Tomb Sweeping Day

It's 清明节 (Qing Ming Jie, "Clear Bright Festival" or "Tomb Sweeping Day") a day on which families traditionally travel to their ancestors' graves and have a bit of a tidy.

It's customary to burn money to send into the 来世 or afterlife, for your deceased relatives to spend. It would be crazy to burn real money, but it's not enough to just scrawl 'a gazillion pounds' on a piece of scrap paper in biro either. In fact, there's a lively market for afterlife currency.

As any elementary Economics student can tell you, the printing of paper money will inevitably lead to some degree of inflation unless attached to a fixed standard (e.g. gold) or strictly regulated. In other words, the price of goods will go up in nominal terms and the value of the paper will decrease.

Here's a fine example. Unrestricted by either laws or common sense, these stacks of notes come in denominations of 50万， 1000万， and 20亿 RMB (£33,000, £670,000 and £130m). Why anyone would opt for just £33,000 when they could be sending Uncle Freddy a stack of £130m's I don't know - I can only assume that the cost of the afterlife money is also reflected in the real-life price.

Speaking Teacher Wang brought up Qing Ming Jie in class and we fired questions at her.

"Actually, it's not just Chinese Yuan, you can also buy American Dollars and Euros to burn too, and of course you don't just burn it, you have to write an address on it so the money will find its way to your relatives".

"What would they spend it on?"

"Well, the idea is that your relatives are enjoying an afterlife which is just like this one".

"How come no-one's sending me money from my previous life then?"

She laughed. "Actually, noone thinks it's real, it's just a way of remembering your ancestors".

Someone brought up burning paper cars.

"Sure. Before, people would burn paper horses, but now you can buy paper cars, houses, electrical goods..."

"Well, what about a paper wife?"

Another laugh. "Impossible. If they've married in this life, then you can't just send a wife like that." A pause. "Actually, you can send paper 小姐 but a lot of people criticise this".

安娜 furrows her brow and mouths "Paper 小姐?"

I look quizzical too and mouth back "Paper hookers? Really?" Speaking Teacher Wang confirmed that she was indeed talking about women of negotiable virtue.

So, just for the record: When I go, I'd like a paper jacuzzi and a few issues of Playboy burnt in my memory.