Do you think it is necessary to ban the burning of paper money on Qingming?

The Qingming Festival is an important festival in our traditional culture, and it is also an important time to burn paper and incense in honor of our ancestors. Sacrifice is a tradition of the Chinese people and is a religious and cultural activity to express our respect and remembrance of our ancestors. Banning the burning of plutonium paper and coins during the Ching Ming Festival is tantamount to banning the traditional cultural activities of the Chinese people, which is neither desirable nor necessary.

Banning the burning of joss paper and coins during the Ching Ming Festival is actually a broad-brush approach which is not appropriate. This is because burning paper is one of our traditional cultural activities of ancestor worship.

At the same time, ancestor worship at Ching Ming is also a kind of root-hunting culture. If you can't burn incense and paper to pay homage to your ancestors, what's the point of the festival? Over time, no one will go to the graves to pay homage to their ancestors, and in the end, they will not even know where their roots are.

If the burning of joss paper and coins has to be banned on Ching Ming Festival, is it necessary to treat all people the same and ban the burning of incense in temples? What about banning cremation at crematoriums? These questions also require our serious consideration. If we simply ban it, it may give rise to unnecessary social conflicts and disputes, thus making society even more inharmonious. We need to look at these issues more scientifically and adopt a more pragmatic approach.

The relevant authorities need to humanize and respect national culture in formulating and enforcing the relevant laws and regulations. As much as possible, we need to pay attention to environmental protection while preserving the heritage of Chinese culture. A ban on burning paper and money does not necessarily mean a complete ban, but rather a restriction on the amount of paper to be burned and a time limit on the burning of paper. The Qingming Festival is not far away, and for many people, it is a very important festival because it is a big day for people to pay tribute to their ancestors and have family reunions. For thousands of years, the Ching Ming Festival can be said to be an important festival to unite the centripetal force of the family, therefore, the people attach great importance to the Ching Ming Festival, no matter where they are, as long as they can go home, they will rush home to pay tribute to their ancestors. On the day of Qingming Festival, people will bring firecrackers, joss sticks and paper money to the mountains, first weeding the graves, then lighting joss sticks and candles, placing tributes, and finally lighting the firecrackers, a lively and ceremonial Qingming Festival festival is completed. This way of worship has been inherited for many years, people have long been accustomed to do so, and even think that this is the most should be done, and, this way of worship is also y attracted to young people and children, because people can be in a cheerful atmosphere to go trekking, to go to the ancestors "reunion", so that the ancestors to know that his descendants are still doing well, if the whole process is dull and boring. If the whole process is dull, I believe many people do not like to go to the tomb.

However, in recent years, there have been more and more controversies over the Qingming Festival rituals, the main one being whether or not to ban the burning of paper money and the setting off of firecrackers. Those who call for a ban argue that burning paper money and setting off firecrackers can cause fires, that many people leave after the festival, and that many graves are in mountains and forests where unburned paper money can easily cause fires, which in fact are still quite common. Almost every year, there are accidents during the Ching Ming Festival where people do not extinguish fires in time after making sacrifices, so every year during the Ching Ming Festival, it is a time when the local fire department is always on standby. In response to this situation, some people feel that it is time to reform the Qingming Festival rituals. At a conference held in March 2022, a National People's Congress (NPC) deputy put forward his own proposal, stating that it was recommended that paper burning be banned during the Qingming Festival, and that flower offerings be encouraged instead of the previous way of offering sacrifices. This NPC deputy made such a statement with good intentions, but the netizens didn't seem to appreciate it too much and even strongly opposed it. In fact, the netizens are not opposing for the sake of opposition, because banning paper burning on Qingming Festival is not necessarily the best way. First of all, in our country's sacrificial ceremony, burning paper is a very important content, and even can say that without the link of burning paper, the whole sacrificial process is like no soul. And one very important reason why people like to burn paper is that they want to believe that the paper money, which is burned to ashes, can really be sent to hell so that their ancestors can receive it and then they can have money to buy things underground. You can call it superstition, but it's also a very pure emotional attachment, and other than that, people don't know how to help their ancestors underground. If flowers were offered instead, then there would be a problem, and many people would think, how could flowers be hard currency underground? And flowers can't be burned, in our sacrificial culture, what can't be burned, can't be sent to the underground, from this point of view, flower offering is just nice to look at, it has nothing to do with the ancestors. Then, flower offering is a western-style way, nowadays, there are many customs in China have been abandoned or banned, new Chinese customs did not appear in time, but instead a lot of westernization, western customs are devouring the living space of Chinese customs. For thousands of years, offering flowers is not the traditional way of offering sacrifices in China, if you ban burning money, ban burning incense and candles and firecrackers, and only use flowers to offer sacrifices, although it is said to be very environmentally friendly, but this is also a kind of compromise, it is the Chinese custom to the Western custom of the compromise, if each and every Chinese custom is so compromised, then in the future, most of the country's culture will break the inheritance. Finally, flowers are too expensive for many rural people to afford. Flowers are very beautiful, but the price is also high, the more beautiful the more expensive, and many rural people Qingming Festival tomb sweeping, not that only sweep a tomb, often there will be a family group of graves, that is certainly the need for a lot of flowers, in this way, the cost will be very high. In comparison, whether it is paper money or incense and candles, in fact, the cost is very low, the price of these things is far lower than flowers, if you really want to ban the burning of paper money, only flowers to sacrifice, that many people in rural areas, is really difficult to bear.

So, even if we want to ban the burning of paper money, it has to be done regionally, and it's not practical to do so in rural areas! During the Qingming Festival, there are indeed accidents of fire caused by grave sweeping, but this is not a large area, if you choose to cut across the board because of an individual case, that is not choking on the food? Moreover, there is now a trend of not only wanting people to reduce the burning of paper money, but even wanting people to reduce the number of on-site rituals and opt for online rituals instead. However, isn't online rituals, in this way, just fooling the ghosts? In short, even if it is to reform the Qingming Festival sacrifices, that is also based on the different situations in urban and rural areas to line, the city is generally cemeteries, it is indeed not suitable for burning paper money and point incense and candles, but in the sparsely populated rural areas, the appropriate burning of some paper money and incense and candles, appropriate to set off some firecrackers, it is still necessary, after all, many of China's customs have been extinguished in the city, only exists in the countryside, if the countryside If the rural areas and then "drive to the end", then really completely extinct, do you think? For the words of the National People's Congress, what do you think?