In the afterlife, you reap what’s burned for you

WHEN archaeologists started to open up ancient Chinese tombs in the 1930s, they were puzzled to discover items made from clay, stone and bone in the shape of gold ingots.

Logic suggested that these represented small denominations and were used by the poor – until the same items were found in tombs of the rich. At that point, scientists surmised that the modest replicas were buried along with the dead in the hope that they would count as real gold in the afterlife.

Perhaps the most extravagant example of decking out the dead lies in modern day Xian, where the Chinese emperor Qin Shihuangdi, who died in 210 B.C., had himself buried with an entire terracotta army: full-sized clay replicas of several thousand human beings, more than 100 chariots and 600 horses.

Some 2,200 years later, a version of this practice is still going strong. Vault-loads of spirit money are burned throughout China and in Chinese neighbourhoods worldwide, at funerals, on the birthdays of the dead and during the grave-sweeping holidays.

The selection of burnable funeral goods is especially vast in Hong Kong. In Sheung Wan, a neighbourhood just minutes from the Central business district, one of the world’s biggest financial centres, a strip of specialised mini-supermarkets for the departed runs along a winding road, with purveyors selling traditional medicine, dried scallops and birds’ nests.

Hanging from the stores’ awnings or standing on the sidewalk, there are watches, phones, laptops, suits, plane tickets, credit cards, McDonald’s Happy Meals, massage chairs, cars, houses, pet dogs, human servants – all made from paper and cardboard. Burnable Apple Watches were sold here months before the real thing.

For many centuries, the stock-in-trade of these so-called joss shops was money to burn. Some of the special bank notes are imprinted with elaborate faux gold leaf.

But then came the 1990s, said Chan Fu Ling, the manager of a store called Tin Chau Hong Worshipping Materials: “Mass production set in and everything changed.”

Creativity blossomed. Much of the design work was done in Hong Kong, and the manufacturing took place in mainland China. A huge palette of trendy consumer goods appeared, many branded: iPads, Louis Vuitton handbags, BMWs, Hennessy X.O. brandy.

Finding itself entirely unregulated, parts of the industry veered into shockingly bad taste.

A few years ago, mainland factories were churning out paper Viagra tablets, paper condoms and paper bar girls. Some joss shops tried to steal a march on the competition by making cardboard models of the female winners of Chinese musical TV talent shows so that ancestors could swan around paradise with celebrity partners on their wrinkled arms.

It isn’t always about crass materialism and good times. Some vendors have recently tucked their casinos, horse-racing stadiums, skyscrapers and other outrageously indulgent items at the back of their stores.

This year, being fit is in. Forget paper Viagra; think paper vegan. Squash rackets, soccer balls and bicycles are featured prominently and alongside Apple Watches so that while exercising, users can monitor their heartbeats (holding steady at zero).

Chan, the shopkeeper, is particularly proud of his paper macaroons, a fashionable and light dessert option he and his team designed to follow the paper zucchini with shredded greens and sliced taro.

Wait. What’s the sense of putting someone who is already dead on a health kick? Is that a bit of schadenfreude? Or is the message that it really is never too late to get in shape?

These questions go unasked since no one expects these rituals to have a coherent theology behind them.

“Most people carry out these practices out of custom and without much reflection,” said John Teng, a banker who works not far from some joss shops.

A month ago, Irene Sun was browsing the goods at Chan’s shop. Although she is raising her four children as Christians, she was preparing with her older family members for qingming on April 5.

They planned on burning mostly bank notes folded to look like gold ingots and paper shoes.

That afternoon, looking around at the shop’s vast inventory, she said, smiling: “How would Grandfather even know how to work an Apple Watch?” — The New York Times