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Burning money in the graveyard behind my house. There is a nice fancy tomb with it's own money burning pit. |
| The same grave as above. Families often leave money on top of the graves. This is to bribe the god of the underworld so the departed can pass on to a better place. The odd thing about this one is that it is a Christian grave, though maybe the family is not. |
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A large money burning barrel outside the graveyard. This is the biggest one I've seen. There must have been a public ceremony earlier. |
| Another public money burning, this one in the community where my church is. This was taken during Ghost Month, around August. The table behind is piled with food that is offered to the ghosts. Every year at this time the ghosts come over the water into Taiwan and hunt around for food. They take the flavor, and the people eat the physical food. The food is for wandering spirits who have no one to preform rituals for them and are trapped between worlds. |
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Families often decorate the graves during certain times of the year and light candles. |
| Sometimes temples have special festivals. This was always a major even in village life and continues for city people. The most common are during the god's birthday. The temple behind my house, TaiPing Gong (the Palace of Great Peace) is not dedicated to any particular god but they still have public ceremonies during religious festivals. The food on the table is either offerd to the gods or ghosts. |
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In some special natural places, Chinese try to recognize their sacredness by putting up temples or shrines there. This is a somewhat tossed together temple behind an ancient tree, 400 years old if I remember. I think it was a Buddhist temple, though it is usually Daoist temples in quasi-nature worship. |
| These were also on my WuLai page but I thought it belonged here as well. Placed here either in recognition of the sacredness of the mountain or for protection of those traveling along the hiking trail. There are cigarettes on the end of the incense sticks, I'm not sure what the purpose of that is, maybe to keep the incense from blowing away and starting a fire. |  |
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Just before the above shrine
was this one to the Virgin Mary, obviously Catholic. This is
not an example of Chinese practice crossing over, Catholics frequently set
up shines, especially in dangerous places. I do wonder which one was
placed here first. This one is well taken care off with a metal roof
set into the rock. Inside is a small statue of the Holy Mother, a
crucifix, and a bottle of holy water. Oddly, are incense sticks used
that look the same as Daoist use. I'm not sure the Catholic custom
for incense is so maybe that is normal, though there were also cigarettes
on the incense which seemed odd. Strangest of all, there were
battery powered Christmas lights wrapped around the top. Maybe one day I'll go around setting up some Orthodox icon shrines. |
| A statue of the bodhisatva GuanYin with an incense burner in a large temple down the road from my house. |  |
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