China's ghost weddings, a practice that may send a chill down your spine: All you need to know

To find a groom or a bride for single people, we put their profiles on the net on different matrimonial apps and sites, or let them live if they want to remain single, but did you know that in China there was an ancient practice of ghost weddings? Scroll down to know what it is all about and how it is deadly.


Those who believe in the custom, have been practicing it for 3000 years. This practice ensures that the unmarried get married to people when they are dead so that they are not single in their afterlife.


Originally, this practice was strictly for the dead but in recent times, one living person is married to a corpse.


In the traditional ghost marriage concept, the bride’s family asks for a heavy price and dowry from the groom’s side in the form of paper tributes. Age, family background are very important here and families also hire a Feng Shui master for a matchmaking job.


The wedding ceremony involves a funeral plaque for the groom, bride and there is a banquet. The most eerie act is when they have to dig up the bones of the bride and put them in the groom’s grave.


In the present times, there have been cases where a living person has been married off to a dead one in a secret ritual. According to Huang Jingchun, the head of the Chinese department at Shanghai University, the price of the bride's bones, especially if they are young, has risen a lot. As per his research, the bones could get the family 30,000 to 50,000 yuan. These prices can go upto 100, 000 yuan as well. This sale of corpses was banned in 2006 but there are grave robbers who make a business out of it. There have been murders of women so that they can make money today.


Why is this practiced

As per many Chinese people, if they do not fulfill the wishes of the dead, misfortune is brought upon them. A ghost wedding means they are pacifying the dead. This ritual is practiced in northern and central China, areas such as Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan provinces. But BBC quoted Szeto Fat-ching, a Feng Shui master in Hong Kong, as saying that “the ancient form of the custom still exists among Chinese communities in South East Asia.”


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