Photos: Taiwanese honour dead with lavish paper offerings

From a modern summer villa with an outdoor pool to a fully equipped film studio or a casino, paper model makers in Taiwan are ensuring the dead enjoy an eternity of luxury. Across the global Chinese diaspora, burning paper offerings has long been seen as a way to send ancestors gifts that they can use in the afterlife. But a handful of paper model makers in Taiwan are taking the art to a new level and crafting offerings that bestow on the dead the kind of trappings only experienced by the truly rich and famous in the land of the living. ...read more

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Yean Han, director of Skea, displays a ‘watch’ paper model, at her workshop in Linkou district in New Taipei City. In recent years, traditional paper incarnations of money and gold bars have given way to the more modern -- paper iPads and mobile phones, washing machines, cars, televisions and credit cards. (Sam Yeh / AFP)

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Tien Cheng-wei, an employee of Cheng Ke Paper Art, cuts bamboo for a paper model. The practice of burning offerings originated in Taoism, a leading faith in Taiwan, with the gifts primarily offered at funerals, death anniversaries and during key festivals when ancestors are honoured. (Sam Yeh / AFP)

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Model maker Lin Chien-chiang, 55, has been in the business for 30 years and says consumer demands are becoming increasingly complex. These include miniature banks, a space shuttle, and even an entertainment complex featuring a casino and a hostess club. His most popular offerings include gadgets such as smartphones and laptops to a “mini vault” containing a wad of US dollars, gold bars and credit cards. (Sam Yeh / AFP)

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Lin’s company is also one of a handful in Taipei still making bigger, traditional Chinese-styled houses with paper and bamboo. They fell out of fashion because of environmental concerns. “We are making changes to produce smaller and more intricate models to better suit the times. And using more environmentally friendly materials,” Lin said. Fewer than 20% of his orders now are for traditional houses. (Sam Yeh / AFP)

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Veteran craftsman Chiang Yueh-lun (L), recalled his most unique order: A lifesize paper double of a young man killed in a car crash to be placed on top of the badly damaged body inside his casket. “Some people think our business is ill luck because it has to do with the dead but I believe we are accumulating good karma for the services we provide,” he said. (Sam Yeh / AFP)

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Lin Chien-chiang (R), owner of Cheng Ke Paper Art, carrying a 'bank' paper model. “We can continue to express our love,” Yean Han of Skea says of the paper gifts, adding: “We are not forgetting our loved ones and they are living in our hearts.” The tradition has crossed over into Taiwan’s other faiths. Han estimates 20% of her customers are Christian. (Sam Yeh / AFP)

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Yean Han displaying a 'plane' paper model. “I hope western societies will understand our practice,” she said. “Paper offerings are not something scary. I want to make beautiful items that make people feel their loved ones are living a better life in heaven.” (Sam Yeh / AFP)

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“We believe that people will move on to another world after they die,” explained Taipei businessman Chen Shu-hsuan, as he attended his uncle’s funeral. “We hope he would live a good afterlife in that world so we prepare a paper house and a lot of paper money so he could have the means to live well,” Chen said. (Sam Yeh / AFP)

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Moments before, family members prayed as a detailed model of a two-storey mansion created for the deceased went up in flames, complete with working lights, paper staff and a luxury car tucked away inside an attached garage. Chen said his family intended to burn more offerings for his uncle on Friday’s Tomb Sweeping Festival when ethnic Chinese traditionally visit and tidy the graves of their ancestors. (Sam Yeh / AFP)