Burning Money: The Material Spirit of the Chinese Lifeworld

Chapter 8 Burlesque

170 c h a p t e r 8 Burlesque Yín sì wú fú [An unrestrained sacrifice brings no blessing] —Book of Rites The ghost bills described in the last chapter provide the opening wedge for a new category of paper monies that has increasingly penetrated the custom and divided it between the older, traditional replicas of value and the newer, modern, and exotic simulations of value. These simulations pay greater attention to realistic detail, the things of modern life—the commodities of the modern system—and its mode of reproduction in machined mimicry, with occasional accusations of forgery. Increasingly these items evoke not only the traditional desire for endless streams of luxuries, now a cornucopia of modern appliances, but more and more the stuff of entertainment, impulse release, sheer dissipation, even the antisocial. The mass media has labeled these things with neologisms: “exotic offerings” (lìnglèi jìpĭn) or “fashionable” or “faddish” offerings, and has thereby sounded the alarm that such things besmirch the original purpose of the paper money custom. Journalists from around the country participate in exposing and opposing the spread of exotic new-wave offering. A group of these squibsters, centered in Shanghai, accomplishes the work with artful effect (Blake, forthcoming). Of course nothing facilitates their work better than the ludic spirit of the paper money custom itself, for when push comes to shove, the paper money custom knows how to shove; under the wit and scrutiny of the modern media, the paper money custom turns to burlesque. This chapter garners mostly online news stories from different places around China that represent themselves as factual news reports based in hard burlesque 171 copy. The work of journalism in China is not reticent about hiding its didactic or propagandistic (educational) purpose. This does not make it merely the mouthpiece of the “communist” government, however. The hegemony here is not the old Stalinist monologue, but much more enveloping and insinuating and dialogic in its modus operandi, which is what makes it so much more effective than before. Many news stories include concurring and nonconcurring voices, while the whole thrust of the story is to cast aspersions on the exotic offerings—either to stigmatize the paper money custom as a whole or to show how ridiculous it looks from a traditionalist point of view. The dialogic of disgust and ridicule is augmented, indeed taken to another level, by the blogosphere and online chat rooms. Some bloggers, mostly globalminded younger folks, have suggested that the Qingming festival in early April (when paper money is prime-time) might as well be changed into April Fools’. Some bloggers view the new offerings as a conscious prank (ègăo) on the recipients of the offerings. They play with terms such as yúlè jié, which convention refers to a festivity corrupted with fun and jollity, by invoking a neologistic homophone that signifies with even greater negativity, a festival of fools and morons. There is irony here: Just as the “communist” government recently turned Qingming into a national holiday by subtracting a day from the May Day (International Labor Day) celebrations, the Qingming becomes more and more a carnival of foolishness, thanks to the new trends in simulating paper money. There are two forces changing the paper money custom. The one I just mentioned, the invasion of exotic objects, is the more spectacular. The other is more subtle, but in my estimation more significant: that is, the shift in the forces of production from hand to machine, which robs the product of its aesthetic qualities, causing many to complain that it lacks ritual effectiveness . Obviously the two processes are closely intertwined. Although the shift in the forces of production is less noticeable to the less attentive, it raises the question about the realism of paper money—or, more accurately, the authenticity of paper money—in ways that strike at the heart of the custom. Even if paper money is not real money, the question still remains, is what I am burning authentic? This is the question that a Mr. Huang was compelled to ask, as reported in the first news story we will examine, from Swatow, Guangdong (W. Liu 2005): A few days ago Mr. Huang observed the first death anniversary of his father. Mr. Huang lives downtown. His father’s spirit tablet was kept 172 chapter eight in a temple in the suburbs. Following Chaoshan [Swatow] custom, Mr...