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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Seger.

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Speaker 1: Today's topic is something that sounds like it should be

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Speaker 1: like the plot of a horror movie. That is, maybe

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Speaker 1: maybe something that's been imported from Asia to America and

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Speaker 1: it's been remade, like The Ring or The Grudge or

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Speaker 1: something like that. But well, we were only able to

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Speaker 1: find one example. Um, and it seems like a relatively

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Speaker 1: small movie. H Yeah, there's a two thousand thirteen film

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Speaker 1: called Ghost Bride um from New Zealand director David Blythe.

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Speaker 1: So what we're talking about today, and this is real,

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Speaker 1: This isn't this isn't a movie, this isn't the plot

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Speaker 1: of a movie. In fact, it's a thousands year old

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Speaker 1: tradition ghost marriages. Uh. And primarily we're gonna be talking

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Speaker 1: about ghost marriages in China or Chinese cultures around the world,

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Speaker 1: but they happen in other places to like Sudan, France, uh,

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Speaker 1: and even here in America. Yeah. In China it's known

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Speaker 1: as the right of ming Hoon and it's it's pretty interesting.

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Speaker 1: We're we're gonna We're gonna get into it in this

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Speaker 1: podcast episode. This is not going to be a particularly

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Speaker 1: science the episode, but we are going to still apply

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Speaker 1: that same level of skeptical rationalism that we apply to

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Speaker 1: all our topics. And uh and and also a certain

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Speaker 1: demystification because I I feel that at the heart of

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Speaker 1: this we have something that is really It may may

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Speaker 1: seem weird, it may seem grotesque or alien too many viewers,

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Speaker 1: too many listeners here, but when you really break it down,

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Speaker 1: I think it is not that different from the sort

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Speaker 1: of thing that a lot of people across the world believe.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, I think, And that's why we should

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Speaker 1: probably start with just kind of defining sort of the

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Speaker 1: cultural philosophical religion, just ideas behind it. But um, it

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Speaker 1: seems very much in line with just the human belief

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Speaker 1: of trying to understand what the afterlife means for us

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Speaker 1: and for the living and for the dead. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: that's uh, you know, we'll get into the details of

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Speaker 1: it in a bit, but that's the basic idea here

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Speaker 1: is it's some sort of a marriage ceremony is taking

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Speaker 1: place between two dead individuals, or between a living and

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Speaker 1: a dead individual. And uh, you know that that may

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Speaker 1: sound a little weird to a lot of people, but

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Speaker 1: it's a real thing. It's been around for a while.

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Speaker 1: And uh, well we'll we'll break down the reasons for

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Speaker 1: it as we progress here. The the inspiration for this

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Speaker 1: was there was an article in the BBC News section

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Speaker 1: over the weekend that I saw about this and I

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Speaker 1: just it immediately, Uh struck me as something that we'd

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Speaker 1: be interested in and that our listeners would be interested in.

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Speaker 1: So we did a deep dive into research over the

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Speaker 1: last well there's research over the last couple of thousand

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Speaker 1: years actually, but really last i'd say sixty years is

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Speaker 1: the major concentration. It seemed to have very much there

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Speaker 1: was like a post World War two boom and hand

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Speaker 1: of this um and also a certain amount of resurgence.

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Speaker 1: Who was we'll get into it like. It did not

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Speaker 1: appear in Japan until the post war period, where it

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Speaker 1: seemed to have sprung out of Chinese influences in Okinawa. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: So why don't we start off by sort of just

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Speaker 1: defining what the religious philosophical practices are behind this that

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Speaker 1: that lead to ghost marriage. All right, and uh and

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Speaker 1: and again we're gonna start with the Chinese model, and

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Speaker 1: then eventually we'll talk about some other cultural motifs as well.

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Speaker 1: So in order to engage with this topic in a

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Speaker 1: like a nonsensational manner, and certainly, um, I imagine people

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Speaker 1: familiar with this you may have encountered it in even

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Speaker 1: like a semi sensational headline, because you can't, I mean,

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Speaker 1: to a certain extent, it can't be helped. Right when

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Speaker 1: when one culture is looking in I another it's it's

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Speaker 1: something yeah, such a um sort of like we're better

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Speaker 1: than that. Look at that. That's weird kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: But when you really like drill down and read about

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Speaker 1: the people's lives, uh that this affects, it makes a

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Speaker 1: little bit more sense. Especially I can't wait till we

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Speaker 1: get to the French example. That's where it really rang

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Speaker 1: home for me. Yeah, I mean, but the things other

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Speaker 1: people believe those are always the weird things, never the

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Speaker 1: things that we've no, no, no, we're perfect all right.

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Speaker 1: So UM, to properly engagement, we have to we have

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Speaker 1: to really break down the importance of ancestor veneration in

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Speaker 1: um in Chinese tradition and to a certain extent in

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Speaker 1: Asian tradition. As a whole um. This is known as

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Speaker 1: xiao or filial piety. So it's a concept that's grounded

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Speaker 1: in Dallas philosophy and in Confucian family values, and it

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Speaker 1: concerns the the undying nature of the human soul, something

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Speaker 1: that you find in religions around the world. Um, the

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Speaker 1: dead live on in the afterlife, and uh then this, uh,

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Speaker 1: this will own resonates equally well in Western families steeped

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Speaker 1: in Christian traditions, or even many mainstream or New Age

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Speaker 1: supernatural belief systems. Right, yeah, you know, it's interesting like

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Speaker 1: reading about this and then thinking about like Western ghost

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Speaker 1: stories from like I don't know, like a century, a

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years ago, you know, like I'm thinking

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Speaker 1: of like m R James stuff like that, ghost stories

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Speaker 1: of the antiquity. They're not really all that different, right,

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Speaker 1: The general idea that like, uh, if somebody dies unhappy,

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Speaker 1: that their spirit lingers on and like sort of causes

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Speaker 1: problems for the living. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of crossovers. And and it's important to

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Speaker 1: note too that when we talk about our beliefs personal

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Speaker 1: beliefs in the afterlife, we're certainly all capable of holding

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Speaker 1: multiple ones at once, you know, because you might have

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Speaker 1: you might have a little bit of influence from your

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Speaker 1: pop culture, from your religious upbringing, from your sort of

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Speaker 1: scientific understanding of the world, and all these can sort

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Speaker 1: of layer on top of each other, and so at

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Speaker 1: the at one time you might say, oh, well, let's

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Speaker 1: to see east loved one uh is gone. They don't

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Speaker 1: exist anymore. But on the other hand, you still might

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Speaker 1: view it at least partially in these other motifs as well. Right,

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Speaker 1: that's the thing, as I imagine, and maybe that's where

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Speaker 1: the sort of like uh um laughter factor, the or

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Speaker 1: the hysterical headlines come from. Is like something like I

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Speaker 1: don't know, like a modern movie like The Woman in

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Speaker 1: Black or something like that, Right, Like see that and

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Speaker 1: that's that's a horror movie, and you go, okay, that

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Speaker 1: basically it's a similar plot to what we're going to

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Speaker 1: describe here today. But there's a there's a reason why

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Speaker 1: that movie has that plot, right, Like it springs out

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Speaker 1: of cultural taboos and traditions and sort of fears that

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Speaker 1: every human being has. Uh But then we we we

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Speaker 1: want to laugh at the fact that we sort of

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Speaker 1: believe those things too. Yeah. So, Uh. Where you see

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Speaker 1: this major difference though between many of these Western models

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Speaker 1: and the Chinese model here is that uh in xiao Uh.

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Speaker 1: There's also this importance on continuing to honor, to cease

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Speaker 1: family members, and to care for them, to tend to

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Speaker 1: their desires, to curry their favor, um, you know, after

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Speaker 1: their debt, in order to you know, avoid catastrophe, maintain

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Speaker 1: balance and happiness for both the living and the debt.

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Speaker 1: So there's this continued spirit lineage for a given of family.

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Speaker 1: There's a continued back and forth between the world of

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Speaker 1: the living in the world of the dead, and you

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Speaker 1: have to maintain that bond. It's um. You could probably

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Speaker 1: think of it in certain terms as being comparable to

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Speaker 1: aspects of Catholicism, where one is, you know, say, praying

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Speaker 1: to a saint in order to uh curry favor in

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Speaker 1: the afterlife. Well, I think the general idea here is

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Speaker 1: behind ancestor worship is essentially like we all pass away, right,

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Speaker 1: and we want someone to remember us, We want someone

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Speaker 1: to pay us homage after we're gone, And so this

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Speaker 1: seems to very neatly encapsulate that. Yeah, I was reading

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Speaker 1: I think we both read this article by Diana Martin

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Speaker 1: titled Chinese Ghost Marriage, and she she has a wonderful

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Speaker 1: section in that where she compares all of this to

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Speaker 1: the Chinese notion of yuan or structural completeness. So in

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Speaker 1: this you have, you know, a family that consists of

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Speaker 1: a father and a mother. You have sons who marry

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Speaker 1: and bring women into the family, uh and offspring into

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Speaker 1: the home. You have daughters who are merely temporary members

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Speaker 1: of the family, destined for a simulation assimilation into another family.

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Speaker 1: So um, you know, Chinese culture is is what you

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Speaker 1: would call a paternal clan culture, and that gets into

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Speaker 1: some of the just sort of I guess we could

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Speaker 1: call it criminal activities that that that might surround this

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Speaker 1: practice well, or at least there's some of the more

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Speaker 1: extreme manifestations of it at the French I guess you

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Speaker 1: would say. But but anyway, within this idea of structural completeness,

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Speaker 1: it even it even breaks down into like the traditional

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Speaker 1: um Chinese household where you would have you know, originally

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Speaker 1: you would have a central room in the family home

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Speaker 1: where you'd have this ancestral altar, so you'd have wooden table,

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Speaker 1: what's that bear the names of the deceased. Uh you

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Speaker 1: know the important dates in this room ideally is also

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Speaker 1: where elderly members of the family would physically die. So

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Speaker 1: you have this idea that you know, the there's this

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Speaker 1: perfect form for what the family is, both in this

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Speaker 1: life and as it as it extends into the past

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Speaker 1: and the future. And and there's a lot of effort,

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Speaker 1: energy and ultimately, as we'll discuss, anxiety going into maintaining

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Speaker 1: that perfect form. And I think we can we can

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Speaker 1: all relate to this because we all grow up with

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Speaker 1: certain certain expectations and models imposed on us for what

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Speaker 1: a what a family is, what our family is, and

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Speaker 1: what it should be like in the future. So um So,

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Speaker 1: even though many cultures don't have that same level of

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Speaker 1: veneration of of actually sort of reaching out continually to

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Speaker 1: uh loved ones who have died, I think that the

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Speaker 1: energy of it is comparable. And in many others, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I agree, there's societal practices that are designed to, you know,

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Speaker 1: make us feel uh loved and and that we belong

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Speaker 1: right and and who doesn't want that? Um Now, it's

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Speaker 1: worth recognizing to that the this tradition, this in this tradition,

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Speaker 1: the sun is very important in the family model. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And their most important duty is to continue on the

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Speaker 1: patrol line. Uh. They need to provide a descendant so

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Speaker 1: that this practice will be able to continue. They'll be

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Speaker 1: descendants who can worship the ancestors, right. Um, So that

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Speaker 1: tends to lead to what we were just talking about earlier,

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Speaker 1: with the minimization of the girl's role. This the daughters

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Speaker 1: in these situations right now. In a in a perfect world,

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Speaker 1: of course, this structure would be maintained right all the

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Speaker 1: marriage all these marriages would be arranged perfectly. Uh, there

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Speaker 1: would be offspring and the line continues in the ancestors

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Speaker 1: or police. But of course life doesn't always work like that. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, stuff happens, and death happens, and uh, and

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Speaker 1: you end up having to have these different fixes to occur,

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Speaker 1: like how do you how do you maintain order and

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Speaker 1: structure for the family, both in the physical and in

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Speaker 1: this uh, in in the supernatural sense. And the belief

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Speaker 1: here too is that if one when you die, you

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Speaker 1: either become an ancestor and you're part of this structure,

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Speaker 1: or you become a ghost. And if you're a ghost

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Speaker 1: that's the then then you're a disruptive anxiety inducing UM,

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of rogue spirit. So instead of finding

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Speaker 1: that that place in the afterlife where you're supposed to be,

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Speaker 1: you're sort of roaming free, causing problems, and it's up

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Speaker 1: to the living to figure out a way to pacify

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Speaker 1: the debt. And in there, I want to say to

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Speaker 1: their other there are other ways that are that are

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Speaker 1: not supernatural and ritual oriented UM to to fix issues

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Speaker 1: that occur. I mean certainly UM, they're they're examples of

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Speaker 1: of of adoption to can place UM in these models

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Speaker 1: where that where this would make up for uh an

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Speaker 1: inability to conceive U. Martin talks about the adoption at length,

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Speaker 1: as well as UM as having a daughter who's UM

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Speaker 1: who's married off to another family. But then those children,

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Speaker 1: or at least some of the children she has are

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Speaker 1: are kind of like added back to her original family

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Speaker 1: as a way to maintain that family line UM and

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Speaker 1: connecting to the ghost topic, which is you know, pretty

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Speaker 1: central point to this episode, Martin. My favorite part in

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Speaker 1: Martin's articles. She says, so let's define who gets to

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Speaker 1: be a ghost and what are their powers and proceeds

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Speaker 1: to sort of you know, explain and basically by powers,

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Speaker 1: I guess what we're talking about here is the ability

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Speaker 1: to cause illness and misfortune. Yeah, and just this overall

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Speaker 1: sense too that it's just like things are out of

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Speaker 1: order with with life, both in this world and beyond.

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Speaker 1: So like something something has occurred and everything is just

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Speaker 1: out of whack and you've got to you've got to

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Speaker 1: realign you know, the energy of it all. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: a nice way to put it. And that's where we

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Speaker 1: get to this, this idea of ghost marriage of ghost wives,

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Speaker 1: ghost husbands and uh, the right of Minghun. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: the right of ming Hun is the official, uh, ritualistic

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Speaker 1: title of what we're referring to here as ghost marriage, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and uh, it's it's been around for for quite a

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Speaker 1: while now. The earliest possible evidence of this, uh, and

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Speaker 1: I believe this comes, according to to Martin, is that

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Speaker 1: the Rights of show a guide book of appropriate confusion

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Speaker 1: behavior written around the third century BC that may include

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Speaker 1: some mention of it in the in the form of

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Speaker 1: disapproval of the practice by the educated elite. Despite the

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Speaker 1: fact that confusism and later blended with Buddhist the mentalism provide,

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Speaker 1: you know, some of the backbone for the practice but

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Speaker 1: even even at this point there may have been some

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Speaker 1: ghost marriage going on, it seems, and it was looked

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Speaker 1: down on by the elite. Yeah. In fact, one of

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Speaker 1: the things that I read was was that around two

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Speaker 1: hundred CE, I think it was um that the practice

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Speaker 1: was getting so out of hands that there were a

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Speaker 1: lot of grave robberies occurring. So even that far back

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Speaker 1: they ended up legislating against this. Yeah, around two that

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Speaker 1: is when you would, um, you would see examples of

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Speaker 1: just sort of the sort of the the more typical

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Speaker 1: version of this, where you have you have a son

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Speaker 1: who dies without marrying, all right, that's it's out of balance, right,

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Speaker 1: And then you have there's another family in town and

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Speaker 1: their daughter dies without marriage. Uh, So you have these

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Speaker 1: two pieces that are out of alignment. What makes more

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Speaker 1: sense than bearing them together and pronouncing them man and

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Speaker 1: wife in the afterlife, and then everything is is back

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Speaker 1: on a righted course. Yeah. I want to make it

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Speaker 1: clear to these weddings were originally only for the dead. Um.

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Speaker 1: The ritual would be conducted by the living to where

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Speaker 1: the two single deceased people, and they would typically use

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Speaker 1: those wooden tablets we're talking about it, So it's not

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Speaker 1: a situation where you would have two corpses lined up

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Speaker 1: in a for a ceremony. Now it would be I mean, really,

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Speaker 1: it's it's It makes a lot of sense to me

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Speaker 1: if you're gonna put this much effort and thought into

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Speaker 1: what's happening in an afterlife. This is just the equivalent

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Speaker 1: of sort of like checking off a couple of things

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Speaker 1: in a couple of boxes for the afterlife and saying,

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Speaker 1: all right, everything sorted. Yeah, I mean. The idea here

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Speaker 1: is that you're providing emotional compensation for the bereaved relative.

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Speaker 1: But also it's especially important in the case where a

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Speaker 1: son was working to support their family right like they

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Speaker 1: were providing financial income, but then they died, um, so

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Speaker 1: they wanted to sure that that son wasn't alone in

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Speaker 1: the afterlife. The other idea here, too, is that by

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Speaker 1: hosting these ghost weddings, it can pacify the dead. So

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Speaker 1: if people believe that misfortune is falling upon them when

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Speaker 1: their wishes weren't fulfilled, the deceased will continue on in

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Speaker 1: the afterlife. Uh, in a marriage like this will possibly

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Speaker 1: calm their spirit so restless spirits. The idea here is

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Speaker 1: that they would wreck havoc on their family. They might

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Speaker 1: cause illness that won't respond to conventional treatments, or maybe

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Speaker 1: they'll start appearing in the living's dreams, or they'll be

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Speaker 1: general misfortune. Uh. So the idea is if you are

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Speaker 1: able to conduct a ghost wedding, that will appease them

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Speaker 1: and they will be able to eventually after a certain

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Speaker 1: period of time. I think it's thirty years. Um, move

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Speaker 1: on to the next stage of the afterlife. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: and yeah, you can really look at this as much

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Speaker 1: of a as a bereavement process for grieving parents that

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Speaker 1: as anything, you know. I mean, this is a like

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Speaker 1: like most of our our funeral customs. It's a it's

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Speaker 1: about the living, it's not about the dead, right yeah. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and it's especially important in families where the older son.

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Speaker 1: This is an important thing to understand about the cultural

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Speaker 1: tradition here. Older sons are supposed to marry before their

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Speaker 1: younger brothers. So what happens if the older brother dies unmarried, Well,

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Speaker 1: then the younger brother can't get married until uh there's

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Speaker 1: a ghost marriage in place, right, So the solution is

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Speaker 1: ghost marriage. The older brother his ghost is married to

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Speaker 1: the ghost of a of a you know, young woman

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Speaker 1: that maybe they didn't even know. But this allows the

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Speaker 1: younger brother to continue on with his life, and again

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Speaker 1: the importance being continuing on the lineage of the family. Um.

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Speaker 1: Now here's the thing. I mentioned that there was legislation

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Speaker 1: against us in two hundred a d. Now it's even

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Speaker 1: more recent than that. All of this practice is technically

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Speaker 1: illegal in modern day China. Ghost marriage was actually outlawed

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Speaker 1: under Chairman Mao, but the practice still remains, especially in

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Speaker 1: northern parts of China. So uh, you know, I mean

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Speaker 1: it occurs in different communities around and as we'll find out,

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Speaker 1: like it occurs in Chinese pocket communities and in other

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Speaker 1: nations as well. Yeah, my understanding is that you'll find

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Speaker 1: remnants of this in various parts of mainland China and

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Speaker 1: other Chinese communities, with an emphasis on rural communities. And

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Speaker 1: certainly in modern times, the Chinese government hasn't been in

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Speaker 1: strict on traditional practices. Yeah. I can't imagine that it's

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Speaker 1: that easy to I don't know, discipline. Yeah, most of

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Speaker 1: these my understandings that they're taking place, you know, very

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Speaker 1: privately between one party and another. If so, it's not

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Speaker 1: the kind of thing where you're going to a local

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Speaker 1: magistrate's office, and you know, applying paperwork for this marriage.

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Speaker 1: This is not about it as much about a legal

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Speaker 1: situation as it is about the afterlife and personal um uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, personal brief. Yeah, we're we should mention this.

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Speaker 1: We were talking about it before we went on air.

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Speaker 1: But I grew up in I lived in Singapore for

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Speaker 1: four years when I was a kid, and at through

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Speaker 1: the research we found out that this is actually a

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Speaker 1: practice that goes on in the Chinese community in Singapore.

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Speaker 1: And I said to Robert, I was like, I'd never

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Speaker 1: heard or saw anything about this the whole time that

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Speaker 1: I lived there, And you had a smart answer, which was, well,

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Speaker 1: of course you wouldn't. You know, this is obviously not

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Speaker 1: something they're gonna talk about with foreigners. But really it's

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Speaker 1: it's a private ceremony. They're gonna keep it within the family. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: A lot of the sources I was reading for this

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Speaker 1: pointed out that, you know, within it's not the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that's necessarily openly talked about even among um,

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Speaker 1: you know, in Chinese communities. It's going to be the

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Speaker 1: kind of thing that might have have a sense of

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Speaker 1: supernaturalism or or silliness even to it, but it's kind

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Speaker 1: of but it's kind of like a lot of supernatural

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Speaker 1: things in in Western civilization. I imagine, Um, if you've

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Speaker 1: ever known anybody who's lost somebody and then they turned

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Speaker 1: to a spiritualist, they you know, want to somehow reach out,

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Speaker 1: you know, have a seance or anything like that, or

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Speaker 1: perhaps they they turned to to certain aspects of the

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Speaker 1: religion that they you know, previously did not engage with.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, death and breath mint kind of

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Speaker 1: can kind of change the way you view these, uh,

359
00:20:16,240 --> 00:20:19,800
Speaker 1: these these rights and these beliefs. Yes, certainly. And and

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Speaker 1: so I think that begs the question too, which is

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Speaker 1: at what point, like how how old does the sun

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Speaker 1: have to be? At what point do they reach the

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Speaker 1: age even if they've passed away that they can be

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Speaker 1: part of this ghost marriage ceremony. Um. I've read that

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Speaker 1: it's like as as early as twelve um or or

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Speaker 1: you know, twelve or older when they die. But that's

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Speaker 1: that's another thing to keep in mind is that it's

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Speaker 1: not necessarily immediately right after that they say, oh well,

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Speaker 1: we gotta get this ghost married off. Years may pass it.

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Speaker 1: There was a one instant sighted in the Dinah Martin

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Speaker 1: paper where it was the the second oldest son one

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Speaker 1: like the middle child. He gets to the point where

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Speaker 1: he's about to marry and then he has an episode

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Speaker 1: where the ghost speaks through it and so, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: remember that one. He says, Oh, well, the oldest brother

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Speaker 1: needs to be married first. And you know this is

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Speaker 1: some years after his death that they end up checking

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Speaker 1: that off the list. He possessed by the spirit of

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00:21:17,359 --> 00:21:21,320
Speaker 1: his older brother in this example, uh, and speaks with

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Speaker 1: the voice that this is what they said, that he

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00:21:24,080 --> 00:21:27,280
Speaker 1: sounded like the older brother and said, you know, no,

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Speaker 1: he can't be married before I'm married. Yeah, and uh

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Speaker 1: and and there are other cases to where the ghost

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Speaker 1: of the male ghost appears to the mother years after

385
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Speaker 1: the death and says, you know, I'm unhappy in the afterlife.

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Speaker 1: I need to be married off. See that that gets

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Speaker 1: taken care of or can you help me with that? Mom? Man?

388
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Speaker 1: If only it was that easy, right in any society. Well,

389
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Speaker 1: it's also important to remember that in some Chinese cultures,

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Speaker 1: if you're female and you're unmarried by the age of thirty,

391
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Speaker 1: you're considered to be what is called quote a leftover woman.

392
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Speaker 1: So if you're a deceased woman. In this case, the

393
00:22:03,720 --> 00:22:08,760
Speaker 1: ghost marriage offers you social and spiritual advantage advantages in

394
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Speaker 1: this patriarchal society. It allows these women to have their

395
00:22:12,480 --> 00:22:16,280
Speaker 1: memory still be worshiped and to have their spirit tended

396
00:22:16,320 --> 00:22:18,320
Speaker 1: to in the same way that we're talking about in

397
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Speaker 1: this familial sense. Traditionally, dead women can't be memorialized in

398
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Speaker 1: their family home where they grew up because the place

399
00:22:26,240 --> 00:22:29,440
Speaker 1: where they grew up is forbidden for their spirit tablet

400
00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:32,840
Speaker 1: to be placed. So, uh, you can put it in

401
00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:36,639
Speaker 1: their husband's home though, So why not marry the deceased

402
00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:40,680
Speaker 1: woman to the ghost of a deceased man. Yeah, it's

403
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:43,639
Speaker 1: basically like balancing out a spreadsheet. Really. Yeah, And it

404
00:22:43,680 --> 00:22:48,960
Speaker 1: includes situations where a heterosexual couple are already engaged but

405
00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:52,560
Speaker 1: the man dies before their wed So in these types

406
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Speaker 1: of weddings, what happens is a white rooster stands in

407
00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:00,320
Speaker 1: for the groom. This rooster thereafter a company is the

408
00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:04,080
Speaker 1: bride to any formal dealings with the groom's family, and

409
00:23:04,560 --> 00:23:07,280
Speaker 1: she is expected to move in with her dead husband's

410
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:10,359
Speaker 1: family and take a vow of celibacy. Now, it's interesting

411
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Speaker 1: for the most part when when you have a situation

412
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Speaker 1: that where the ghost is appearing and saying, hey, mom,

413
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Speaker 1: we need to set up this ghost wedding. Generally it's

414
00:23:18,320 --> 00:23:22,120
Speaker 1: the male ghost, but in Taiwan, apparently traditions dictate that

415
00:23:22,160 --> 00:23:24,840
Speaker 1: the female ghost is always the one to make first

416
00:23:24,880 --> 00:23:29,159
Speaker 1: contact and initiate the matchmaker. Yeah, and the way that

417
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:32,440
Speaker 1: the rituals are just slightly different in these different areas

418
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Speaker 1: around Southeast Asia. In Taiwan, if an unmarried woman passes away,

419
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Speaker 1: her family will place packets filled with cash and paper money,

420
00:23:41,320 --> 00:23:44,679
Speaker 1: not not real money, fake money, uh, a lock of

421
00:23:44,720 --> 00:23:47,960
Speaker 1: her hair and a fingernail, just out in the open.

422
00:23:48,040 --> 00:23:50,600
Speaker 1: And if a man picks it up and doesn't marry

423
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:54,159
Speaker 1: the ghost bride, it's considered bad luck. So it's kind

424
00:23:54,160 --> 00:23:57,879
Speaker 1: of this weird like I don't know trap, but but

425
00:23:57,960 --> 00:24:00,680
Speaker 1: I guess, like it's so culturally known that if you're

426
00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:03,240
Speaker 1: just a guy walking along and you see such a packet,

427
00:24:03,280 --> 00:24:05,480
Speaker 1: you're going to say, well, I don't want to pick

428
00:24:05,520 --> 00:24:08,800
Speaker 1: that up because I'm not interested in ghost marriage right now. Yeah. Well,

429
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:11,080
Speaker 1: I mean you could probably say the same about marriage

430
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:14,399
Speaker 1: between a living like someone. Some people would say, hey,

431
00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 1: this normal marriage is the trap, right. The difference the

432
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:20,399
Speaker 1: yes they put. The difference in Taiwan, though, is that

433
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:23,880
Speaker 1: the bones aren't actually dug up, and the groom can

434
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:27,600
Speaker 1: still marry a living woman later on, as long as

435
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:32,240
Speaker 1: his dead wife is considered his primary wife. Uh. And yes,

436
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:35,760
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, it also occurs in Singapore. There's

437
00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:40,960
Speaker 1: a significant Chinese population there um Singaporean Chinese. The the

438
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:44,320
Speaker 1: best record I could find of this was from nineteen

439
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:46,280
Speaker 1: fifty five, so that goes to show you just how

440
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 1: kind of um secretive it is. But the idea this

441
00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:53,000
Speaker 1: was This is written by Marjorie totally back in nine.

442
00:24:55,240 --> 00:24:58,720
Speaker 1: The ritual there is called in chi uh. It's similar

443
00:24:58,720 --> 00:25:01,679
Speaker 1: to the modern Chinese actual, but it's more common among

444
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:05,200
Speaker 1: Cantonese Chinese than it is among other dialect groups that

445
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:07,440
Speaker 1: might be part of it too, is a lot of

446
00:25:07,560 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 1: the Chinese. Because I was in high school at the time,

447
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:11,360
Speaker 1: a lot of the Chinese that I was interacting with

448
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:14,040
Speaker 1: were part of the Mandarin dialect group. So maybe I

449
00:25:14,080 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 1: just I wasn't interacting with the right communities. But the

450
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:20,760
Speaker 1: reason to conduct this maybe you need to acquire a

451
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 1: grandson after the death of a son of a family,

452
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:26,120
Speaker 1: or you need to acquire a living daughter in law

453
00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:28,919
Speaker 1: after the death of an unmarried son, when a younger

454
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 1: son wishes to marry and the elder brother had died,

455
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:33,720
Speaker 1: just like we talked about earlier, that's another reason to

456
00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:37,399
Speaker 1: do it. So back in ninety five, the process was

457
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:40,240
Speaker 1: they would get these priests and they would pay them

458
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:43,480
Speaker 1: to conduct the arrangements. And the one that they observed

459
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:47,159
Speaker 1: for this particular study was from a Cantonese branch of

460
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:51,760
Speaker 1: Jenese school of Taoism, and these guys earned their living

461
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:56,680
Speaker 1: performing funeral ceremonies and Cantonese rites. Now the actual ghost

462
00:25:56,800 --> 00:25:59,639
Speaker 1: marriage ceremonies. These were held in a temple that was

463
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:03,040
Speaker 1: referred to as the dying House. You know, I'm glad

464
00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:05,200
Speaker 1: that you you you brought brought this up because it

465
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: reminds me that another way for Westerners to think about

466
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 1: this looking in on this tradition is to like, don't

467
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:15,080
Speaker 1: just think of it as a wedding. Think of it

468
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:19,359
Speaker 1: as a wedding slash funeral. It's it's essentially a funeral rite.

469
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:24,399
Speaker 1: It's it's aiming into the afterlife. It's aiming into life

470
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:29,159
Speaker 1: without continued life without these people. Yes, certainly, And I

471
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:31,879
Speaker 1: think one thing that like we should clarify to I,

472
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:34,520
Speaker 1: just like sort of casually talked about it. There's lots

473
00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 1: of money involved in this. UM, Like any funeral or

474
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:40,880
Speaker 1: wedding service. You you you pay for these services to be done,

475
00:26:40,880 --> 00:26:43,320
Speaker 1: and you need experts to conduct them, and it's kind

476
00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:45,399
Speaker 1: of just a combination of some of the methods we've

477
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:48,639
Speaker 1: we've discussed already. So Martin actually found a case from

478
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:52,359
Speaker 1: ninety one. It was five years after a ghost wedding.

479
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:57,520
Speaker 1: The ghost wife's mother adopted her son in law's brother's

480
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:01,280
Speaker 1: child on behalf of the couple. The child was reared

481
00:27:01,320 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 1: by his own birth parents. He was intended to dutifully

482
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:09,320
Speaker 1: worship the ghost parents. So this ties in again with

483
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 1: other efforts to maintain some level of of of luan

484
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 1: through adoption and or the splitting of a daughter's offspring

485
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:20,480
Speaker 1: between her family and her husband's in terms of of

486
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:24,719
Speaker 1: their responsibility to ancestors. This isn't that doesn't seem that

487
00:27:24,840 --> 00:27:27,000
Speaker 1: alien to me. Um. You know what it makes me

488
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 1: think of? Do you ever watched Deadwood? Um? And it

489
00:27:29,680 --> 00:27:32,359
Speaker 1: never watched all of it? Okay, there, Well, there's one

490
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:34,919
Speaker 1: of the characters and that eventually I think it's in

491
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 1: one of the last seasons. He marries his brother, his

492
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 1: dead brother's wife, because she doesn't have someone to take

493
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 1: care of her and her son. And he he literally

494
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:48,960
Speaker 1: steps in and fills the role as both husband and father.

495
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:53,680
Speaker 1: And and and yes, they still revere the the the

496
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 1: original father who was his brother. This is all in

497
00:27:56,880 --> 00:28:00,320
Speaker 1: the context of America in the late nineteenth century. One

498
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 1: other thing that I wanted to mention about the the

499
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 1: sort of money involved here. So gifts are exchanged and

500
00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:11,959
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about those tablets that we mentioned. Traditionally,

501
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 1: the bride's family demands a price. Uh, they also have

502
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:20,560
Speaker 1: a dowry and that includes jewelry, sometimes even servants in

503
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 1: a home. It could be a mansion in some cases.

504
00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. They're all made of paper. So

505
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:30,120
Speaker 1: the servants, the jewelry, the mansion, all this stuff, it's

506
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:33,280
Speaker 1: it's paper. It's it's symbols of these things. Are not

507
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 1: actually giving servants to uh, these ghosts couples. Yeah, and

508
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 1: this and this just ties in with a lot of

509
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: you know, ancestor of generation that you see in in

510
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 1: Asian cultures. Want the example, I we think over the

511
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 1: ghost houses in Thai culture, where you have the the

512
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 1: little wooden houses that you'll see out in front of

513
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:56,960
Speaker 1: homes but businesses, and they'll be little offerings sometimes in

514
00:28:57,000 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 1: the forum of say like a soda that the sea

515
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 1: joy life. You know. It's like here in America we've

516
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 1: got those um little neighborhood libraries, you know what I'm

517
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: talking about. But like there's a little like houses that

518
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: are filled with books. Uh, And I just have to

519
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:13,280
Speaker 1: imagine that, like somebody else would see those and be like,

520
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 1: what's going on with that? That's weird, you know, But

521
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 1: it's it's just culture. Well, I think the the closest

522
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:21,120
Speaker 1: thing we probably have, you know, in terms of like

523
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 1: mainstream American culture, would be the leaving of objects at

524
00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:28,240
Speaker 1: a grave, which which is similar. But there are times

525
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:30,400
Speaker 1: where I wish we had something a little more like

526
00:29:30,400 --> 00:29:33,560
Speaker 1: like a spirit house like or ancestors altar, like some

527
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:39,760
Speaker 1: way to to you know, symbolically venerate the dead without

528
00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: having to you know, drive out to a field somewhere

529
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:45,360
Speaker 1: and leave something in the middle of nowhere. Well, it's interesting.

530
00:29:45,400 --> 00:29:47,960
Speaker 1: I'm actually working on another project for How Stuff Works

531
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 1: right now that is about the American cultural practices surrounding burial.

532
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:56,360
Speaker 1: And we've become very distanced from that aspect of it,

533
00:29:56,760 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 1: uh in modern day burial. But you go back not

534
00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:02,959
Speaker 1: even a hundred and fifty years, people used to have

535
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 1: picnics on the graves of their family members uh and

536
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: up and did all the upkeep of their grave sites

537
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:12,720
Speaker 1: on their own. It wasn't expected to be part of

538
00:30:12,760 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 1: the cemeteries job. So you know, there was a point

539
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 1: where we had similar practices surrounding this one other thing

540
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:23,040
Speaker 1: that I wanted to mention to which I couldn't find

541
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 1: anything about. But um, so you're digging up the bones

542
00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 1: or the body of these brides, right, and then you're

543
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:33,120
Speaker 1: putting them inside the groom's grave. Again, from the research

544
00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: that I've done on burial practices, man, disinterment is uh

545
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 1: can be a hideous practice, right, It can be very difficult.

546
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 1: So I have to imagine there must be some kind

547
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 1: of protocols in place for how they deal with the bodies.

548
00:30:50,120 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 1: And yeah, but at the same time we have to

549
00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 1: realize that, like the I the idea of burying a

550
00:30:55,160 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 1: body in one place and stays there forever, it is

551
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:03,000
Speaker 1: not necessarily uniform around the world. I mean that go

552
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: down to New Orleans and you will encounter a different

553
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:10,000
Speaker 1: model and weighs a drastically different model than the mainstream

554
00:31:10,080 --> 00:31:13,440
Speaker 1: American idea of bearing the dead, the idea that that

555
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:16,720
Speaker 1: the dead will be in in this place temporarily or

556
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 1: in the case of you know, the raised graves, their

557
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:23,280
Speaker 1: body is going to um essentially bake in there and

558
00:31:23,320 --> 00:31:25,840
Speaker 1: then you're gonna push the bones back out into a

559
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 1: chamber in the rear of the in the rear of

560
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 1: the mausoleum. Yeah, I guess I'm more thinking along the

561
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 1: lines of just the biological process that a dead body

562
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:39,200
Speaker 1: goes through it, right, and and and what like how

563
00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: grizzly that might end up being, depending on how the body,

564
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:44,080
Speaker 1: I guess, is prepared for burial, Yeah, and and to

565
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 1: what extent, to what extent is prepared and over prepared,

566
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 1: because as we've touched under our momification absolutely episodes and

567
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 1: discussing even modern funeral rights, the you know, sometimes we

568
00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:57,320
Speaker 1: go a bit overboard in our attempts to keep the

569
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 1: natural process from occurring and in a way really prolong

570
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:03,800
Speaker 1: the the weirdness and ickiness of death. I guess all

571
00:32:03,840 --> 00:32:07,040
Speaker 1: of this depends on how soon after the death of

572
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 1: either the bride or the groom that they're disinterred um.

573
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:14,600
Speaker 1: Like we said, like sometimes it's a long time. It's all.

574
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:17,560
Speaker 1: They're digging up our bones. So maybe that's all. And

575
00:32:17,560 --> 00:32:19,880
Speaker 1: I'm assuming the individuals doing it, you know, might be

576
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: people who's trade it is to to do this, right,

577
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:25,800
Speaker 1: like I was like a funeral director here, yeah, or

578
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: you know, just grave diggers and people who are not

579
00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 1: as distant from the biological um realities of death. Yeah. So,

580
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, a lot of you may have heard

581
00:32:36,480 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 1: about this topic through some of the the more kind

582
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:43,680
Speaker 1: of scandalous headlines that have come out and and you

583
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:48,160
Speaker 1: know in some some mainstream media sources about ghost marriage,

584
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 1: and it's an occasional, rare instances where this ends up

585
00:32:54,600 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 1: having some sort of a murder. So there's been multiple

586
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:01,400
Speaker 1: instances where connected to the practice there have been either

587
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 1: murders or graves being robbed. Specifically, I mentioned at the

588
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 1: top of the episode that there was a BBC report

589
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:11,760
Speaker 1: this weekend h that was in Northwest China police charge

590
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 1: demand for murdering two women with mental disabilities. Uh. Their argument,

591
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 1: this is the police, was that he was allegedly going

592
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 1: to sell their corpses for ghost weddings. According to the police,

593
00:33:23,440 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: he was telling them, the women that he would find

594
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:30,479
Speaker 1: them groom. So I guess technically he wasn't lying, but uh,

595
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:35,240
Speaker 1: yeah he unfortunately, well you know this is their charge

596
00:33:35,320 --> 00:33:38,600
Speaker 1: where I don't know, I guess it's allegedly this practice

597
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 1: was discovered in the Chancey Province back in April of sixteen,

598
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:46,320
Speaker 1: when a woman's body was discovered in a vehicle with

599
00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:49,800
Speaker 1: three men who were moving it. Uh. And there's also

600
00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 1: evidence that this has been going on for years in

601
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,840
Speaker 1: certain parts of China. Living people have been married to

602
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:57,880
Speaker 1: corpses in secret rituals, as we've been discussing throughout this.

603
00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 1: But last year, for instance, in fifteen fourteen female corpses

604
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: were stolen from a village in shank Xi. Shank Xi

605
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 1: seems to be the place where a lot of this, uh,

606
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: these reports are coming out of. Uh. The likely reason

607
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:13,319
Speaker 1: was to make money off of them, selling them as

608
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 1: corpse brides. Again, in four men were sentenced to prison

609
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 1: for exhuming ten women's corpses to sell. Now you're probably wondering, well,

610
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:24,839
Speaker 1: why are they going to all this trouble right, Well,

611
00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:28,279
Speaker 1: the BBC article actually interviewed a guy. His name is

612
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:32,400
Speaker 1: Huang jing Chun and he's the head of a study

613
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:35,840
Speaker 1: on this at Shanghai University, and he said the price

614
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 1: of a young woman's corpse or its bone has risen significantly.

615
00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 1: They first started moderate monitoring this in two thousand and eight,

616
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:47,040
Speaker 1: and at that time a body would go for between

617
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:50,920
Speaker 1: thirty thousand to fifty thousand yen, which is roughly translated

618
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:54,720
Speaker 1: into forty five hundred or seventy five hundred U S dollars.

619
00:34:55,080 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: Today they're going for around a hundred thousand yen UH

620
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:02,799
Speaker 1: for almost fifty thousand U S dollars. So even though

621
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: the sale of corpses was outlawed in two thousand and six,

622
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:09,759
Speaker 1: it hasn't stopped grave robbers. Now. The connections between these

623
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:12,279
Speaker 1: are tenuous though, right like, all we know is that

624
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:14,800
Speaker 1: the police are just saying, well, we think it's because

625
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 1: of ghost marriages, but but who knows what the reasons

626
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:21,200
Speaker 1: are uh. And the reason why shang Zi keeps coming

627
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:23,640
Speaker 1: up as as an area where this seems to be

628
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: prevalent is because there's large numbers of young, unmarried men

629
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:29,799
Speaker 1: there and they work as coal miners, so they have

630
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: high fatalities. So the idea there is that there's there's

631
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:38,239
Speaker 1: a lot more dead young men there that haven't had

632
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:40,880
Speaker 1: the chance to marry. Yeah. In factor into that too,

633
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:45,560
Speaker 1: like a disproportionate balance between between male and females. Also,

634
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:47,799
Speaker 1: I read that like a number of the females in

635
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 1: the area are and just young people in general are

636
00:35:51,560 --> 00:35:55,319
Speaker 1: continue to be like siphoned off to the to the

637
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:59,360
Speaker 1: ever growing metropolitan areas of China. Yeah. I mean that

638
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 1: my general understanding of Chinese culture right now is that's

639
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: a fairly common phenomenon, right, Yeah, and that makes sense.

640
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:09,080
Speaker 1: It also reminds me though, of that that potential early

641
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 1: mention of it, where you had the elite criticizing um,

642
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:17,360
Speaker 1: the working class and the other way members of society

643
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:19,799
Speaker 1: for engaging in this, because it's ultimately kind of an

644
00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 1: elite privilege to not have to worry about this for

645
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:25,400
Speaker 1: the most part. Because I mean not to say that

646
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: tragedy does not strike the elite as well. I mean,

647
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:32,960
Speaker 1: certainly every every elite member of society has ever lived

648
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:36,120
Speaker 1: is also wound up in a hole in the ground. Uh,

649
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:41,920
Speaker 1: But certainly there are professions their trades. Uh within a society,

650
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:44,920
Speaker 1: would it puts you closer to death, closer to injury

651
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:47,640
Speaker 1: and uh and makes it more difficult for just the

652
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 1: normal shape of the family to maintain itself through time. Yeah,

653
00:36:51,719 --> 00:36:53,759
Speaker 1: I mean again, like this seems to me to be

654
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:57,320
Speaker 1: a point where we as Westerners can identify a little

655
00:36:57,320 --> 00:37:00,839
Speaker 1: bit with this practice. Right. So it's not the practice, sorry,

656
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:02,720
Speaker 1: I want to be clear, not the practice of murdering

657
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:06,719
Speaker 1: people or of robbing their graves, but the idea of, um,

658
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: that your son works as a minor, he's in a

659
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:14,319
Speaker 1: dangerous occupation, he dies at a young age before he's

660
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:18,240
Speaker 1: able to marry, and the that you, as a parent

661
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:22,359
Speaker 1: want to somehow bind his spirit so that he can

662
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: be honored in your family for eternity. Essentially. Yeah, I

663
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 1: think I think we can all relate to that on

664
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:31,160
Speaker 1: some level, at least, you know, we can. We can

665
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 1: sympathize with that if you want him to be remembered positively. Yeah. Now,

666
00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:40,000
Speaker 1: on the the so we've established it, there is to

667
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:44,600
Speaker 1: a certain degree a black market then for either either

668
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 1: stolen bodies or in rare cases, murdered individuals whose bodies

669
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: have been then sold. Uh my, my two, my two

670
00:37:53,520 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: cents on this. So while okay, so we have these

671
00:37:56,600 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 1: rare cases of murder, and of course these are to

672
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:05,000
Speaker 1: be condum time not at all um forgiving that, but uh,

673
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:08,040
Speaker 1: I want to pose an argument here, is the selling

674
00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:12,439
Speaker 1: of the dead for matrimonial purposes really worse uh than

675
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 1: the overt or essential selling of the living. And when

676
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: it comes to traditional marriages with around the world, you know,

677
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:25,360
Speaker 1: through dowries, arranged marriages, green card marriages, human trafficking, um,

678
00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: to say nothing of domestic abuses and homicides. According to

679
00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:33,320
Speaker 1: two thousand and thirteens the Global Prevalence of Intimate Partner

680
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:38,560
Speaker 1: Homicide a systematic review, at least one in seven homicides globally,

681
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:41,879
Speaker 1: and more than a third of female homicides are perpetrated

682
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:46,320
Speaker 1: by an intimate partner. So this idea that that marriage

683
00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:49,040
Speaker 1: and all of the social anxiety that we attached to

684
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:52,560
Speaker 1: marriage and too and to obtaining an intimate partner for

685
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 1: our life. To to think that this is this is

686
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:59,399
Speaker 1: something that never touches on death is ridiculous. I mean

687
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 1: it far more than is comfortable. It It touches on

688
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:06,880
Speaker 1: death and murder and uh and and and other miseries.

689
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 1: I think it is a thing that actually happens. It's

690
00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:12,799
Speaker 1: just I think it's rare, right that the idea of well,

691
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:14,799
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna kill somebody so

692
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:17,440
Speaker 1: that I can sell their body for you know, however

693
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:22,720
Speaker 1: many dollars. I don't think that this is like a

694
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:26,759
Speaker 1: rampaging practice occurring in the countryside of China, right, and

695
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:29,279
Speaker 1: is we're about to discuss um. You know, this is

696
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:32,359
Speaker 1: not the expression of this ritual is not an enigma um.

697
00:39:32,400 --> 00:39:34,400
Speaker 1: And we have a few different traditions we're going to

698
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 1: discuss here that we feel illustrates this the notion that

699
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 1: we can communicate with the spirits of the dead, and

700
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:43,200
Speaker 1: then there's there's some level of interaction between the two realms.

701
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:47,480
Speaker 1: This can be found in most religions, most spiritual traditions.

702
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 1: And uh, and I don't think it's really an extreme

703
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:55,239
Speaker 1: model at all to incorporate marriage to the dead and equation. Yeah. Well,

704
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 1: the first one that we can look at here is

705
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:00,600
Speaker 1: in Japan, where it's it's not all that different from

706
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:06,279
Speaker 1: the Chinese model. Very Yeah. I mean clearly there within

707
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 1: physical proximity to one another, so their cultural traditions can

708
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:13,359
Speaker 1: kind of sometimes bleed back and forth between nations. Uh.

709
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:16,280
Speaker 1: There's a book called Buy Me a Bride by Ellen

710
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:20,080
Speaker 1: Shot Schneider that I took a look at for this,

711
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:24,400
Speaker 1: uh was? She references how the Japanese performed this ritual.

712
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:27,759
Speaker 1: Their spirit marriage keeps the dead from being denied their

713
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 1: sexual and emotional fulfillment. This way, they don't torment the

714
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:36,439
Speaker 1: living with misfortune, possession, or illness. So somewhat similar, maybe

715
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:40,360
Speaker 1: a little grimmer than the Chinese version. Here's the difference.

716
00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:44,640
Speaker 1: The Japanese use dolls instead of living spouses, so they

717
00:40:44,680 --> 00:40:47,960
Speaker 1: marry the ghosts to these I guess their custom made dolls,

718
00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:49,440
Speaker 1: I would have to imagine. And this is in the

719
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 1: case of both grooms and brides. The style that's practices

720
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,880
Speaker 1: in China was also in Japan originally, but it shifted

721
00:40:56,880 --> 00:41:00,080
Speaker 1: to this doll ritual in and the reason why is

722
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:03,200
Speaker 1: because young single men were dying during war and it

723
00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 1: was hard to find them. All ghost brides and that

724
00:41:06,680 --> 00:41:10,600
Speaker 1: kind of traditional practice. So the ceremony goes like this.

725
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:13,480
Speaker 1: In Japan, a photo of a dead man is placed

726
00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:16,360
Speaker 1: in a glass case next to a doll to represent

727
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:19,560
Speaker 1: their union. This stays up in the family home for

728
00:41:19,680 --> 00:41:22,759
Speaker 1: thirty years. Then the man's spirit is considered to have

729
00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:26,200
Speaker 1: passed on to the next realm. Yeah, It's interesting. This

730
00:41:26,239 --> 00:41:28,719
Speaker 1: apparently arose as a new practice in Japan in the

731
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 1: forties and fifties among a sort of sort of a

732
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 1: grarian social classes. And it seems like the area where

733
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 1: it really originated was Okinawa, as mentioned at the top

734
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:41,399
Speaker 1: of the podcast, and this is an area where there's

735
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 1: a you know, a fair amount of Chinese influence as

736
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 1: well as some Korean influence as well. So then we

737
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 1: go from Japan all the way across the world to France. Ah. Yes,

738
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,239
Speaker 1: and I'm excited about this one because this one definitely

739
00:41:55,320 --> 00:42:00,200
Speaker 1: puts it in a Western framework. Yeah, I agree. Uh.

740
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 1: It's actually part of France's legal civil code in article

741
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:07,719
Speaker 1: one seventy one that the President of France can authorize

742
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 1: a marriage where one of the spouses is already dead. Now,

743
00:42:11,560 --> 00:42:14,719
Speaker 1: this was actually added to law in nineteen fifty nine,

744
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 1: and the reason why was a damn collapsed and it

745
00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:21,200
Speaker 1: killed four and twenty three people. The law was passed

746
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:25,280
Speaker 1: so that the bereaved could marry their dead fiances. Now

747
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:29,280
Speaker 1: and almost of the cases in France where the article

748
00:42:29,320 --> 00:42:32,799
Speaker 1: one seventy one is is uh invoked, I guess, and

749
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:36,320
Speaker 1: the president is requested for this. It's by women asking

750
00:42:36,360 --> 00:42:40,399
Speaker 1: to marry their their dead fiances. Um, but here's the thing.

751
00:42:40,440 --> 00:42:43,680
Speaker 1: The living person has to prove that the couple had

752
00:42:43,719 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: intended to marry, and they also have to have permission

753
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:50,360
Speaker 1: from the deceased family. This allows, for instance, for a

754
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:54,359
Speaker 1: pregnant woman to give birth to the deceased air. Now

755
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 1: that again getting back to patriarchal lineage and the importance

756
00:42:58,560 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 1: that it has in many syce sieties. You could see

757
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:03,919
Speaker 1: there why they would want the air to be able

758
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:06,600
Speaker 1: to have that name or whatever, depending on what the

759
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:09,839
Speaker 1: I guess like aristocratic nature of the family is. Yeah,

760
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:13,960
Speaker 1: that seems completely sensible to me. Now, another example from

761
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 1: from Western Uh civilization, and this is this is one

762
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:19,840
Speaker 1: this this is not a one to one comparison, but

763
00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:24,279
Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks had a tradition called epicleros Uh and

764
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:27,920
Speaker 1: it borders on similar principles in which the kinsman of

765
00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:30,960
Speaker 1: a dead man could fill in for him as a

766
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:34,359
Speaker 1: temporary property holder until his widow could produce a son

767
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:36,879
Speaker 1: to act as there And I would assume that by

768
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:39,400
Speaker 1: produce a son it means that the kinsman would be

769
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:42,680
Speaker 1: having sex with the widow. I'm not clear on that point.

770
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it's a situation where she is

771
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:52,399
Speaker 1: pregnant from the you know, already pregnant, or if it's

772
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:55,719
Speaker 1: like a gray area. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how

773
00:43:55,800 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 1: that that comes together. But you do see this idea

774
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:02,000
Speaker 1: of all right, we have a situation here, she doesn't

775
00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 1: we need to protect the rights of the child. What

776
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:08,719
Speaker 1: can we do too, It's sort of like a placeholder. Well,

777
00:44:08,719 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: there's actually a very similar practice in southern Sudan. So

778
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:15,880
Speaker 1: the tradition there is within the new Air ethnic group,

779
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:19,200
Speaker 1: and it's very similar to what you just described. In Greece.

780
00:44:19,239 --> 00:44:22,399
Speaker 1: If a man dies without male heirs, his kinsman will

781
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:26,080
Speaker 1: marry his wife in the dead man's name. Now, this

782
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:30,160
Speaker 1: kinsman then behaves socially like a husband, but the ghost

783
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 1: is considered the father of any air that they produce. Okay,

784
00:44:34,520 --> 00:44:38,000
Speaker 1: So so if the kinsman and the and the wife

785
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 1: produce a son, then he worships the son, worships the

786
00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:48,560
Speaker 1: ghost as his actual father, even though biologically the ghost

787
00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:52,480
Speaker 1: isn't involved. Uh. And usually this is conducted to secure

788
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:57,000
Speaker 1: property for somebody, like a dead man who died in

789
00:44:57,000 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 1: a feud um, and this price is paid out by

790
00:44:59,440 --> 00:45:02,680
Speaker 1: something that's blood wealth from those who are responsible for

791
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:06,720
Speaker 1: the death. The woman receives this payment during the ghost marriage,

792
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 1: and that's known as the bride price. Sounds very Game

793
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:13,279
Speaker 1: of Thrones E yeah. I mean it ultimately comes down

794
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:17,400
Speaker 1: to like what is what is essential moving forward for

795
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:19,560
Speaker 1: the survivors, Like how much of it is is like

796
00:45:19,600 --> 00:45:23,799
Speaker 1: a purely legal property situation, how much of it is uh,

797
00:45:23,920 --> 00:45:26,960
Speaker 1: you know, concerns of the spiritual and on as far

798
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:29,520
Speaker 1: as concerns of the spiritual go. The next example is

799
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:33,279
Speaker 1: really key here, and this is from the Church of

800
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 1: Latter Day Saints. Yep, this is right here in the

801
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 1: United States of America. So if you've been listening to

802
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:40,719
Speaker 1: this episode and you've been like, oh, this is so

803
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:43,719
Speaker 1: weird that they do this in these other places, it's

804
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:47,840
Speaker 1: so foreign, Well, there are similar practices that are conducted

805
00:45:47,960 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 1: right here right now. I do have to say this.

806
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:54,600
Speaker 1: I have seen this sometimes scandalized by like like certain

807
00:45:54,760 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 1: uh like for instance, chick tracks un from a from

808
00:45:58,680 --> 00:46:02,759
Speaker 1: a you know, a very servative Protestant perspective where they're saying, oh, well,

809
00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 1: the Church of Latter Day Saints is weird, and let's

810
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:07,600
Speaker 1: explain what chick track is. A chick track is like

811
00:46:07,640 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 1: a comic book that's produced by a religious organization that

812
00:46:12,840 --> 00:46:18,839
Speaker 1: sort of condemns a way of life. Is that about right? Yeah? Satirically, yeah,

813
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:22,000
Speaker 1: it's I have you know, if you haven't seen one,

814
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:25,360
Speaker 1: check do you just google chick tracks. You'll find a

815
00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 1: whole archive of them. Generally, the whole point was to

816
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:32,000
Speaker 1: scare children out of doing things or believing in certain things,

817
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:34,800
Speaker 1: and in my experience, attended to backfire because we have

818
00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 1: cool monster illustrations to make you think, whoa, it's like

819
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:40,759
Speaker 1: those TV specials in the eighties that told you that

820
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons would make you worship the devil and

821
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 1: turn you evil. Exactly. Of course, everybody started playing dungeons,

822
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 1: and so I'm pretty sure there were some that the

823
00:46:48,840 --> 00:46:51,920
Speaker 1: targeted um that the Church of Latter day Saints for

824
00:46:52,280 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 1: this idea of celestial marriage. So celestial marriage is just

825
00:46:56,719 --> 00:47:00,640
Speaker 1: the idea that marriage last beyond the grave eternity, and

826
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 1: it's one of three major doctrines that were presented by

827
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:06,880
Speaker 1: church founder Joseph Smith in the early eighteen forties. And

828
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:10,200
Speaker 1: these are the three Baptism for the dead, and this

829
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:14,919
Speaker 1: guaranteed deceased relatives membership in the church, eternal marriage which

830
00:47:15,000 --> 00:47:19,320
Speaker 1: united living husbands and wives after death, and then proxy marriage,

831
00:47:19,360 --> 00:47:22,879
Speaker 1: which linked spouses to their deceased partners. Yeah. So the

832
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:26,839
Speaker 1: idea here, as I understand it is matrimony within this

833
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 1: faith is also called ceiling by doctrine, and what the

834
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 1: what it means is very I think it's a similar

835
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:38,040
Speaker 1: understanding the most marriage systems, especially in religion. It binds

836
00:47:38,080 --> 00:47:40,440
Speaker 1: a couple to one another for the rest of their lives,

837
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:45,200
Speaker 1: but also beyond into eternity. Uh, and it allows for

838
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 1: a wedding ceremony to be performed for those who have

839
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: already died. Yeah, so you know, it's uh, it's not

840
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:56,080
Speaker 1: that alien. No, I think that's the that's the point

841
00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:58,440
Speaker 1: I definitely want to drive drive home with this episode

842
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:01,959
Speaker 1: that on one hand, yeah, it's it's totally fascinating to

843
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:04,520
Speaker 1: to to look into another culture and and find this

844
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:08,200
Speaker 1: thing that that this mode of belief, this motive behavior

845
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:11,480
Speaker 1: that it seems rather different from the way we we

846
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 1: do things within our own culture. But then on the

847
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:15,960
Speaker 1: other hand, that like the next level of interaction is

848
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 1: then to realize how much it has in common with

849
00:48:19,640 --> 00:48:21,920
Speaker 1: with all with the beliefs you may have, or at

850
00:48:21,960 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: least beliefs that are present in your immediate community. Well,

851
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:28,719
Speaker 1: our producer No brought up before we started recording. He said, well,

852
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 1: it's not all that different from that movie Ghosts, the

853
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:35,160
Speaker 1: Patrick Swat Demi Moore joint. Uh So when you think

854
00:48:35,160 --> 00:48:38,200
Speaker 1: about it that way, I guess you can identify with it. Yeah,

855
00:48:38,200 --> 00:48:42,400
Speaker 1: that's the thing, Like, even if your your your written

856
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:45,440
Speaker 1: religious beliefs don't line up with it, we still have

857
00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:49,840
Speaker 1: this whole realm of pop culture supernaturalism that you know,

858
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:52,680
Speaker 1: you may just dismiss it as fiction with your rational mind,

859
00:48:52,719 --> 00:48:56,560
Speaker 1: but in the irrational color corners of your mind, all

860
00:48:56,560 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 1: that stuff still resonates and it actually ends up informing

861
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:02,680
Speaker 1: the way you you may you may interact with the world.

862
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:06,439
Speaker 1: So we'd love to hear from you about this. Tell us, Uh,

863
00:49:06,520 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 1: you know what you think about these ghost marriage practices.

864
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:12,360
Speaker 1: Most importantly, I'm really curious people who have lived in

865
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:16,799
Speaker 1: China or Chinese listeners, if you've had personal experiences with these,

866
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:19,279
Speaker 1: let us know about them, or if you're from one

867
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:21,319
Speaker 1: of the other cultures that we just briefly mentioned at

868
00:49:21,320 --> 00:49:24,120
Speaker 1: the end here. Again, we'd love to know more about it.

869
00:49:24,160 --> 00:49:27,040
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll be able to read something that you sent

870
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:29,480
Speaker 1: to us on a listener mail episode in the future. Yeah,

871
00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:31,400
Speaker 1: we haven't. I know, we have a number of Asian

872
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:34,160
Speaker 1: and Asian American listeners. We have a number of Mormon

873
00:49:34,200 --> 00:49:37,000
Speaker 1: listeners as well. Yeah, you know, let us know. Let

874
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 1: give us your your two cents on the topic. So

875
00:49:39,080 --> 00:49:40,640
Speaker 1: the way to do that is you can hit us

876
00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: up on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram.

877
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 1: You should be able to find this episode on all

878
00:49:48,040 --> 00:49:50,400
Speaker 1: of those platforms, and you could just write to us

879
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:53,399
Speaker 1: through those platforms as well, pretty much all of them.

880
00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:58,640
Speaker 1: We are blow the Mind or some variation of that phrase.

881
00:49:59,160 --> 00:50:01,600
Speaker 1: That's right, and be sure to check out stuff to

882
00:50:01,600 --> 00:50:04,480
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. Uh, that is the website.

883
00:50:04,520 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: It's been updated and hey, if you want to get

884
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:09,399
Speaker 1: in touch with us the old fashioned way, reach out

885
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:11,600
Speaker 1: to us at blow the Mind and how stuff works

886
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:23,440
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

887
00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:47,880
Speaker 1: Is that how stuff works dot com.