Burning cars and gas stations for the dead

The 15th day of the lunar seventh month or Ram Thang Bay (Ghost Festival) will fall on Friday, August 31. To serve the festival, votive papers and paper-made items for the dead have flooded many streets in Hanoi.

VietNamNet Bridge – The 15th day of the lunar seventh month or Ram Thang Bay (Ghost Festival) will fall on Friday, August 31. To serve the festival, votive papers and paper-made items for the dead have flooded many streets in Hanoi, especially Hang Ma Street – the home for votive objects.

Ram thang bay or the Ghost Festival is on the 15th night of the seventh lunar month. In tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day, in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm. On this day, living descendants pay homage to their deceased ancestors, on Ghost Day the deceased are believed to visit the living.

On the fifteenth day the realms of Heaven and Hell and the realm of the living are open and people would perform rituals to transmute and absolve the sufferings of the deceased. Intrinsic to the Ghost Festival is ancestor worship, where traditionally the filial piety of descendants extends to their ancestors even after their deaths.

Activities during the festival would include preparing ritualistic food offerings, burning incense, and burning joss paper, a papier-mâché form of material items such as clothes, gold and other fine goods for the visiting spirits of the ancestors.

This year shops not only sell cars, motorbikes and airplanes but also filling
stations. A paper-made filling station is priced between VND150,000 to VND200,000 ($7-10).

“My customers said at séances, their dead relatives complained that they
were presented with motorbikes and cars but they did not have petrol
so they could not use these means of transport. Some customers
ordered gas stations to burn for their relatives,” a saleswoman
in Hang Ma Street said.