It is a full-moon day today in July of the Chinese Lunar calendar, walking in Beijing you will see some people burning the paper at the corner of the street. like the following picture.
You know what? It is the Chinese Halloween day, but there is nobody carrying the Pumpkins. They burning the paper instead, in a circle.
As the story goes like this: from the Daoism legend, the ghosts will have a holiday in the July of the Chinese Lunar calendar. That means they can leave the hell and up to the human world, So some ceremony will hold this day. burning the paper is one of them.
It is only a story or a legend, but all Chinese belive it. including the people in the Beijing city. Only one tiny difference between the north and the south is that, the north Chinese celebrate the Ghost festival on 15th July of the Lunar Calendar, but the south Chinese celebrate it from the ealier day, July 14th(Lunar calendar).
How is your ghost festival? how did your Chinese friends tell you about it?
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It’s the same here in Malaysia where Chinese also perform this rituals dated back before the Independence in Malaysia.