confucian faithful, who hold that the body should remain intact, even after death.

Combining cremation and organ donation was a double attack on the old way of doing things, which was exactly how the authorities wanted to make it look: Deng, known for his bold strokes in life, would be fighting tradition in the name of selflessness and science, even in death.

It worked, at least for some people.

``Deng is setting an example with his own action and challenging old customs,'' Li Weiye said. As director of ophthalmology and the cornea bank at Xiehe Hospital in Beijing, he is obviously interested in the example.

``When I heard that he is donating his corneas and body,'' he said, ``I felt he really is a great man.''

In a society where information is controlled and conspiracy theories are rife, however, the decision to cremate Deng's body - before it could be publicly seen - has fed suspicion that he actually died some time ago.

Deng had not appeared in public for three years before he died Wednesday night, assuming that the official time of death was correct.

``It's like, can't see the person when he's alive, and can't see the body when he's dead?'' said a taxi driver in Beijing. ``For a long time there were no reports on him, no appearance on TV. And now suddenly we are told he is dead? It's hard to judge.''

China's Communist leaders have been trying to eradicate traditions they deem superstitious, but with only mixed success. So it is understandable that cremation is still met with suspicion.

In 1956, Mao Tse-tung called on all Chinese to forgo traditional burials for cremation - sensible in a nation with so many people and not enough land - and he, Prime Minister Chou En-lai and Deng all pledged that they themselves would be cremated.

Of course, Mao himself lived outside the rules that governed ordinary senior leaders, and was later embalmed and put on display in a glass sarcophagus that rests in Tiananmen Square, where tens of thousands of people see him each week.

And only about 30 percent of the 7 million people who died in China last year were cremated, though the percentage is higher in large cities and reached 95 percent in Beijing.

Even fewer make organ donations, although human rights groups have charged that organs are removed from death-row prisoners for medical transplants. Li said his hospital's cornea bank, prepared so that transplants can be made to needy patients, had not done very well because Chinese tradition works against making such gifts.

``In China, not only corneas, but also other organs, are all in short supply,'' Li said.

Part of the problem lies beyond the Confucian bias against dismemberment.

Because Chinese society is so grounded in personal relations with family and close friends, and highly mistrustful of strangers, the idea of voluntarily donating one's body to be used by a person one will never know is anathema to many Chinese.

But not, at least, to Deng.

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Photo

PHOTO Hu Kehai throws white confetti, the Chinese color of mourning, on a tree in front of Deng Xiaoping's old home in Sichuan province.

Associated Press