The Ghost Festival is a traditional Chinese festival held on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month. People celebrate this festival by commemorating their ancestors. Fake money is burned and paper lanterns are sailed down rivers. The idea behind this is to show their ancestors the light to a better place. Ghosts are also known to be afraid of fire.

This year Trev and I took part in the festival. We researched how to make a lantern and a boat. Mr Fish was going to ask his mother for help but then the thought dawned on us, his mother would think this very strange that her 40 year old son was asking for the first time how to do this.

The festival is old and is not celebrated with some rapture as Mid Autumn or Spring Festival, but after walking all over Qingtian we came across an old lady selling hand made lanterns. We bought one from her, but decided against the fake money (although we were slightly amused to see not only Chinese money but USD and Euros). Our next dilemna was the boat to sail this lantern down the river. We settled for a cake box base - not the traditional look we'd been hoping for but never the less we could see our lantern with some tape, staples and a nail would sail down the Ou Jiang.

Mr Fish met us under the bridge with some friends and although the weather had turned a little nasty on us, our lantern sailed some 200m down the river before self combusting.