Beliefs and Superstitions

[legalmoose]

I had a hunch it was "Ghost Month" (the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar) as I watched the various calamaties minor and major on my friends list over the past couple of weeks, so I looked it up (you'll need 1. Adobe Acrobat Reader and 2. to be able to read Chinese to view the calendar) and sure enough, it is. Ghost month began this year on the 9th of August and runs until the 7th of September.

In a nutshell, ghosts, spirits without descendants to care for them, are though to run amok during the 7th month unless you appease them somehow. I know folks in Taiwan who swore by it, and would do nothing big during the 7th month (start no businesses, no new ventures, etc), at least not without doing their best to appease the wandering ghosts.

Not nearly as much fun as the Mid-Autumn festival where you get to get sick off of eating too many moon cakes. ;-

Comments

[yagtex.livejournal.com]

aaahhh someone hold me. :)

[myloveisrobotic.livejournal.com]

great. so it's the ghosts fault AGAIN

now I'm trying to remember some movie or book I read that involved someone eating moon cakes that were a month old and caked with dust. damn I'll never remember what I'm thinking of