Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. China News .




SINO DAILY
Bonfire of the vanities? Chinese offerings go up in smoke
By Tom HANCOCK
Mijiawu, China (AFP) April 5, 2015


Gleaming gold watches and smartphones are piled high in a ramshackle Chinese farmhouse -- all replicas made of paper and designed to be incinerated, as 21st-century consumerism transforms the age-old market in offerings to ancestors.

"Our work is serving the dead," said Pu Shuzhen, as female workers with glue guns folded paper into imitations of Louis Vuitton handbags and iPhones in her dirt-floored house turned workshop.

China celebrates "Tomb Sweeping Festival" on Sunday, when millions burn paper offerings to their ancestors in a tradition believed to date back thousands of years.

Pu's workshop is one of hundreds hidden inside crumbling courtyards in Hebei, a province bordering Beijing which local farmers have transformed into the centre of the country's funeral products industry.

"Before we were growing corn and potatoes. It was tough," Pu said. "The money from this is better than farming."

Mahjong tables, jewel boxes and cigarettes sell well, she said. Other items include imitation house ownership certificates and more practical goods such as toothpaste, toothbrushes and shoes.

"They are just the same as living people use," she said. "It was like that in ancient times too. It's a tradition handed down from our ancestors."

Offerings to the dead have been found at some of China's oldest grave sites.

"The products express an emotion: we are living well, and we hope our ancestors can live just as well in their world," said factory owner Zhang Guilai, as a vast press roared in the background pressing out paper houses.

- Grave issues -

Beijing declared tomb sweeping festival -- just one of many traditional dates for honouring ancestors -- a national holiday in 2007.

The move was a marked contrast to Mao Zedong's rule when the officially atheist Communist party condemned tomb offerings as feudal, graves were desecrated and traditions driven underground.

"During Mao Zedong's time it was all about opposing superstition... and we would have to give offerings in secret," said Pu's husband, Zhao Yansheng. "But now it's a national holiday... and we can celebrate openly."

Even so, official attitudes are still sometimes ambivalent.

China's civil affairs ministry this year vowed on its website to step up controls on "burning paper money, offerings and other uncivilised tomb sweeping behaviour", while also "preventing the use of vulgar and superstitious grave offerings".

State media have also blamed burnt offerings for adding to chronic air pollution.

The ministry did not define what it considered "vulgar" and did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.

But at an open air market on a mud-soaked road in Mijiawu, vendors displayed paper Ferraris and female mistresses.

Officials in the northern city of Changchun -- which hands out fines for burning offerings in public places -- last month confiscated seven vehicle-loads of "feudal and superstitious objects", including paper cattle and horses, reports said.

"It's clear to see that people are adding commercial elements -- such as paper houses, sports cars and mistresses -- into these traditions, and some people would consider that vulgar," Yang Genlai, an academic affiliated with the civil affairs ministry told AFP.

He added: "Personally I think any kind of object which can express respect towards ancestors can be reasonable. Burning iPhones is a reflection of how things are today."

- Cashing in -

Authorities have other reasons to be suspicious of paper offerings.

At the Mijiawu market, seller Meng Weikai said: "Everything that living people have, there are paper replicas to be burned.

"In the past, you just burned some plain white paper. Now we burn notes which look more and more like real money, we even have US dollars."

But they are sometimes misused for earthly purposes. Police in southern China reportedly held four people in February for attempting to pay back a loan with "spirit money", and in January police in Hebei arrested a suspect who had used such bills to buy lottery tickets worth 90,000 yuan.

Workers at one small imitation money workshop ushered AFP reporters away as fresh red notes lay drying on rusty metal printing presses.

"It is hard for ordinary people to tell the 'spirit money' apart from real money... this money has seriously damaged the image of the renminbi," the state-run Xianyang Daily cited a banking official as saying last year.

At the Sanyuancun market in Beijing bundles of cash sell for three to five yuan ($0.5-$0.8) apiece. "People want to tell the ancestors that the family still has descendants," said vendor Liu Li.

"This is a 50 billion yuan note, this one is 10 million," she added. "The afterlife has inflation as well, that's why you have to burn big denominations. I've also got foreign notes here -- the dead need to go abroad too."


Thanks for being here;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5 Billed Monthly


paypal only


.


Related Links
China News from SinoDaily.com






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle




Memory Foam Mattress Review
Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News





SINO DAILY
Fashion victim: Chinese designers face struggle
Beijing (AFP) April 3, 2015
A parade of unknowns on the catwalks of Beijing Fashion Week highlights the challenges facing Chinese designers trying to break into an industry dominated by foreign brands: high production costs, excessive retail prices, and customers who still favour Western labels. Not a single international fashion house exhibited at the show, much of which took place in a former factory building in the ... read more


SINO DAILY
When will Kazakhstan finally be allowed into the WTO?

Hard money, soft standards? Tough questions for China's new bank

US ready to accept China-led infrastructure bank: Lew

Taiwan to apply to join China-led infrastructure bank

SINO DAILY
Diversity prevents resistance

Taxi drivers hospitalised after Beijing pesticide protest: police

Illegal cocoa farms threaten Ivory Coast primates

Photosynthesis hack needed to feed the world by 2050

SINO DAILY
Pygmies demand end to discrimination in DR Congo

Nigerian president quits voting station after tech glitch

Regional troops retake Nigerian town from Boko Haram

Nigerian army chief vows crackdown on election unrest

SINO DAILY
Nissan pledges self-driving cars in Japan in 2016

Toyota to build new plants in China, Mexico: media

Tesla reports 'record' quarter for auto sales

Driverless Cars Poised To Transform Automotive Industry

SINO DAILY
Bulgaria drops $4bn Westinghouse nuclear deal

Atomic Experts to Visit Fukushima in April to Check Contaminated Water

Japan's NRA confirms fault line under nuclear reactor on west coast active

Jordan, Russia ink deal on nuclear reactor plant

SINO DAILY
S. Korea creates cyber-security post to counter North's threat

China suspected as software site GitHub hit by attack

Tech firms, activists renew surveillance reform push

Beijing behind Internet security violation: group

SINO DAILY
Japan denies plan to join China-led development bank

Deadly Ukraine rocket strike another shot in propaganda war

Russia continues Asian pivot

Sri Lanka says no deal to restart Chinese port project

SINO DAILY
Cornell deploys dual ZephIR lidars for more accurate turbulence study

U.S. to fund bigger wind turbine blades

Gamesa and AREVA create the joint-venture Adwen

Time ripe for Atlantic wind, advocates say




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement All images and articles appearing on Space Media Network have been edited or digitally altered in some way. Any requests to remove copyright material will be acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner. Any attempt to extort money from Space Media Network will be ignored and reported to Australian Law Enforcement Agencies as a potential case of financial fraud involving the use of a telephonic carriage device or postal service.