Ching Ming Festival: what do the dead want in the afterlife this year? Passports, rail tickets, Alaskan king crab and lobster among top sellers in Hong Kong
- Following end of pandemic travel restrictions, items connected to travel are proving popular with residents shopping for paper offerings to burn on Wednesday
- Pricey food, including seafood and roasted suckling pig, is also being imitated this year, but some worshippers say they still prefer to offer the real thing
The festival is a traditional Chinese holiday devoted to remembering and honouring the deceased through tomb sweeping and burning incense and paper goods. The offerings are burned at graves to ensure ancestors enjoy a good afterlife, and each year’s iterations reflect the latest trends or obsessions preoccupying the living.
One popular item is a paper travel pack containing two passports, a home return permit, a high-speed rail ticket, a ferry ticket, an air ticket, a fifth-generation mobile SIM card, a stored-value card called Opportunity in a nod to the ubiquitous Octopus ones and a pass to Walk Distance, a reference to the Walt Disney theme park.
“Some people are not buying real items to use for worshipping [such as fruit or meat] as they believe ancestors may not be able to enjoy them, but believe they may receive burnt offerings,” veteran paper artisan Kenneth Mo Cheuk-kei told the Post on Sunday.
Mo, who runs a shop in Yuen Long, said he had stocked up on different paper offerings shaped like food largely imported from mainland China, including pigeons, pomfrets, Alaskan king crabs, lobsters, abalone, roasted suckling pigs and fruits such as durians.
In Tai Po, paper offering shop operator Jack Lai said such items were especially popular with younger customers. The crab ones were among his bestsellers, along with pigeons, oysters, lobsters and groupers, Lai said, adding he had sold more than 100 packs recently. The crabs and lobsters cost HK$50 (US$6) each.
But the creativity on display this year might not win over all worshippers. One Tai Po resident in his forties who only gave his surname as Chan told the Post that after spending more than HK$200 on the more common paper money and clothing pack offerings for his deceased father, he was not so keen on the “edible” ones.
“They’re just too trendy,” he said. “I want something more traditional.”
Another buyer, Martin Or, also in his forties, said he spent HK$300 on paper offerings fashioned as a leisure boat, a Mercedes-Benz limousine and plane for his grandparents. The telecommunication worker said he still preferred to offer actual food such as chicken and roasted pig, which he and his relatives could consume after visiting the graves.
To Chin-sung, owner of the 45-year-old paper offering shop Chun Shing Hong in Sai Ying Pun, said he expected a double-digit growth in sales this year over 2022, when the city was embroiled in the fifth wave of Covid-19 pandemic.
“The business this year should be better, after so many people died last year [during the fifth wave],” the 70-year-old said.
Mo from the Yuen Long shop said residents were making their purchases later than in previous years. He said the resumption of cross-border travel might have drawn more Hongkongers to visit graves of their ancestors in mainland China, although they would have fewer fancy items to choose from.
