Christmas is a festive time to think about nativity and religion. In this city which is now a part of China, it is fitting to talk about the Chinese religious culture. The photos in the post are all about death in a way, mostly the unique paper offerings which you may not find them around unless you befriend a local who knows the way.
This is the second post of an educational series to give you a glimpse into China's mysterious colours of folk religious beliefs. You may be also interested to read some related old posts are here, here and here.
^A paper Mercedes (Be a posh ghost!) the length of a man's height. The plate says 168 which is the homonymic to "get rich all the way" in Cantonese, the language spoken in Southern China.
Under the influence of Buddhism, the majority of Chinese people believe in reincarnation. At the same time, they hold dear the long tradition of ancestral worshipping passed down since around the founding of the Han Dynasty (founded 221 BC). In effect, they fuse two contradictory beliefs together.
Reincarnation works under a system of rewards. In essence, the more good deeds one has done in this life, the higher stratum one will end up in the next life. The marks scored are implanted into a person’s soul. The reckoning of the accumulated deeds is, like a scheduled scanning 
for a computer, done at the appointed time (i.e. when one kicks the bucket) by the deities. At that moment, much like an imaging sensor already fused in a camera, be it good or bad, you can do nothing about it anymore.
« The bamboo-stick framework of the Mercedes (Has it got the licensing permission?)
The grand total marks decide which of the six strata a person can enter in the next life: they are, in descending order of classes, the heavens, the temporal world, Asura (the half-deity and half-human form), the hell, hungry ghosts and, lastly and the least, beasts. When one pops clogs, he or she doesn’t go to the next world right away. There is a transitional period known as Madhyaskandhakaya, during when the deceased lives on incense offerings.
^The paper houses to be burnt by the living and received by the dead. What a booming property market it must be in the afterlife.
Therefore, Buddhists burn joss sticks for the spirits of a deceased person. But they don’t burn it for long because it is simply wasting efforts once the prime time for the spirits to enter the next world, which closes after the first 49 (7 times 7; coincidentally, seven connotes completion in Christianity) days, is past.
So how does this contradict ancestral worship? In ancestral worship, the deceased becomes two separate beings, namely, the wind
(soul) and the corpse (spirit). The corpse is buried six feet under while the wind is a temporary existence in space as a continuum of life. Old Chinese households placed tablets for the deceased at home whereby the wind would not turn into a “lone soul” straying to become dissipated at last (which resembles the Buddhist concept of the first 49 days).
»The workers of a paper-offering workshop transport the items from the first floor to the street level which would be loaded into a van in a moment.
In short, the gist of ancestral worship is about making the souls of all the deceased stationary with the tablets, whereas reincarnation is about the spirits moving from one life to another.
^Entertainment is needed too. A paper offering depicts a racecourse. Let's hope this will not turn any ghosts into habitual gamblers.
The combo of reincarnation and ancestral worship is further mixed with the burning of paper offerings for the dead to enjoy in the 
afterlife. So, the Chinese people have fused the concepts of the dead to reincarnate, to station in the tablet and to stay in the afterlife. But such is the typical potluck characteristic of the Chinese folk religious beliefs: making a hotchpotch of whatever beliefs are at hand.
Tomorrow we will talk about the Chinese concept of the hell, the destination on the recipient's address for the burnt offerings of incense and paper gifts (People really do write a recipient's address on some paper offerings).
^A half finished religious item of some sort resembles a pagoda.
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