Customs
Despite looking like play money, hell bank notes are taken seriously by many people. There are several customs and taboos regarding their proper usage.
It is highly offensive in all Chinese communities to give a hell bank note to a living person as a gift. When burning the notes, the notes are placed as a loose bundle, in a manner considered respectful. Alternatively, in some customs, each bank note may be folded in a specific way before being tossed into the fire because of the belief that burning real money brings bad luck.
While the custom of burning hell bank notes is legal and still commonly practiced in China, other burnt paper offerings for the deceased, which include "luxury villas, sedan cars, mistresses and other messy sacrificial items...", will, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, be subject to a ban from 2006 onwards, said to be a feudal superstition.
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Famous quotes containing the word customs:
“The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)