Hell Money

Hell Money on the Streets of Hue City

While I was walking down the street in Hue City yesterday, I noticed a large amount of hell money laying around.  Though this is not unusual for me to see, it is something that must seem very strange to someone who hasn't lived in Vietnam or any other Asian country.  Hell money is known in Vietnamese as "tiền âm phủ" and is a category from a larger group of offerings - known as votives - called "vàng mã" in Vietnamese.  Votives in general are small offerings of material items that represent anything from motorbikes, cars, houses, and money that are burned and sent to those family members who have died in the hopes of gaining favor - or luck - in this world from those dearly departed.  Though there are references to heaven and hell in the Vietnamese language, my take is that people are generally thought to go to hell when they die (not necessarily the "fire and brimstone"-kind, but rather the "not living anymore"-kind.)  In hell, these people still need, or long for, those material items they had when they were alive.

The use of votives as offerings are not specific to Asia and even go back to ancient Roman and Greek times.  Doing research on this, I found that tossing a coin in a wishing well can be traced back to the use of votives to gain favor from supernatural forces.  This is something Mom never told me, but in retrospect, the granted wish had to come from somewhere, didn't it?

In Vietnam, this money is used mostly during funerals (ma chay) and on the anniversary of the death date (đám giỗ) of a relative, although it is also used on specific occasions leading up to Tet - the Vietnamese Lunar New Year.  My guess is that the money I saw yesterday was thrown from a funeral procession as it passed.

This money has been considered by Vietnamese authorities as wasteful and, in cases where the money looks too much like real money, even fraudulent.  Though it may be wasteful, I doubt that the villages that produce these votives would like to see this religious practice go the way of the dinosaur.  I still remember when firecrackers were determined illegal.  The authorities had to provide aid and assistance to entire villages and communities whose sole source of income came from the production of fireworks.  It would stand to reason, a similar assistance program would be needed for those villages and communities dedicated to the making of votives if it was determined illegal to produce.

Hell Money in U.S. Dollars only come in C-notes

With regards to the fraudulent use of hell money, I found an article describing the different pranks that teenagers have pulled with fellow students and vendors who operate around the schools.  In one instance, a boy described finding some hell money made from polymer (a plastic material that is used to make Vietnamese currency) that looked very much like a 200,000 Dong note.  Just as he picked it up, other students - the pranksters - descended on him and congratulated him on his luck.  They even talked him into buying refreshments at a local cafe to celebrate his good fortune.  When they had finished their coffee and sodas, he pulled out the money to pay, only then discovering that it was fake.  The other students acted shocked and he still had to pay for the drinks with his own money.  He later found out this was a prank and found new friends. 

When I was photographing this money on the streets of Hue, not a few people watched me curiously, and even one felt the need to explain to me with exaggerated gestures that the money was fake.  He didn't know that Diep has, on many occasions, explained to me not to pick up things I see on the streets.