Today is the ghost festival – a celebration for the dead. Most of the people that I’ve spoken to about it seem to take it fairly seriously, deciding to not go out in the evening to give the ghosts their space. Evidently they roam all over the place and can look like normal people, but it’s not trouble until they ask if you have a lighter. If you accept and the ghost lights a cigarette with your lighter, the flame burning is your soul and your death should follow shortly afterwards. It puzzles me that Chinese people believe in ghosts without really believing in a God, but this tradition is thousands of years old.
So, I guess I’ll stay in tonight!