What is Ghost shopping?

Posted by ugfanfan on January 19th, 2015

What is curious about this market is that it not only provides for the living, but for the ghosts of the dead as well. There are several stalls selling paper clothes, shoes, houses and other luxury articles; all presumably meant to make 'life' in the after world more pleasant. One stall in particular was selling the most exquisite miniature paper shoes, and the Bai ladies were buying them by the bag-full.

At one point we were drawn away from the main street by a large group of middle-aged and ancient ladies, sitting on wooden benches, singing and tapping small wooden instruments. To one side, there were several other grannies, busy folding and burning coloured pieces of paper. When we asked them what they were doing they explained that they were singing, or praying, to the dead and burning prayers. It was apparently the auspicious and appropriate time of the month for doing this.

PRACTICALITIES: Location: Wase is situated on the eastern side of Lake Erhai, about 350 kilometres north of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan. Apparently, the Wase market used to take place every 5 days, but it is now held on Saturday mornings, and runs well into the afternoon. Besides the obvious attraction of the market, the town is full of wonderful traditional Bai homes and mansions, characterised by their sturdy adobe walls and painted doorways.

There are numerous other markets in the various Bai villages around Lake Erhai. The most famous and popular is the Monday market at Shaping, about 33 kilometres from Dali. Even in January 1991, Shaping market was already pretty touristy, though interesting. These days, Wase's Saturday market hasn't been swamped by the tourist hordes from Dali yet.

Grace Fan is a travel expert from chinatourdotcom which provides a full range of travel service such as affordable China tours, China city tours, China day tours, Tibet Travel, Guilin tours, Yangtze River tour and Shanghai tours  so on..

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Joined: September 5th, 2014
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