LTO Cambodia, Chinese Death Rituals, and Stupid Stupid Laws

I recently discovered LTO Cambodia, a blog describing itself merely as “A Barang in the Land of the Khmer.” I’m so grateful to the author of that blog for photoblogging the excellent, excellent – looking exhibit of old maps of Kampot at the French Cultural Center.  They even tagged and labeled some of the old maps with contemporary locations! Oh, the nerdvana of this!

The photo below is from that post. Click here to see the whole post.

LTO Cambodia also helpfully blogged up a nice post on Chinese death rituals that take place around the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival (中元節 / 中元节 / Tết Trung Nguyên; note that this is different from, but related to, the Khmer Hungry Ghost Festival known as Pchum Ben).  A lot of this, as documented in the great photos and description, involves the burning of paper replicas of worldly wealth.

You wish that cops in New York were anywhere near as cosmopolitan as any Cambodian.  Despite having an enormous ethnic Chinese community of long-standing, and licensed businesses over a hundred years old to serve them, NY’s finest recently busted a Chinese business that creates these replicas of wealth for the specific purpose of burning and sending them to the ancestors. Wanna laugh? They busted the business for counterfeiting.  Oy, Vey.

“Fook An Sing Funeral Supplies Store Raided by New York Cops for Copyright Violations.” from the Death Reference Desk.