Why does the Chinese custom of burning money have a long history? Ching ming festival
Interface News Reporter | Forest people
Interface News Editor | Jiang Yan
On the eve of the Qingming Festival, the news of Nantong's ban on the production and sale of paper money sparked heated discussions. The Nantong Civil Affairs Bureau and the Nantong Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau issued a notice on March 25 saying that in order to further promote the city's funeral reform, abandon the bad customs of funerals, advocate civilized sacrifices, and purify the urban environment, according to the "People's Republic of China Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law", "Funeral Management Regulations", "Jiangsu Provincial Funeral Management Regulations" and other laws and regulations, the city prohibits any unit or individual from manufacturing and selling feudal superstitious funeral supplies such as paper money and paper solid objects.
After the release of the relevant notice, a large number of netizens paid attention and discussed, and opponents believed that remembering and sacrificing ancestors was a Chinese tradition and should not be regarded as feudal superstition. In fact, since ancient times, voices have been opposing the tradition of burning paper and denouncing it as vulgar. Wei Huaxian, a scholar of Song history, discovered that in Kaifeng, Northern Song Dynasty, there were workshops for making paper money and shops specializing in selling paper money for the people to consume in rituals. And when the production of paper money becomes a high-profile local industry, it often raises official concerns about wasted labor. Liao Gang, who had the reputation of "Shaoxing Famous Minister", wrote to Gaozong in the ninth year of Shaoxing (1139), expressing his concern that the peasants in the southeast region would abandon agriculture and turn to the manufacture and burning of paper money.
"If you use all your strength to lose ghost labor and pour money into wildfires, it is especially useless, and I hope that Your Majesty will resolutely ban paper burning, denounce it as harmful to agriculture and not help education, and make the foolish people realize the wrongs of a hundred thousand years of customs, and it is not also good!"
In modern times, environmental protection has also become a reason to oppose this practice, and many people point out that burning paper money pollutes the air and water, and is a fire hazard.
Papier-mâché items such as paper money were burned as offerings to supply and comfort deceased relatives, ancestors, or deities – a practice that, despite controversy, continued from the Tang Dynasty onwards and became one of the most important cultural traditions of Chinese people around the world. It's so old and ordinary that most of us don't think deeply about the meaning behind this act, but for some anthropologists, the paper money custom of the Chinese is a fascinating subject of study, not just "feudal superstition". American cultural anthropologist C. Bai Hua In his monograph "Burning Money", Fred Blake argues that the custom of paper money is a window into the elusive spirit of Chinese culture.
The origin of the custom of burning paper money
On many different occasions, Chinese people burn paper money, as Bai Hua describes in "Burning Money":
"At every stage of life, which is fraught with risk, crisis, or anxiety, people burn paper replicas of these worldly things, trying to solve their problems through rituals: from pregnancy, childbirth, travel, and shampooing that can bring ruin, to adulthood, marriage, marital disharmony, divorce, and sometimes paper money against villains and other troubles (which can also curse or disturb their opponents in turn), or to exorcise evil spirits, mourn the dead, remember the deceased, The list goes on and on to thank the deceased for the hellish torment of removing the defilement of the flesh, sometimes to start a career, to fulfill a dream, to embark on a journey, to take an exam. ”
Bai Hua also traces the origin story of the practice of burning paper in the book, and finds that Cai Lun, who is widely regarded as the inventor of paper, is often mentioned. Although in real history Cai Lun was a eunuch during the reign of Emperor He of the Han Dynasty (89-106), in folklore, he was a married and cunning merchant. According to legend, when Cai Lun invented paper, there was little demand for paper, and in order to deal with the hoarded paper, Cai Lun and his wife came up with a trick to persuade people to believe that the paper would turn into money in the underworld when burned.
In other stories, Cai Lun's brother Cai Mo and his wife Hui Niang (no historical record) are used to carry out the trick. They should work together inside and out, and make people believe that burning paper can bring people back from the dead. Some of the stories also end by pointing out that people eventually discovered that burning paper didn't have this magical effect – which is certainly obvious in real life – but that didn't stop it from becoming a custom. Some folk tales will put forward the theory that the cycle of life is like a cycle of money, and that the value of money (and all forms of wealth) circulates in the universe and is controlled by the netherworld.
Burning Money: The Material Spirit in the Chinese Living World
Written by Bai Hua, translated by Yuan Jian and Liu Xihong
Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2019-3
Regarding the origin and popularity of the paper money custom, Bai Hua sorted out five hypotheses: first, this custom came from the Confucian tradition, especially influenced by the Book of Rites, and second, the popularity of this custom was accompanied by the emergence of printing, which was promoted by Buddhist scriptures and rituals—many scholars believe that the emergence of block printing was related to the rise of Buddhism, and its invention can be traced back to the Sui Dynasty.
Third, the rise of paper money coincided with the invention of paper money. In the fourth year of Wude (621), in order to rectify the chaotic currency system, Tang Gaozu opened the minting of "Kaiyuan Tongbao", which can be connected into a string of copper coins with a round circle and an inner square, which can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty and continued until the 20th century. By the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, with the development of commerce, the increase in long-distance trade, and the rise in trade volume, a series of problems caused by the inconvenience of the use of metal money, and merchants began to use printed paper as transaction receipts. The invention of Chinese banknotes dates back to 995, when merchants in Chengdu, Sichuan Province began using Jiaozi as a medium for private transactions. In the second year of Tiansheng in the Northern Song Dynasty (1024), the Yizhou government issued the first official banknotes, with denominations ranging from one to ten yuan. Paper money grew in popularity during the rest of the Song dynasty, and its issuance increased further during the Yuan dynasty, but it was no longer favored by the imperial court during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is worth noting that it was precisely during the Ming and Qing dynasties, when real paper money was unpopular, that the custom of paper money became popular throughout the country.
Image source: Visual China
Scholars also believe that the popularity of paper money was driven by the Confucian doctrine of "rebirth over death, and man over god". "In addition to practicing these ideas on the basis of a hierarchy of dignity and inferiority, Confucianism also explicitly allowed poor families to reduce the size and cost of sacrifices. "Using paper as an offering saves the general public money on funeral costs.
However, Bai Hua reminds us that the custom of paper money does not necessarily have a "thrifty spirit". Anyone who has ever had the experience of going to the grave on the Qingming Festival should have experienced this - people do not seem to have a concept of moderation in the matter of burning paper money, hoping that the relatives under the Yellow Spring can live well, and the paper money and other paper offerings burned will naturally "the more the better". "Paper money promotes a spirit of luxury, allowing the worshipper to immerse themselves in an unrestricted ritual in which they can manifest themselves by burning during the offering. Bai Hua pointed out that if Confucian scholars and scholars limited their support for the practice of paper money was intended to weaken the sensitivity of ordinary people to the hierarchy or at least to ensure that ordinary people obeyed the rules of dignity and inferiority, then ordinary people were also subverting and ridiculing the hierarchy through the practice of paper money. "The custom of paper money was very popular among ordinary people who were obsessed with the mysteries of the hierarchy and who dreamed of being promoted and made a fortune in the hope that they might influence the effects of this privilege on their lives. ”
The ancient Chinese's attitude of respecting paper may also provide a perspective for us to understand the custom of paper money. Nancy Berliner, director of the Chinese art department at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, studies Chinese Bapo (a form of "collage" that depicts broken album lettering in a realistic way) that text fragments also had an important significance for the general public by the 19th century. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a non-governmental organization called the Writing and Paper Society evolved respect for classical teachings and calligraphy into respect for all written scripts. Its members believe that paper with words written on it cannot be discarded at will. They would hire people to collect old paper on the street, put it in a large basket with the words "Respect and cherish the word paper", and throw the collected old paper into a special furnace in Wenchang Temple to burn. Those who collect old paper will also gain longevity and good luck from this.
Holding on to the Defects: Eight Broken Paintings of China
Translated by Bai Ling'an
Social Sciences Academic Press 2023-7
The spirit of capitalism or the manifestation of moral obligation
Chinese why do you burn paper money? When doing fieldwork, Bai Hua noticed two reasons given by people: one is that burning paper for the ancestral gods brings happiness, liberation, and atonement, and the other is that burning paper is an obligation, and if you don't do it, the consequences will be unimaginable.
The symbolic meaning of paper money has caught the attention of some researchers, and the Chinese seem to believe that the power of money is still strong even in the afterlife, and that wealth rules can determine the fate of families. In Chapter 7, "The Magic of Wealth," the American historian Richard von Glahn argues that in the traditional Chinese cosmology, the supernatural world approximates the secular world, so that the changes in the belief in the God of Wealth in the late Ming Dynasty actually reflected the changes in the monetary economy of that period. American anthropologist Hill Gates further argues that Chinese folk ideology not only provides a psychological defense mechanism against the impact of the monetary economy, but also becomes a counter-hegemonic mechanism against elite ideology and state control of capitalism.
Image source: Visual China
Gates found that the idea of "money as a universal medium of exchange" permeated all aspects of Chinese life, and its shaping of Chinese culture was most vividly reflected in Chinese folk ideology. Money became a universal image in folk culture, and paper money became a key component of Chinese religious ceremonies and customs. Both the well-being of this life and the fate of reincarnation can be quantified by the value of money – the capitalist principles that emerge from the collective subconscious of the Chinese are closely related to the meaning of human life. Gates responded to Max Weber's book "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" by proposing "Taoism and the Spirit of Chinese Capitalism", arguing that the Chinese version of the spirit of capitalism emphasizes that individuals fulfill their obligations and repay the kindness of others than on strengthening the rule of law and the power of the state. The obligation to repay favors is strengthened by the "sacred money dealing" between people and the gods. Given China's official "anti-capitalist" stance, folk ideology with some capitalist values hints at potential resistance to state control.
Although Bai Hua admits that it was Gates who first proposed the concept of "paper money as an ideology", he proposed another explanation for the ideology of paper money. He argues that the Chinese lifeworld – a phenomenological and anthropological concept that refers to the whole world directly experienced by humans – was monetized rather than commoditized in the pre-modern period.
In fact, the whole history of China can be seen as a history of attempts by different dynasties to maintain a monetary system (money ties) and to suppress commercial trade through the decommodification of the production system, which in fact prevented the control of the production system by those who profited from the circulation of goods. The way to accomplish this is to maintain the production system at an agrarian level and to impose a strict hierarchy of dignity and inferiority. ”
In Bai Hua's view, the regime of imperial China needed to control two values, one was the labor of the peasants, and the other was the family ethics (filial piety) of the peasants. The exploitation of family labour is an integral part of the family-based smallholder mode of production. Just as the capitalist mode of production needs to disguise the essence of exploitation and appropriation of labor with wages and equality concepts, the small-scale peasant mode of production plays the role of enigmatizing the exploitation in a mystified way. Burning money as a ritual performance of sacrifice and sacrifice is one of the ways of mystifying this way.
Bai Hua believes that the "live" (life, survival) and "work" (labor, work, labor) of the Chinese are isomorphic - life is labor, and labor is the source of value. In this sense, the physical effort and labor of the conscious body is for the maintenance and reproduction of the living world. The value produced by conscious bodily labor is different from 'surplus value' in that it is measured by quality rather than quantity, and is more creative, self-actualizing, and self-productive. ”
The magical power of paper money is thus determined by labor: whether it is piercing holes in straw paper to simulate the holes of copper coins, folding silver foil into the shape of ingots, or simply touching each piece of paper with both hands, these tedious, dedicated, and even self-sacrificing tasks bring about "a creative energy of transformation that resides in the vitality of the body (life itself) and which is deeply aware of its moral obligations to others." Citing an anthropological study, Bai Hua pointed out that the form of Chinese affirming and symbolizing interpersonal relationships is not emotional expression but other social behaviors, and self-sacrifice is such a social behavior. Folding paper money hides the sacrifices made by a person in public, and the custom of paper money becomes a kind of moral obligation, reflecting people's "filial piety" and "benevolence".
Image source: Visual China
The custom of paper money has persisted for thousands of years, until modern times. It is worth noting that the custom of paper money has been domesticated by modern economic forces: paper money has become a modern economic commodity, a product of mechanized mass production, and the form of paper money has also begun to imitate the paper money or bonds issued by modern banks (i.e., ghost bills), and the "inflation" of the face value of ghost bills (A ghost ticket collected by Bai Hua has the words 8 billion on it) is not only a parody of the modern monetary system, but also a mixture of surreal and hyperreal to the custom of paper money, and at the same time, other paper sacrifices are also becoming simulations of contemporary consumer goods, such as villas and cars.
Bai Hua notes that contemporary Chinese attitudes towards paper money customs are ambivalent, but even those who do not believe in the existence of the underworld tolerate paper burning. In his opinion, the most "typical" representative is a retired driver he met in Shijiazhuang, who did not believe that the gods could receive paper money, but he still burned paper. His attitude is torn between denying the existence of gods and denying the validity of rituals, between affirming the power of habit and affirming a sense of obligation...... I don't see this as flickering and ambiguous, on the contrary, this is the essence of customs, the material spirit of the Chinese living world. ”
Resources:
Bai Ling'an, Holding on to the Defects: Eight Broken Paintings in China, Social Sciences Academic Press, 2023.
Bai Hua, "Burning Money: The Material Spirit in the Chinese Living World".Jiangsu People's Publishing House.2019.
Wan Zhiying, "The Left Dao: Gods and Demons in Chinese Religious Culture", Social Sciences Academic Press, 2018.
Wei Huaxian, Research on the Production and Consumption of Four Types of Articles in the Song Dynasty, Sichuan Science and Technology Press, 2006.
Gates, H. (1987). Money for the Gods. Modern China, 13(3), 259-277. https://doi.org/10.1177/009770048701300301