Several years ago, I wrote the following post about the 'Ghost Brides' tradition in China. I am reposting the information after receiving an explanation request from a reader.
A dead woman gets married off twice
In a shocking incident in China, a dead woman was found to be married off not once but twice.
A family sold their daughter's corpse for about $5,000 to a man who wanted to perform a marriage ceremony between two dead bodies. It is known as 'yin' marriage in China, reports Global Times.
After the wedding ceremony with a difference, the dead couple were buried in the same tomb. However, it was later discovered that the grave was dug up and the deceased bride's body was missing from the tomb.
The matter was immediately reported to the police and the investigating authorities found that a group of five men had stolen the corpse and sold it off to another interested party for an exorbitant amount for yet another yin marriage ceremony.
NOTE: The following is a post from 2009 that explains this practice in China. Lon
'Ghost Bride' Practice Continues in China
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 women 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.
Under Chairman Mao's rule, officials made strenuous efforts to stamp out the ghoulish practice but it has since resurfaced in some rural areas.
Last year, a gang in southern China was arrested for strangling young women to sell as ghost brides when the supply of female corpses in their area ran short.
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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 ming hun — 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 ming hun 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
• Communist authorities tried to ban the practice, which dates from the Zhou dynasty (1122-256BC). It was also forbidden in the Book of Rites, texts that describe religious practices from the eighth to the fifth century BC
• Minghun survives mainly in the poor rural north, particularly in the remote plateau on the upper reaches of the Yellow River
Yang Dongyan, 35, was arrested in Sha’anxi province as he played cards with his children. In his prison cell, Yang showed little remorse for committing two murders. He told the Legal Daily: “I just wanted to make money. It’s a quick way to make money. I was arrested too soon otherwise I had planned to do this business a few more times.”
Two accomplices, Liu Shengbao and Hui Haibao, were also arrested, as was Li Longsheng, a self-styled undertaker who traded the bodies to bereaved families.
Zhang Yanjun, chief of police in Yanchuan County, said: “It’s lucky that the case was cleared up in time or we don’t know how many women would have been killed by them. These people thought they had found a shortcut to wealth.” Instead, they face the death penalty.
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.
Yang chanced upon the trade in dead bodies when he paid 12,000 yuan (£800) for a mentally handicapped woman whose family hoped to marry her off for a price. The trade in women as wives is a common practice in rural China and a woman may be sold several times by intermediaries before meeting her eventual husband.
Yang arranged for the woman to stay in a guesthouse in Yanchuan County where Mr Liu offered him $1,310 for her. Yang refused until Liu told him the woman would be worth much more dead than alive. The next morning the two men set out across the Yellow River to meet “Old Li” in Xixian County, Shanxi province. Old Li agreed to buy the woman’s body for $2,067 and to complete the deal late at night on the Yanshuiguan Bridge.
The next day Yang killed the woman and took her body by taxi to the bridge where Mr Li was waiting and handed over $1,969 for her. For his part in the deal, Mr Liu received $590 and Yang came away with a loss of $394 after his expenses.
Back at the guesthouse, Yang told an old acquaintance, Hui, he had found an easy way to make money. The two men agreed to go into the body business together. Last November they sought out a prostitute they knew in nearby Yan’an — the city where Chairman Mao began his Communist revolution — but she threw them out after they said that they could not afford to pay her $40. They returned the next morning and killed her.
On December 3 they completed a similar body handover with Li on the bridge. This time they made only $1,043 because the buyer was unhappy with the quality of the body and, after costs, Yang and his two friends each earned $196 on that deal.
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Contact me by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974
Thanks. Lon
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DOPPELGÄNGERS: SHOULD WE FEAR THEM? | Join Us For LIVE CHAT | Questions & Answers #Doppelgänger
Have you ever met someone who looked just like you? Perhaps you’ve walked up to a person you thought you knew only to find they were a stranger. If so, you may have met a real-life doppelgänger.
What is a doppelgänger? The word comes from German meaning “double goer.” Today, it’s often used to describe two strangers who look so much alike they could be twins. Seeing a doppelgänger can be startling. That’s true whether it’s a person who looks just like you or someone who could be your friend’s twin. It’s no wonder, then, that doppelgängers are also common in frightening stories.
Many times, a doppelgänger is the double of another character. They are like the character in many ways, most often in looks. However, the things that make them different are more important. The doppelgänger often differs from the main character in the values they hold. This results in them making choices that lead them down a different path. For example, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson. In this story, both characters share the same body. However, they are opposites, with Dr. Jekyll representing good and Mr. Hyde evil.
There is also a historical attribute to this phenomenon. President Abraham Lincoln supposedly saw his doppelgänger when he saw two faces in the mirror on the night of his first election in 1860. The second face was pale and sickly, which his wife, Mary, interpreted as a sign of death or sickness during his second term. Only a few months after his second election, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
So, what do you think a doppelgänger represents? Listen to these accounts and form your opinion.
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Have you had a sighting or encounter?
Contact us by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974
Thanks. Lon
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