1999mar04. ASIAN CULTURE WEEK WRAP-UP.(*)
My friend Doc wrote me earlier today. He said:
this morning i erased the white board on which i’d been adding a new bible verse each day, on the subject of, basically, how crappy people are. it had been making people nervous. this afternoon i remarked, as i do almost every day, “i need to make a lot of money real fast.” someone asked whether i had a plan to do that. i went back to the white board & wrote my plan:
“MY KINGDOM FOR A SKI MASK”
Oh my! I have several BILLION DOLLARS that I can give Mr. Doc, but I don’t think he’ll want to retrieve any of it – because he’ll have to pick ’em up IN HELL!!!! [saucy reverb] Yes, I’ve got BILLION DOLLAR HELL NOTES!!!! [haunting reverb]
What the hell are Hell Notes?, you ask. I will tell you. I will tell you what the Hell Notes are. First, let’s take a look at one. Here’s a ONE BILLION DOLLAR HELL NOTE. It’s one of the biggest, baby, clocking in at ten by five inches! Nothing but the best for my little reader (here the web ro-bot tickles you under the chin with Microsoft’s Ticklebot 99. Oh, oh JESUS! GOOD LORD!!!! Ummm, don’t worry, it’ll grow back ... it’ll grow back).
front! (ding ding!)
back!
There are several denominations of Hell Notes, from a one-dollar bill up to (at least) the one billion dollar note. The Chinese create this money to be used in the afterlife. The Chinese afterlife is pretty much the same as here, you work (that IS hell!), have to spend money and provide for your family, etc. The hell money is transported from this world to the afterlife by burning it. The money is traditionally burned after a funeral, or during the Chinese new year. It doesn’t stop at money – the place where I picked these bills up also had Hell shoes – shoes to burn, made out of cardboard. There are other various consumer items available elsewhere; a friend of mine saw a Hell VCR once. I have read of ersatz cars and houses being assembled just to be burned.
The tradition itself is frowned upon by the Chinese government (you know, if I had a Hell Dollar for every time I saw that phrase ... ). In the interest of the environment, they suggest burning one blank check for the deceased. There are also Hell Credit Cards issued by at least one bank in Taiwan.
The reason they’re called HELL notes is rather funny – it comes from Christian missionaries visiting China in the 19th century, happily explaining to the Chinese where they’d all end up. I love this attitude – “call it whatever you want, we’re still going to keep our traditions and beliefs.”
I’ve decided to gather up a bunch of Hell Notes and burn them for my own twisted reasons ... I’m burning them to transport ‘em across TIME – across a very pernicious moment in time when my bank account may go up in smoke.
NOTES NOTE: This money is VERY, VERY cheap in this world. I got about 34 one billion dollar Hell Notes for ninety-five cents and I think that several of the other denominations go for less (as they are smaller). Unless you HAVE to have Hell Notes (and aren’t near a major city), don’t buy them off the web – the prices I’ve seen are ridiculously high.
(*) Friday is always “Friday Free Day,” ever since the 8th grade. It sort of stuck. It’s a caution at work. If something is destroying you that day, you just sort of twitch, blurt out “FRIDAY FREE DAY!” and run out of the office. Oh sure, sometimes I come back and there are security guards waiting with a box labelled “LOSER,” but I think the tradition should be kept alive at all costs.