Staring at us in the fire : a case study of the Chinese funeral figures for assessing Hong Kong’s Chinese funeral offerings as an intangible cultural heritage

Abstract

The practice of Hong Kong’s Chinese funeral offerings is one of the many rituals conducted during funerals. When the offering practice takes place, it frequently employs Chinese funeral figures as a type of indispensable traditional paper offering to the deceased in the afterlife by burning them. Notably, the offering practice is unique in the context of Hong Kong, as it is the only place in China where the practice has been continuing without any interruption. The significance of funeral figures as the research topic is twofold: they are arguably the most iconic element in Hong Kong’s Chinese funeral practice, and they are the only kind of modern-day paper offering evolved from ancient human sacrifice in Chinese royal funerals. However, the offering practice is presently facing multifarious threats associated with the rising environmental awareness and changing attitude among people. At present, the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) nature of Hong Kong’s offering practice focuses only on the paper crafting technique, as revealed in Hong Kong’s ICH Inventory. This detaches the paper offerings from their original socio-cultural contexts and relegates these offerings to a consumable product. As such, this thesis seeks to assess the offering practice under the framework of ICH through a qualitative methodology of primary (interviews) and secondary (desktop research) sources to produce an integrated analysis for the findings. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the potential of offering practice in becoming an ICH, under the domain of “Social Practices, Rituals and Festive Events.” The research findings are achieved through the identification of the character-defining elements (CDEs) of offering practice, and in so doing, provide a new way of understanding it by means of a heritage conservation methodology, which is the impact that this research aims for.