Some spirit money is perforated to resemble old Chinese coins. These coins had square center holes through which they were strung together into weighty masses. The paper used for these "coins" is usually cheap, machine-made stuff, unbleached or dyed brilliant red or green. The other type of spirit money represents official government paper money and can be distinguished by the tin foil glued to it. In China the making of the tin foil was a separate and painstaking task. Spirit money was burned in great quantities. Although some of the tin used for foil was newly mined, much was reclaimed from ashes scavenged from funeral furnaces. The size of the foil ranges from little more than one quarter inch square to several inches in size. If the tin foil is left as is, it represents silver. If it is brushed with an orange liquid, made from a certain seaweed or the flower of the pagoda tree (Sophora japonica), the foil stands for gold. Often the "gold" foil is block printed with red figures, representing good fortune, wealth, and longevity. Papers range from fairly fine handmade paper on which the imprint of the bamboo screen can be seen, to thick, rough paper which seems to have dried on a coarse, cloth mesh. The finer papers are usually made from bamboo, the rougher are probably waste bamboo or rice straw. Some of the printing on recent papers seems to be done by machine rather than by hand. Bangkok's busiest Chinese Buddhist temple, the Dragon Flower Temple, stands on Charoen Krung Road, one of Chinatown's main streets. Inside several furnaces burn constantly waiting to receive bundles of spirit money. Next to the temple are several shops jammed with items used for worship, primarily burning papers. Along with spirit money the shops sell bags of beautifully detailed paper shoes, robes, and helmets so the dead will be well dressed. Other workshops make a variety of paper dolls, representing male and female servants and retainers, also to be burned. Several blocks away on a quiet edge of Chinatown is the Taoist temple where spirit money folded into elaborate shapes is offered. The sample of Thai spirit money featured here differs in appearance from spirit papers found in other countries. It is never blockprinted and it is the only paper on which the orange dye covers the whole sheet, leaving no undyed border. The paper is made in two sizes, this being the smaller. The details of this paper's manufacture remain a mystery. The paper is said to be made in Bangkok but no one could say where. It is clear from observation that foil has been applied and that a dye has been brushed on top, but the fiber content and method of manufacture are unknown. Paper like this sample is the most common spirit money in Thailand, used by Buddhists and Taoists. It is usually folded into the form of gold ingots and offered in groups of twelve, a procedure which Dard Hunter noted "involves much time and labour, but which is thought to enhance greatly the value of the offering."^2 The ingot form resembles a flat rowboat. Several women sit in the paper stores folding paper into ingots. Worshippers can buy them prefolded and strung into garlands, or can fold their own. The papers are also put together into a variety of lantern and globe forms. Although the Chinese Communist Party has officially condemned the burning of spirit money, the practice still goes on. "Most people know perfectly well that there is no heaven, no hell, and no future life, but they still go in for all that mumbo-jumbo...It's right to uproot superstition, but you have to make allowances for human nature too," says a worker in a Chinese crematorium.^3 His voice echos the conflicting arguments of many centuries. The age-old strains of skepticism and tradition in defiance of official government disapproval seems somehow comforting in the face of so many other changes. Notes: 1. Dard Hunter, Chinese Ceremonial Paper, The Mountain House Press, Chillicothe, 1937. 2. Ibid. 3. Zhang Xinxin and Sang Ye, Chinese Lives, Pantheon Books, New York, 1987.
