Alpha
06-18-2009, 11:52 AM
I had never heard of this until I read this article....thought I'd share.
'Ghost Bride' Practice Continues in China (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5541242/Teenage-girl-dug-up-to-be-corpse-bride.html)
Five people have been arrested in China for digging up the corpse of a young woman to be a "ghost bride" for a man killed in a car crash.
The suspects included a grieving father who allegedly paid his four accomplices around £2,700 pounds to find a female to be his son's companion in the afterlife.
The men were caught after unearthing the remains of a teenage girl who had poisoned herself after failing her university entrance exams last year. In rural China, superstitious villagers have for centuries sought out the bodies of recently deceased woman to be ghost brides for young men who die single.
Marriage ceremonies are conducted for the two corpses, and the bride is placed in the same grave as her husband............................
The Ghost Brides of China
They are murdered to give dead bachelors a wife in the afterlife.
A ring of gangsters who traded in the bodies of women they murdered, selling them as brides to keep dead bachelors happy in the afterlife, has been arrested in China.
The arrests have exposed a trade that places a higher value on women when they are dead than when they are alive.
• Traditional Chinese belief holds that the living must tend to the wants and needs of dead relatives, who exist in an afterlife
• The tradition manifests itself in the burning of fake money or paper models of luxury goods
• It is believed by some that an unmarried life is incomplete, leading to the practice of minghun — burying single sons with recently dead young women to provide them with a wife in the afterlife
• Parents of a dead daughter often regard the money received in selling her for minghun as recompense for the dowry that they did not receive in her lifetime, while also posthumously elevating their child’s place in a patriarchal society........................................... .
The men preyed on the superstitions of ill-educated farmers eager to ensure that a dead son was happy in the afterlife. It is not uncommon in rural parts of China for a family to seek out the body of a woman who has died to be buried alongside their son after the performance of a marriage ceremony for the deceased pair.
Ancestor worship is a tradition that runs through many aspects of Chinese life. One of the main Chinese festivals is Tomb Sweeping Day, when families visit graves of their forebears to clean them and burn incense. The spirit is believed to live on in the afterlife and at funerals families burn offerings of paper money and models of houses, cars and other little luxuries that the dead may need.
Complete Article and article continues (http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2009/06/ghost-bride-practice-continues-in-china.html)
'Ghost Bride' Practice Continues in China (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5541242/Teenage-girl-dug-up-to-be-corpse-bride.html)
Five people have been arrested in China for digging up the corpse of a young woman to be a "ghost bride" for a man killed in a car crash.
The suspects included a grieving father who allegedly paid his four accomplices around £2,700 pounds to find a female to be his son's companion in the afterlife.
The men were caught after unearthing the remains of a teenage girl who had poisoned herself after failing her university entrance exams last year. In rural China, superstitious villagers have for centuries sought out the bodies of recently deceased woman to be ghost brides for young men who die single.
Marriage ceremonies are conducted for the two corpses, and the bride is placed in the same grave as her husband............................
The Ghost Brides of China
They are murdered to give dead bachelors a wife in the afterlife.
A ring of gangsters who traded in the bodies of women they murdered, selling them as brides to keep dead bachelors happy in the afterlife, has been arrested in China.
The arrests have exposed a trade that places a higher value on women when they are dead than when they are alive.
• Traditional Chinese belief holds that the living must tend to the wants and needs of dead relatives, who exist in an afterlife
• The tradition manifests itself in the burning of fake money or paper models of luxury goods
• It is believed by some that an unmarried life is incomplete, leading to the practice of minghun — burying single sons with recently dead young women to provide them with a wife in the afterlife
• Parents of a dead daughter often regard the money received in selling her for minghun as recompense for the dowry that they did not receive in her lifetime, while also posthumously elevating their child’s place in a patriarchal society........................................... .
The men preyed on the superstitions of ill-educated farmers eager to ensure that a dead son was happy in the afterlife. It is not uncommon in rural parts of China for a family to seek out the body of a woman who has died to be buried alongside their son after the performance of a marriage ceremony for the deceased pair.
Ancestor worship is a tradition that runs through many aspects of Chinese life. One of the main Chinese festivals is Tomb Sweeping Day, when families visit graves of their forebears to clean them and burn incense. The spirit is believed to live on in the afterlife and at funerals families burn offerings of paper money and models of houses, cars and other little luxuries that the dead may need.
Complete Article and article continues (http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2009/06/ghost-bride-practice-continues-in-china.html)