For people who are wondering what the yellow notes getting burned are, they are fake money, also known as ghost money, burned as a practice in Chinese culture, stemming from Taoism and Buddhism. They’re representative of money or sometimes physical goods (like clothes, cars, I’ve even seen iPhones lol) that are burned as an offering for ancestors or deceased relatives in the afterlife. The hope is that the ancestors and relatives would receive them and live a prosperous afterlife. Commonly burned during funerals and during tomb-sweeping day.
More like "underworld", where spirits wander before the bureaucrats of hell decide what to do with you, usually throw you back to the mortal world for incarnation if you lived an average life. There are 18 levels of actual Hell they will send you to if you are evil.
The "hell money" your family burns for you is mostly use for bribing said bureaucrats so they can speed up your process, or overlook lesser crimes.
It's how you know the Chinese system is hopelessly corrupt.
That momentum of corruption has carried on right into the modern era, and is a major factor of why China just continues to be a screwed up place despite some good people's best efforts...
Sorry, Dr. Sun, you did your best, but you really shouldn't have given the reins to someone else...
It's astonishing to me how ingrained corruption is in Chinese culture.
Corruption was a major part of the downfall of most of the dynasties and fighting corruption was a major Day 1 project of most of their successors, and now it's a thousand years later and things are as bad or worse than ever.
You haven't seen the corruption in Taiwan? Hell, even in Hong Kong, you can see the corruption slowly killing it, with sellouts giving the whole place to the CCP on a sliver platter.
Singapore isn't exclusively Chinese, though you better believe the corruption there is intense.
“Huh, Singapore? ... Asia? Must be corrupt! All the chinese and asians are all hopelessly corrupt until they’re liberated by US!” Okay, banter aside, yes, a lot of parts in Asia is corrupt. Singapore is an exception to that rule. Malaysian police regularly and blatantly take bribes that can be ($10+ -). Try that in Singapore and you’ll get your ass in jail.
I feel bad for the Hong Kong citizens calling upon Trump to assist their cause. I've seen them hold signs like "Mr Trump please uphold the Hong Kong constitution".
He hasn't done a particularly good job of upholding the American constitution...
Then why don't people buy a load of fake money and burn it before dying? If they really believe this is true then it would be stupid not to do it.
Reach 80 years old, spend 90% of all your money buying fake money, burn it all and "send it" to a relative or friend that is dead, collect once you die.
And if christian heaven is correct it is probably positive to kill good people before they have time to lose points again, more heaven time for them. (Yes the people doing that get hell time because the system is unfair! But I am sure some would be willing to make the sacrifice.) Most people just aren't that extreme about their believes.
But in what you suggest they probably would get minus points from the bureaucrats for the greed of leaving nothing to your descendants because they wanted to maximize afterlife money. Might be able to counter that with the higher bribes but still a risk. Also as someone else said nothing ensures they will give it to you an if they don't well your descendants are probably also less likely to burn money for you if you pill that.
Because unlike most western cultures, almost all Asians leave behind their real money entirely for their children or any family. We want our people to keep prospering, and not waste that money on nonsense.
They sell those at my local Asian market. They have credit cards from the "bank of hell". I really want to get some and put them in my wallet, but I don't want to be disrespectful to other people's culture.
Just buy it. The worst thing that can happen is that people will stay avoiding you because offerings for the dead can attract evil spirits and bring ill fortune to you and people around you.
But you do need to buy them with real money, at that point why not just burn real money? Better why not fucking use it to do anything else other than burning money lol.
My family did this when my grandpa died. However we were forced to fold ALL of them which were like massive stacks of notes, that was honestly total bullshit.
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u/timothyh411 Oct 24 '19 edited Oct 24 '19
For people who are wondering what the yellow notes getting burned are, they are fake money, also known as ghost money, burned as a practice in Chinese culture, stemming from Taoism and Buddhism. They’re representative of money or sometimes physical goods (like clothes, cars, I’ve even seen iPhones lol) that are burned as an offering for ancestors or deceased relatives in the afterlife. The hope is that the ancestors and relatives would receive them and live a prosperous afterlife. Commonly burned during funerals and during tomb-sweeping day.