Zhōngyuán (Ghost Festival)

When it falls

The fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, under a full moon, in August or early September. The whole month is the ghost month; this is its middle night.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

The gates of the lower world are held to stand open for the month, and the dead to come up — the ones with descendants to feed them and the ones without, who are the hungry ghosts the festival is named for.

The Buddhist telling is Mùlián, a disciple who found his mother reborn among them, her throat too narrow to swallow. The Buddha told him he could not free her alone but could with the whole assembly of monks, which is where the offering on this day comes from.

It is not a frightening festival so much as a careful one. What is being taken care of is the dead nobody else is taking care of.

How the day is kept

• Food set out on the street and at the roadside, and an extra place laid at the table.
• Paper money, paper houses, paper cars and paper servants burnt in metal drums.
• Opera and concerts staged in the open with the front row of seats left empty, because the front row is not for the living.
• Water lanterns floated downstream on the last night to show the dead the way back.

More ancestors and remembrance