CHINESE AND MONEY

There’s always a particular smell of burning incense when one walks through the gates of a Buddhist temple. The smoke looms around in a mist-like form. The air is difficult to breathe and some of the people’s eyes burn from the ashes around. The faithful continue to add more to the already huge amount of incense of all shapes and sizes—the little flames on the top of the incense glows through the misty smoke. Before these incense lays the deities, to whom some ask for divine guidance for their cause. 
Today, a girl was burning something else in the temple. I looked down at what she was burning—some form of paper money? It appeared so. She was dropping them into the flames one by one. I had seen something like this before—somewhere in a Chinese movie, a man was dropping paper money in a makeshift grill for his brother who had died. Curiously, I approached the girl.

“May I see one of those?” I asked
“Of course,” the woman replied.
I looked at what the paper money said. “Hell money,” it read on the bottom.
......

I remember reading about this in the Novel; Taipan by James Clavell. The girl, his consort, was burning paper money and praying for something. The Taipan asked the girl what is she doing. She tell him that she was praying for their family's prosperity and the money was offerings to the gods. When asked whether the money is real, the girl looked incredulously at him and shushed, "Do I look stupid? Why should I burn hard earned real money?"


Then the Taipan understand what is money to chinese. Money is everything, prosperity is honour. Good business is pride. Everything revolve around money. A chinese would do anything, even cheat their gods for money.


So you half witted Malay deperados willing to do anything to woo chinese votes, please heed Sultan Sharafuddin's advice. Dont sacrifice what you have for what you will never have. Remember the the Pak Pandir Chronicles; Ayam Menang Kampung Tergadai. Dont disgrace yourself and your race just to be in good books of these mahjong players who are all too well verse in poker faced, double meaning, double handling, willy dilly maneuvres learned in thousands of years of trades with money as their gods. If you think you can best them in their own playing field, you can never be more cow dung brained than this.