The Ghost Festival, also known as Zhongyuan Festival, is a festival which takes place on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month in China. Why this date? Because the 7th lunar month is called Ghost Month in Chinese culture, and the 15th day of this month is called Ghost Day.
Ghost Day is not every year on the same date in the Gregorian calendar, the celebration takes place between August and September. Below is an equivalence between these two dates over several years.
According to ancient traditions, the spirits in the hell come back to Earth because the gates of the hell are open. Although important events such as weddings should be avoided during Ghost Month, this tradition is not meant to scare people. In fact, ceremonies are held to celebrate the release of the spirits and comforting meals are prepared for them. The ghosts can know that a banquet is being held in their honor thanks to a lantern that is suspended: the higher the lantern, the more ghosts are invited.
In addition to food and drink offerings, people burn paper objects representing, for example, money, houses, cars and clothes so that the ghosts can use them in the hereafter. On the evening of the festival, people light lanterns and float them on the water in order to guide ghosts and lost spirits.
These celebrations also take place in other Asian countries such as Japan, Indonesia and Taiwan.
Traditions around the world, by Anaïs 
I found your blog very informative and interesting to read. It made me learn a lot of information about the traditions you wrote about because I knew little to nothing about these traditions. I found Zhongyuan Festival (Ghost Festival) very interesting to learn about. I found it very interesting that they do all these things for the spirits and that they try to avoid many different things like weddings during that month. A lot of this information most people would not know and your blog helped me learn something that I did not know about. It is also very interesting that they burn paper images of things for spirits to use in the afterlife. This is definitely not a tradition that is heard about often.
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Thanks a lot for your comment Amari! I hope you will enjoy the rest of the articles as much 😇
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Hello! I haven’t traveled as much as I want to, but I’m hoping the article will give me some good ideas! I found this section particularly interesting because welcoming spirits and ghosts is not something that occurs very often. It is also bizarre that people would burn images of certain things. I just wonder why weddings are not really supposed to occur during these times. If people are guiding the spirits, welcoming them, « feeding » them, why can’t there be marriage.
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Hello! Thank you very much for your comment! I agree with you about marrriage, I think they’re afraid that the spirits are irritated about being in hell…
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I never heard about this tradition ! I like the spiritual side of this event, and I like the candle lights on the river too !
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