BURNING THROUGH ‘GHOST MONEY.’
The two men in dark glasses had all the trappings of sanitation workers — heavy jeans, work boots, thick gloves, fluorescent vests — but in reality they both were sitting, reclining even, on a mountain of money.
And based on the brisk pace of money-changing in the Tiangong Temple courtyard, that mountain was only going to get taller.
Ambling through Tainan, the capital of Taiwan from 1662 until 1887, I was distracted by a museum dedicated to weather forecasting and stumbled into an alley where everyone seemed to be carrying armloads of cash. Banded bricks of mustard-colored bills were everywhere and, in the courtyard, dozens of folding tables were stacked to eye level with a fortune in the currency. The operative word: fortune.
It was ghost money. A young couple said that people come to the Tiangong (Lord of Heaven) Temple to buy stacks of joss paper “money” that the temple monks burn. The act is believed to help ensure that your loved ones who have died will have a better afterlife. Good fortune, in every sense of the word.
It turned out I had arrived on the ninth day of the first lunar month, the birthday of the Jade Emperor for whom the cash was intended. This day each year, the normal orderly exchange of ghost money turns into a run on the bank.
And it wasn’t just money. Vendors were selling packages of snacks — sugar cookies, baskets of fruit, lemon cookies, hard candy, wafer cookies — intended for the Jade Emperor’s sweet tooth and a tastier afterlife for ancestors.
It was a ritual I’d never encountered, and the cynic in me kicked in, especially after seeing the 10-foot mountain of white garbage bags full of ghost money at one end of the courtyard with workers lounging on top of it. How does it work? Is there a published exchange rate for ghost money to a good afterlife? What if you want better than good? Can you get your ancestors a condo with a view? Is the ghost money a bribe? Or is it more of an allowance for ancestors to spend on afterlife beer and soup dumplings?
I had a serious lack of understanding.
Whether intentionally or not, so much of travel puts us on a crossroads with religions, beliefs, rituals. They are part of every culture on the planet, and to experience a place is often to experience some portion of religious life there. (Author Paul Theroux even named a book of travel wisdom “The Tao of Travel,” although since the vast majority of the quotes are his own, there might be some confusion about who the relevant deity is.)
While not deeply religious, I like to learn about what a culture deems sacred the same way you learn about its wine or music or art — by experiencing it (unless hot coals are involved, of course). I’ve walked through thousands of prayer gates at a shrine in Kyoto, Japan, trudged to a mountaintop temple near Pyeongchang, South Korea, to look for a relic of the Buddha, lit candles in cathedrals from Krakow, Poland, to Montevideo, Uruguay, and climbed barefoot up the steps at Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to pay homage with flowers and milk.
So while staying at a Buddhist temple in the mountains of South Korea not long ago, it made sense to come up with a chant, a prayer of sorts, to repeat during the day.
“Buddha of Great Wisdom, help me to understand better what is important and what is not. Buddha of Great Wisdom, help me to understand better what is important and what is not.”
Again and again. While hiking, while waiting for dinner, while getting ready for bed.
Not surprisingly, I got lazy by the second day. The first bit to go was “great wisdom,” then “and what is not,” then Buddha, himself and, eventually, ironically, “what is important” was no longer important. The prayer became, simply, “Help me understand better.”
It occurred to me that travel is that prayer. The simple act of going to other places is asking to better understand the world.
As I drifted into the Tiangong Temple, and smoke from burning money and joss incense drifted out, I stopped to watch the people for whom this was an important part of their culture. Having delivered their ghost offerings, they stood quietly, humbly asking for good fortune — for relatives, for themselves, for the world. It was devotion that deserved more than a punch line.
Remembering that I had come to Taiwan to learn, I left the temple, walked up to the closest vendor and bought a few large bricks of ghost money, intended for some recently departed relatives.
Without using any shared language, the woman asked if I wanted anything else. “Just good fortune,” I said, knowing she probably didn’t understand the words.
So I just pointed at the cookies.