7th Month

A ministerial meeting on haze pollution in Southeast Asia on 19 August 2009 agreed to ban all open burning in the region.
This ban comes into effect and coincide with the chinese 7th month festival. Burning of joss and "hell" money is traditionally carried out throughout the month. So far the ban seem to concentrate on the open burning activities mainly in Indonesia.



Why do chinese burn hell notes or currency ?
The word "hell" is said to be introduced to the Chinese by Christian missionaries who told the Chinese that non-Christians go to "hell" when they die. Buddhist and Taoist considered hell the initial destination of the soul of the dead regardless of his or her virtue during life.



So to ensure that the deceased has lots of good things in their afterlife, joss paper which include credit cards, houses, cars, servants are burned. Hell money notes are known for their outrageous denominations ranging from $10,000 to $5,000,000,000.
In 2006, China ban at least the more extreme forms of joss paper, such as MP3 players, planes, boats and even paper condoms, paper prostitutes and well, paper Viagra.



But true Buddhism strongly discouraged the practice of burning joss paper to the deceased as they have no use for material possessions upon reaching either a heaven or hell realm.