Hell bank notes are votive offerings burned at funerals and ancestral ceremonies in Chinese folk religious practice, intended to transfer wealth to the deceased in the afterlife. The issuing "authority" — variously rendered as Bank of Hades, Bank of Hell, or similar — carries no monetary standing anywhere, living or dead. These are not numismatic items in any conventional sense, though they circulate freely through Chinatown novelty shops and joss paper suppliers across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and diaspora communities worldwide.
Hong Kong has been the dominant production center for export-quality hell money since the mid-twentieth century, with denominations escalating wildly over decades — inflation, apparently, knows no jurisdictional limits.
Hell bank notes are votive offerings burned at funerals and ancestral ceremonies in Chinese folk religious practice, intended to transfer wealth to the deceased in the afterlife. The issuing "authority" — variously rendered as Bank of Hades, Bank of Hell, or similar — carries no monetary standing anywhere, living or dead. These are not numismatic items in any conventional sense, though they circulate freely through Chinatown novelty shops and joss paper suppliers across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and diaspora communities worldwide.
Hong Kong has been the dominant production center for export-quality hell money since the mid-twentieth century, with denominations escalating wildly over decades — inflation, apparently, knows no jurisdictional limits.