Cars, bank notes and TVs were going up in flames one chilly winter morning in the parking lot of Universal Chung Wah Funeral Home in Alhambra.
Thirteen white-clad relatives of Dam Lam, 87, formed a circle, each cradling a stack of paper models: a foot-long 747 jetliner, a black-and-gold car sitting in the courtyard of a 2-foot-tall, red-tiled paper mansion. One by one, the items were thrown into the fire licking out of a 4-by-4-foot wheeled container, charred from years of use.
Lam would need the items in heaven, his family said.
Chinese mourners have been burning funeral paper -- known as joss paper, or dzi-dzat -- for centuries. Traditionally, stacks of bamboo or rice paper bank notes were burned in braziers before the body of the deceased was lowered into the ground.
Practitioners of the ritual, derived from a mix of Taoism, Buddhism and regional folklore, believe that burning paper money equates to making advance deposits into an afterlife bank account that the deceased's spirit can access in heaven.
Sales usually jump around Chinese New Year, which fell on Thursday this year. Shops also offer deep discounts during Ghost Month, often referred to as the Chinese version of Halloween, which this year begins Aug. 1. Many believe that spirits spend the month sniffing for souls to take, prompting the superstitious to crowd dzi-dzat stores looking for offerings to appease dead relatives.
Demand for increasingly extravagant dzi-dzat models is booming in Asia and in Southern California's large Chinese community, fueled by devoted family members who regularly burn care packages on festival days, birthdays -- even the day after they dream about the deceased.
The Chinese immigrants who arrived in the U.S. between the 1950s and the 1970s are beginning to die, and their relatives are flocking to funeral homes to brush up on the ritual.
"For some people who cannot buy the actual items, they pursue the desire in the paper-goods form," said Xin Zhao, a professor of international marketing at the University of Hawaii. "It's like vicariously having them."
Lately, Southern California Chinese have become very particular about what they take to heaven, opting for fashionable upgrades of older dzi-dzat models, funeral workers said. Which explains the paper cellphones, paper DVD players, paper jewelry and clothing. It also explains why mourners purchase paper laptops: so their dead kin can keep track of the paper credit cards that came with them.
