The Paper Offerings Handbook 祭祀品礼俗手册 is a guide designed to assist the younger generation, particularly those who may lack familiarity with Chinese culture and rituals. The insights shared in Brenda’s guide are derived from conversations with numerous aunties and uncles who actively practise these rituals, providing valuable firsthand knowledge. Through engaging with this handbook, Brenda hopes that individuals can reconcile with their roots, fostering a sense of belonging and appreciation for traditional customs passed down through generations.

Let's talk about your cultural heritage. Do you and your family practise these rituals?

They do these rituals, but only on specific events. We don't go very in depth into it and half the time, only my dad goes down to do it himself. He doesn't ask us to go with him, like when I was younger. So I myself don't know what to do and even when he did teach me before, he just said oh, just bow, just burn that, just throw that in the fire. I never understood why I was doing it. But recently, as my parents are getting older, I thought about it and if they passed on, I wouldn’t know what to do.

That's why I decided to do this project. I did try to Google about it, but I feel like religion can be quite intimidating. So, I wanted to make it slightly easier for people to learn how to do this when they need to, and if they need to.

What have you learned from talking to your parents or other people about these rituals so far?

I talked to people's parents who are more into it. So Caryl and Geraldine, their parents are a bit more into the whole religion thing. So I asked them to help me talk to their parents. I also found a 24 year old guy that started documenting his Taoist journey on TikTok. I got to talk to him and during our call, he had his shifu there. It was quite funny. Then I found out that the whole act of burning paper is not actually a religious ritual. In Taoist and Buddhist scriptures, they don't need you to do it. Burning offerings is a Chinese culture thing. It stemmed down from the olden rituals where they gave human and animal sacrifices. Then this is basically a very toned down version of that. You just burn paper money, paper clothes, stuff like that. I think that was the one interesting thing I found out.

The scriptures also say that there's no need to burn offerings because the people you're sacrificing these things to — deities and gods; they don't need your money. They don't need anything from you, actually. They're self sufficient. But people still do it to just show appreciation.

Now let's talk a bit about your work. I remember you talked about how you were breaking down the symbolism and the imagery of the illustrations on the hell notes. Could you talk about your process and what insights you've gathered from that?

At the start of my project, I wanted to deconstruct the bank hell notes. And then while I was deconstructing it, I actually found out that there was no point in me deconstructing these things when nobody really understands what is useful, which is why my project took a very big turn and I ended up doing a whole handbook and guide. But a lot of the animal symbolism is actually quite interesting because they stand for very different things in Chinese and Western mythology. In Chinese mythology, they have their own little creatures. So they have a half-lion, half-dragon creature. Something like that. And it has its own meaning and everything.

My project currently is more informational and instructional, and I’ve moved on to making a whole kit for the seventh month and Qing Ming. It comes with an informational guide if you do want to learn more about these things; as well as instructional manuals on how and where to burn. They will have little guides on how to fold the little Yuan Baos (gold ingots). I couldn’t put real joss paper inside because I don't think it's very appropriate, but I made my own little fake joss paper so that people can practise folding the Yuan Baos.