Chinese culture is very complicated. But the activities involved always requires families and relatives to come together and meet, chat and pray for hours on many special occasions such as chinese new year, our ancestors "birthday" or the day they passed away, special god's day......Many of which i cannot really pin point actually, but one of those special day was the 15th day after Chinese New Year began on 7th Febraury. We have to pray to our ancestors on this day with special set of food and paper folding is required for burning after the praying ritual is complicated.

I don't really know much about the paper folding and it's actual meaning. But we were told by our older relatives to do what it is required. So i discussed with my husband that this ritual is very interesting and we should put this in the blog. He did some research thru the net, because our relatives couldn't provide us with solid information as well.  The following may or may not contain the correct facts, so please help me out if I am on the wrong track.

 Paper folding in the shape of a boat, representing the highest value in terms of money wise, for our ancestors. The more we siblings fold, the better it is for our ancestors who we believe are in another dimension or "imkarn" in chinese.

Praying room for our ancestors. Food and fruits are placed here and are prepared by all four families.

Incense and red candles. First round of praying starts at 10.30am, and the second at 11am and the 3rd round another half hour later. All family members will place one incense for each "pot" for all different rounds.

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There are 5 essential food for praying, which includes pork,chicken,fish,liver and dragon prawns. If prawns are too expensive, you can replace it with duck or dried cuttlefish. 5 essential food for praying are also called "knor sae" in chinese.

Rice with tea and liqour is required too.

In some praying occasions, 5 sweets "kanom" are required and is called "knor pie" in chinese.

Fruits have to sound "positive".....like "chom pu" having good meaning and not like "la kum" which doesn't have a good meaning in Thai.

You can also call the 5 essential fruits for praying in chinese as "knor kuay".

Some ready made "kong tek" paper money or paper gold bars and other paper accesories. We will burn them after the third round of praying is completed. We believe that all these will be "given" to our ancestors in another dimension. The paper money is essential when our ancestors come to recieve our prayers on all praying occasions. The paper money is like a travel expense, a request to the "gate keeper" in another dimension, to allow our ancestors for passage for travelling.

My daugther is making a demonstration on folding a "boat"  or "kiewtaosee" in chinese with the orange/golden paper.

Halves are met in the middle.

Then fold them again to meet in the center.

Fold the corners in on both sides.

Make a "wing" on the side.

Unfold the "wings" like this.

Turn the paper around and fold them in.

Once they meet.

Put your fingers on one side and the other to push it softly.

Voila.....a boat.

This orange/golden paper can fold many shapes for praying too, either gold bars or lotus flowers, but folding boats gives the highest value.  They can be used for all chinese praying occasions.

Gold bars "kimtaew" in chinese and paper money required to pray our ancestors.

Silver/gold paper or "kimjuag" in chinese. These silver/gold paper requires family members to fold as many "gold bars" as possible for our ancestors.

The "gold/silver" bars.

Once the 3rd round of praying is completed, we have to lift up the tray of paper and "hiem" pray above our head and ask for good will from our ancestors before heading off  for burning at the this bin outside. Once done, the chinese praying ritual is completed once again. All families will "hiem" their food and fruits too before heading home and have the lunch with the food we've just prayed. Happy praying.