It seems that fake paper money is no longer good enough for the dead of Taiwan, where relatives traditionally burn make-believe cash to help ease the passage of their deceased loved ones through the byways of the netherworld.
Instead, many people now opt to provide ancestral ghosts with more elaborate paper gifts — models of everything from Ferraris to iPhones and even villas.
Many Taiwanese believe that burning a paper model makes a version of the item available to the dead in the spirit world. For centuries, fake money was the primary gift for the dead. The first week after someone died was reserved for burning thick wads of yellow-colored paper cash.
Recently, Taiwanese have increasingly turned to sophisticated paper models. They reflect a new desire to ensure that the dearly departed take with them what they need, rather than what may be useless wads of bills in a place where buying opportunities have never been convincingly documented.
Taiwanese firms making the new-style paper gifts report booming business ahead of Monday’s Tomb-Sweeping Day, when millions of people across Asia pay respects to their ancestors and dead relatives.
The Sky-Home Shop (天國之屋) — one of several shops advertised on the Internet — looks like an up-market salon for billionaires, but its prices are within reach of many ordinary Taiwanese.
Pet houses, slot-machines, racing cars, villas and even private jets go for anywhere between NT$4,000 (US$125) and NT$25,000.
“Everything is handmade,” said Sky Home owner Huang Chih-kuo (黃志國).
“A car has a steering-wheel and seats that may be made of paper but actually look like genuine leather,” Huang said.
He said he takes special orders, including those for guns to allow weapons collectors or gangsters to continue their lifestyle as ghosts.
SKEA (天堂配件公司), another firm in the paper-gifts-for-the-dead business, got its start in 2007 after the widow of a sumo wrestling fan requested a paper sumo platform for her dead husband.
“We saw how the gift brought a smile to the aging widow who had been crying her heart out,” SKEA manager Frank Han said.
SKEA has begun making an S model of the iPhone, complete with USB charger. Han said the company also is marketing an elaborate paper communications center that is supposed to ensure that iPhone calls can make their way between the dead and living.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, booked its first-ever profit from its Arizona subsidiary in the first half of this year, four years after operations began, a company financial statement showed. Wholly owned by TSMC, the Arizona unit contributed NT$4.52 billion (US$150.1 million) in net profit, compared with a loss of NT$4.34 billion a year earlier, the statement showed. The company attributed the turnaround to strong market demand and high factory utilization. The Arizona unit counts Apple Inc, Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc among its major customers. The firm’s first fab in Arizona began high-volume production
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE: The Japanese company is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence linchpins Nvidia Corp and TSMC Softbank Group Corp agreed to buy US$2 billion of Intel Corp stock, a surprise deal to shore up a struggling US name while boosting its own chip ambitions. The Japanese company, which is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence (AI) linchpins Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), is to pay US$23 a share — a small discount to Intel’s last close. Shares of the US chipmaker, which would issue new stock to Softbank, surged more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. Softbank’s stock fell as much as 5.4 percent on Tuesday in Tokyo, its
The prices of gasoline and diesel at domestic fuel stations are to rise NT$0.1 and NT$0.4 per liter this week respectively, after international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to rise to NT$27.3, NT$28.8 and NT$30.8 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to rise to NT$26.2 per liter at CPC stations and NT$26 at Formosa pumps, they said. The announcements came after international crude oil prices
SETBACK: Apple’s India iPhone push has been disrupted after Foxconn recalled hundreds of Chinese engineers, amid Beijing’s attempts to curb tech transfers Apple Inc assembly partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has recalled about 300 Chinese engineers from a factory in India, the latest setback for the iPhone maker’s push to rapidly expand in the country. The extraction of Chinese workers from the factory of Yuzhan Technology (India) Private Ltd, a Hon Hai component unit, in southern Tamil Nadu state, is the second such move in a few months. The company has started flying in Taiwanese engineers to replace staff leaving, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named, as the
RSS