Ghost Money

"You must have a room, a corner, or a certain hour of the day where you do not know what was in the morning paper, a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. At first you may find that nothing is happening… but if you have a sacred place and use it, take advantage of it, something wonderful will happen." ~Joseph Campbell

Today, on our last sightseeing stroll through the city, my sister and I stopped at the Man Mo Temple in the very heart of Central Hong Kong. Situated on a busy street lined with antique shops and art galleries and surrounded by the residential skyscrapers of the Midlevels, Man Mo Temple is a Taoist enclave devoted to the Chinese god of literature (Man) and the god of war (Mo).

Leaving the bright sunlit traffic of Hollywood Road, we stepped cautiously into the dark depths of the temple, striving to respect the ceremonial altars heaped with food and drink (generous offerings to the ancestors) and winding our way around people lighting their offerings of incense, the “food that feeds the gods.” It was a sudden and harsh departure from the rest of our week – this was just a quick tourist stop on the way to lunch – who knew what we would encounter here?

We quietly looked around – there seemed to be a “baptism” in progress that we quickly and quietly avoided. Instead we focused on the beautiful lanterns and the huge rings of incense hanging from the ceiling – the heady, heavy aroma was enough to immediately transport us to another time and place altogether!

The temple is a stark departure from the modernity of Hong Kong, strangely nestled into a hill, hidden behind ancient gates and dwarfed by the huge modern buildings looming over it. It’s an incongruous example of how ancient Chinese traditions are fighting to survive in a city that is moving with unrelenting momentum into the future.

We could only absorb so much inside the temple and quickly longed for the sunny familiarity and fresh air of Hollywood Road just outside the heavy wooden doors. We respectfully made our way to the exit and stepped into the sunshine – only to find something completely unexpected in the small temple courtyard just outside!

Just outside the temple doors, two young women were placing a tray of shiny paper offerings into the bright orange flames of a large brick oven framed by heavy iron doors. They carefully lit their offering in the “eternal flame” that burned in the alcove nearby and ceremoniously placed their collection of offerings into the oven; as we watched, they stoked the flames with long black pokers to make sure the paper was completely engulfed in the bright burning flames.

What struck us while watching these women from a respectful distance was that these weren’t superstitious old women or naïve children – these were young working women on their lunch hour, taking a moment out of their day to honor their ancestors in a traditional Taoist ritual. Their offerings were “joss paper” or “ghost money,” which is burned to venerate the ancestors.

Joss paper, also known as ghost money or spirit money, are sheets of paper & paper-crafts made into burnt offerings which are common in traditional Chinese religious practices to ensure that the spirit of the deceased has lots of good things in the afterlife. Among other things, the ghost money is intended, in part, as a gratuity of sorts to the “spiritual judge” in the hope that he will adjudicate their ancestors’ case favorably and lighten the length of their stay in the underworld.

This ritual, serious and somber, is clearly meant to bring comfort and alleviate grief, perhaps even reduce anxiety. And while ‘non-believers” may largely consider all of this a superstitious waste of time, Gwynn and I were forced to consider that these women were clearly finding some measure of peace in their lunchtime offerings of “ghost money” at Man Mo Temple today. We can only hope that for them, in their sacred place, something wonderful will happen.