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Chinese Spirit Money
In one traditional Chinese view of the afterlife, the souls of dead people continue to pursue many of the same activities that their living counterparts pursued before they died. For example, these souls continue to eat, drink, wear clothes, read books, play sports, go to parties, etc. To help ensure that they can do whatever they want, their still-living relatives may try to send them gifts, including money. Normally this isn't real money, but instead is a special "spirit money" that supposedly can be used for transactions in the afterlife. This special money is "sent" to the souls of dead people by burning it, for fire is thought to transform a tangible object in our world into a corresponding spiritual object in the other world. After the souls of the dead receive this money, they can use it to buy the things they need to make their afterlife more enjoyable.
Spirit money is also called "hell money' and "heaven money". The use of these other names came about because many Chinese misunderstood the teachings of early Christian missionaries, and thought that hell and heaven were English names for their own imagined world of the afterlife. The mistake was eventually recognized, but only after the new names were in common usage.
Most spirit money has the form of a printed bank note or paper bill. It comes in various sizes and denominations, and many of the designs are very elaborate and colorful. Some of the bills have denominations that are equivalent to billions of dollars, which suggests that prices in the afterlife could be very high.
People in China sometimes try to send other things besides money to the souls of dead relatives. To do so, they burn paper replicas of items such as clothes, watches, cars, and even houses. It is thought that the soul of a dead relative receives the real item when the paper replica is burned. Some modern Chinese have even used this method to try to send credit cards to the souls of their dead kin.
