Something is always on fire in Taiwan
Here's why buckets of flames occasionally burn outside businesses.
Often the floating ashes or the smell reach you first. It’s a common sight on this island: A sooty steel basket sits ablaze in front of a business or apartment, while an employee or resident feeds the flames with a stack of thin red and yellow papers. Sometimes the fire is the entirety of the ritual, but other times it burns in front of a folding table piled with cooked and packaged food, from glossy roasted duck to chocolate-covered Pocky sticks. I saw a lot of them yesterday, May 23, which encouraged me to check and confirm that it was indeed the morning of a full moon.
The most succinct explanation that has been offered to me is that the ritual represents a communication with the deceased, with ghosts, with ancestors, with the divine. The small pages are joss paper, a sort of spiritual money, and are akin to slipping your departed loved ones cash to go get themselves a nice meal or buy a special something—and in pleasing them, get their blessing or input or grace on some vexing issue. The ceremony might happen during Ghost Month, or on the 15th day of the lunar month, or on a date that carries some sort of numerical significance for the firestarter; it’s a very hot reminder of Taiwan’s special blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. When I ask Taiwanese people about the significance of a fire I’ve just seen, it’s usually explained away with a hand wave about the actually dominant religion here: “We’re just really superstitious.”
