Every Qingming Festival, Guangzhou citizen Ye Jialiang's family burns paper money twice.
Once he went to the cemetery to visit the grave, and under the government's "civilized tomb sweeping" initiative, he and his family laid flowers in front of the graves of their relatives, and then returned to their neighborhood to burn paper money in a bucket. Another time is directly at home, the kitchen must turn on the range hood - every year someone burns paper money in the corridor of the community, generating smoke and triggering the neighbors to call the police.
Burning paper has gradually become a guerrilla-like existence in the city. On festivals such as Qingming Festival and Zhongyuan Festival, when night falls, at crossroads and along rivers and rivers, there are often people guarding a flickering fire, and continue to throw paper money into it. The next morning, if pedestrians pay attention, they will see black and dark burning marks and circles poured with white wine on the side of the road, in the corner of flower beds, and on the ground by the river.
On festivals such as Qingming Festival and Zhongyuan Festival, many cities will post slogans and notices prohibiting open smoke and fire, and civilized sacrifices. Even so, there are still quite a few people who burn paper in the city.
On Qingming Day in 2022, due to the need to prevent and control the new crown epidemic, cemeteries in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province were closed, and some citizens turned to city streets and suburbs to burn paper to worship. On the afternoon of March 28, 2022, in Bali Village, Liuhe District, local villagers set fire to the surrounding weeds because of burning paper from the grave. In addition, in many communities in Nanjing, there have also been a large number of citizens burning paper money to express their condolences.
It's just that in big cities, not everyone has a local identity like Ye Jialiang. The fast-paced life and distant homeland broke the custom of tomb-sweeping sacrifices that had been practiced for many years. Guangxiao Road in front of Guangxiao Temple in Guangzhou is a famous local street to buy folk paper money goods, paper money gift bags are interspersed with red lanterns, and the owner often sits in front of the shop and folds tin foil into ingots. People can ask their bosses to burn a paper package for their deceased relatives for more than 30 yuan. One shopkeeper told us that most of the people who burned it were outsiders. Wandering in a foreign land, unable to go home to personally pay homage, substitute burning became a way for them to express their concern to their deceased relatives in another country.
Throughout the year, the shops near Kohyo Temple are stuffed with paper ties and paper money. Stacked in the shape of a lotus flower, these paper ties that keep pace with the times build a modern life of affluence: villas and luxury cars hang in front of the door, paper suits are assembled with watches and mobile phones, squarely folded into a box, next to lobster and hot pot, as well as a variety of designer shoes and bags.
In Mexico's Chinatown, Pan Weilin, a scholar at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, has also seen China's underworld coins. Many shops in Chinatown have altars of sacrifices, and in front of them, they offer Hades coins and rice, which symbolize the transformation of life and death and symbolize a good harvest, accompanied by marigolds, which are common in the area. "In different lifestyles and cultural environments, you can see some formal changes in the traditional Chinese custom of burning paper, but the core of it is still there." Pan Weilin said.
She lives in Shanghai, and when she was a child, her family followed the custom of burning paper. This silver paper money is made of extremely thin tin sheets framed on bamboo paper, and once became a characteristic industry in Hangzhou, Ningbo and Shaoxing. Pan Weilin's doctoral thesis in the Department of History of Fudan University, "Ritual Consumption and Local Change: The Material Culture History of Tin Foil in Jiangsu and Zhejiang", traces and discusses the tin foil culture in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and for thousands of years, the three religions of Confucianism and Buddhism have been unable to investigate the origin of burning paper, so they have to rationalize it and incorporate it into daily religious ceremonies. During the Republican period, paper burning was characterized as a superstitious and extravagant and wasteful activity, and the development of the tin foil industry was curbed by increasing taxes, trying to guide the people to abandon the custom of burning paper through punishment, but it was not effective, and it was never completely eliminated.
▲Knotted tin foil Photo/ "Good Friends", No. 171, 1941, p. 31
American cultural anthropologist Bai Hua once explained in "Burning Money: The Material Spirit in the Chinese Living World" (hereinafter referred to as "Burning Money") -
These paper money "cut" from the rolling paper rolls, gathered into piles, thick smoke, layers of ashes, accompanied by choking smoke and other environmental pollutants, burning paper is identified as a serious fire hazard, a parody and mockery of virtue and reason, an expression of pure and pious values, an entertaining description, a divine comedy of subsistence labor, a normative ritual about the original values of human nature and the nature of reality, a way of communicating with the gods, a way to protect life and pass on the torch, A continuous effort to realize eternal wishes, an effort to give material weight to frivolous greetings and vows, a contribution to realize the essence of life through obligations, a sustenance to express and relieve psychological wounds such as regret, regret and sadness, burning paper teaches us the knowledge of value, which ultimately transforms worldly values (exchange value, use value, labor value) into real value, spiritual value and human value.
Today, the daily etiquette of burning paper is still changing, and we have a dialogue with Pan Weilin on how to understand the existence of burning paper in modern society:
▲Pan Weilin Photo/provided by interviewee
Help ancestors get along with each other
Southern People Weekly: In the process of modernization, the occasions and forms of paper-burning activities have undergone a lot of changes, specifically, how is it recognized at present?
Pan Weilin: Academics are othered to a certain extent. It used to be an organic part of daily life, but now it has become the antithesis of daily life, not one thing to do at a certain point in time, but to read or watch how others are doing it, stripping it from life and alienating it. For example, there are special researchers who collect and study paper-burning activities in a professional way, and then organize it into a traditional folk knowledge that is opposed to modern times, make a cultural specimen, write it in a book, or put it in public education scenes and local tourism projects to display.
The second point is more important, in the social governance promoted by the state, from the perspective of public health and the environment, burning paper money is problematized, for example, burning paper to draw a circle on the ground, burning will produce air pollution and garbage.
In the past, it was not intended to be shown to the public, it was supposed to be a private sexual activity. However, due to the change in the urban living environment, some private religious activities have become visible, which will affect the mentality of those engaged in this activity, will consider whether it will offend the interests of others, and become more careful, wanting to end this ceremony as soon as possible.
Southern People Weekly: Do you still have the habit of burning paper at home now?
Pan Weilin: Our family is in Shanghai's Putuo District, which used to be a suburb of Shanghai, and the family has lived together for generations. Burning paper is a family act. Every time my grandfather's death day or the winter solstice, all the children in the family have to return. From noon, cook 8 dishes and set the table. Go to the door to insert incense, and there is a person who reads and goes to the door to come back for the reunion dinner. The incense cannot be broken during the whole meal. When the banquet is over, the children and grandchildren of the family will kneel three times and take out the original folded tin foil and burn it at the door, meaning that they are leaving, and let them bring some money back.
Burning is also exquisite. Draw a circle on the ground in front of the house, the money in the circle is for the ancestors in the family, and some should be sprinkled outside the circle, which is for the neighbors of the deceased and the unworshiped wild ghosts, so that it can help the ancestors to harmonize their interpersonal relationships in another world and eliminate some unnecessary troubles.
Later, the house was demolished, and everyone was scattered in different places, just doing some paper-burning things according to their own wishes within the confines of the nuclear family. After my grandmother died, we burned paper for three or four years, and as my parents grew older and their energy declined, our family slowly thought of purchasing some services instead, and went to the temple to enshrine the immortal tablet, which was about a hundred yuan a year. I have classmates who work in a cultural company owned by temples, and said that the enshrinement of the eternal life tablet is actually one of the main sources of income for many temples today.
Southern People Weekly: Interestingly, it has not disappeared due to humanization and problematization, but is still developing new forms. For example, there is a Guangxiao Temple in Guangzhou City, and paper money gift bags are sold on the street, but the temple cannot be burned, so on the "T" street at the entrance of the temple, the person who sells paper money will provide the service of burning, and can also take a small video for the buyer.
Pan Weilin: There are always some roundabout ways to bypass the regulation, such as some sacrificial supplies "smokeless", incense candles have become electronic.
In general, it was often the elderly in the family who presided over the paper-burning activities, who acted as ritual experts in the family, and they decided what to do when. This whole body of rituals and knowledge is independent of the modern education system I have received. If the family lacks such a character, then the burning paper may disappear in the lives of the next generation, and I think this is a key point.
When my grandmother was alive, she was the "authority" on burning paper in the community, and neighbors would consult her where to buy tin foil, how to fold it, how to burn it. When my grandmother was in her eighties, she used to "knot tin foil" at home. In Shanghainese, folding tin foil is called "knotted tin foil". After her death, we found more than a dozen cardboard boxes filled with tin foil that she "knotted" for herself. Maybe she felt that after her death, it would be difficult for us to have such patience to prepare for her, so she saved a lot and said that she would burn a little for her in Qingming in the future.
Later some new ritual experts appeared. In the past, only monks and Taoist priests from local temples may have presided over ceremonies, and the ceremonies had local and individual personalities. The practitioners of the modern funeral industry, commonly known as "one dragon", have developed a new set of rituals adapted to modern cities. In immigrant cities like Shanghai, different local customs are absorbed and integrated. The commodification of ritual services means that rituals are standardized and are increasingly simplified as the pace of life increases. I don't know what will happen later, but homogenization and simplification to adapt to modern lifestyles is a trend.
▲ In Guangzhou, citizens burning paper in the alley to worship make way for passing electric vehicles Photo/Southern People Weekly reporter Zheng Jie
Constantly being "modernized", from hands-on to purchasing services
Southern People Weekly: Does the change in carrier mean that the things undertaken are different from before? Traditional paper-burning rituals, such as "knotting tin foil," emphasize the touch and handling of paper money by hand, and even emphasize the value of some self-sacrifice. But now many do not go directly to burn paper themselves.
Pan Weilin: I think you made a key point. In premodern societies, many religious ceremonies emphasized hands-on activities, required a lot of time and labor, and emphasized the effectiveness of rituals through individual effort. It has no monetary value, but it must be transformed into something that is valuable in another world through a lot of human participation.
But the part of hands-on participation in modern society has been downplayed. That is, the marketization I just said can provide standard services, and the sacrificial goods have undergone a process of commercialization. The commodity economy in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River developed relatively early, so Hangzhou, Shaoxing, and Ningbo produced tin foil, and people could buy it back and fold it, so tin foil was already a semi-participatory and semi-commercial sacrificial product.
People in rich places will also demand upgrades in the form of paper money, hoping to offer things of higher value to their ancestors, similar to luxury goods. Tin foil corresponds to silver taels, and the value is much higher than that of copper coins corresponding to paper money. Expand the scope a little further, in many street shops in Hong Kong, you can buy all kinds of smartphones, cars, designer clothes. Even after the coronavirus pandemic, there are three-piece anti-epidemic sets. In 2015, the Dresden Museum in Germany held a special exhibition called "The Underworld Supermarket", which displayed paper ties collected from the Chinese community in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong and Taiwan.
▲In 2020, Pan Weilin saw paper money in the supermarket in Boston's Chinatown, including Hades coins, susheng gold, incense candle sets, etc. Photo/provided by interviewee
Southern People Weekly: Does it sound like people who burn paper are projecting their lives into another world?
Weilin Pan: Yes. In my own research, I trace how historical intellectual elites, including Confucian scholars, explain the occurrence of paper burning in daily life. For them, this is also a puzzle and cannot find a basis. The rationalization that Confucianism found was to say that burning paper was in line with the etiquette system. Confucianism says that "death is like life," not treating the deceased as if they had died and had no connection to our world, but as if they were still living around us. That is to say, Confucianism holds an agnostic view of the afterlife, but does not affirm its existence in the embodied form of gods or ghosts, but expresses emotional connections through a certain human order.
Confucians refer to sacrificial artifacts as "ming vessels," which are imitations of "living vessels" (i.e., things used by living people). Confucianism proposes to reflect the distinction between the world of the living and the world of the dead through the different properties of objects. The "bright instrument" should be "beautiful but not functional", that is, the form is like, but the material and workmanship can be as simple as possible. There is actually a frugal idea behind it.
Southern People Weekly: Why does East Asian society maintain such a pre-modern way of religious sacrifice in such a modern living environment, and its supplies are constantly being modernized?
Weilin: This is the biggest puzzle. Modern people are still attracted to some supernatural subjects, and there are still many things that we cannot digest and understand through science and modern culture. From the perspective of anthropologists studying sacrificial rituals, it actually reflects the religious and emotional needs of people.
Whether it takes place in urban spaces or traditional villages, people's fear of death, the pollution of the environment caused by death, the need to purify the environment, and – if the deceased is a loved one – the need for emotional bonding between the person and the deceased remains. These needs will motivate us to participate in some religious activities. In this regard, there is no essential difference between modern people and pre-modern people.
▲ In front of Guangxiao Temple in Guangzhou, although banners prohibiting open smoke and flames and civilized sacrifices were posted in many places on the street, there were still many people who came to buy paper money Photo/Zhang Zhitao
"Roundtable Mutual Aid" in Premodern Society
Southern People Weekly: In the preface to the book, you wrote about your contempt for burning paper as a child, and even affected your relationship with your grandmother. When you do paper-burning related research, will there be any emotional changes in the paper-burning activities at home?
Pan Weilin: Actually, doing research did not make me more emotional, but for a while I tried to make myself a calm observer, treating every paper-burning activity at that time as a field experience, such as the Qingming festival, I took photos and records from the perspective of researchers, and the sense of participation in paper-burning activities at home did not increase.
My regret for my grandmother was mobilized while reading Bai Hua's "Burning Money". The first time I read his book in English, I didn't feel anything, but after more than ten years and more than a decade after my second reading, I grew older, and I rediscovered my life experience through his book, especially about my grandmother and the past of tin foil.
When I was a child, every summer vacation, my grandmother asked me to help me make tin foil for my grandfather, and I didn't want to do this. But my grandmother had a saying that because I was a granddaughter, the value of the tin foil I produced would be multifold. I would argue with my grandmother that this thing was fake. My grandmother would be very angry, and often said that my grandfather gave her a dream, and I thought it was a very nonsensical statement.
The first chapter of Bai Hua's book talks about dreams, and he says that if from the perspective of religious researchers, he cannot find any theory of religious classical texts to support this ritual behavior, the only thing that can support these rituals is that people believe in their hearts that there will be a communication between themselves and the dead. This kind of communication is through the form of dreams, the living understand the needs of the deceased in this regard, and prompt the living to constantly burn paper. My grandmother told me that my grandfather's dream was a personal experiential connection between her and the deceased. It was mostly an emotional connection, but I was too young to understand that emotion.
It was also in the process of growing up that I slowly realized the importance of emotional bonding to a person. I was only four or five years old when my grandfather died. The first memory point in my life was my grandfather's memorial service, everyone cried very sadly, I desperately wanted to cry, I wanted to blend in with everyone, but I just couldn't cry. I don't think it's right not to cry, but I can't cry.
The photos I took at that time recorded my state, where I pretended to cry and secretly looked at the people next to me to see how they cried. So my understanding of feelings and grief at that time was definitely different from that of my grandmother. She was constantly digesting and pinning her feelings for my grandfather through tin foil and burning tin foil.
Southern People Weekly: Going back to the paper burning you mentioned at the beginning is a big family activity, in that kind of occasion relatives and friends are there, obviously a semi-public place, but there is a frank atmosphere, let people say some real thoughts and wishes.
Pan Weilin: Burning paper is a sacrificial occasion, but it is also a rare opportunity to communicate emotions. I was particularly impressed by a scene described in Bai Hua's book. Bai Hua went to North China to attend a funeral in the suburbs, and after the funeral, people burned the relics of the deceased. People sit there burning relics and paper money of the dead, and the whole burning process continues until dawn. Everyone guarded the fire, constantly burning paper in silence. I think that every time we get together as a family to make tin foil and burn tin foil, most of the time everyone is silent, but occasionally people use this occasion to reflect on some things about my grandfather's life, which is a rare and warm moment.
On such occasions, people's emotions will be released to a certain extent. I think it's a bit like a psychotherapy scenario where families can open up to each other. Some places of worship in pre-modern society are also places to deal with and coordinate daily family and village personnel disputes, because it will arouse people's emotions and balance the rational demands of life, which is a balance point between emotions and reason.
In the event of conflict within the family or community, the purpose of negotiation is to produce compromise, and everyone can balance each other's interests. The ritual of sacrifice constantly reminds people that blood relations with each other, or close blood relatives in village communities, are the emotional basis of people, and this emotional bond is important.
▲ In a shop east of Guangxiao Temple in Guangzhou, the owner often greets business while folding the ingots in paper money / Zhang Zhitao
Southern People Weekly: Especially in modern cities, the act of burning paper itself reminds people where they came from, like a reconnection with where they came from.
Pan Weilin: People still have an emotional need for refuge. Especially after living in big cities for a long time, everyone envies those who have a hometown. Although I feel that life is too stressful in the city, I feel that I can return to a place like the mother's womb to heal the wounds, absorb the most primal strength, get a new life, or recharge and start again. If there is no such hometown to provide emotional rest, it is easy to feel that they have been in a rootless state, always fighting, struggling, and drifting.
The rituals that have been carried over from the traditional farming era are also constantly feeding and recharging people's emotions, making people feel that they have their place in the network they live in, seeking solace and help when needed, and maintaining the traditional interpersonal network through rituals can give individuals a kind of support. Man still hopes to seek an underworld power from the larger external world.
(Thanks to Ni Yuyao for his help with the interview)