How do the traditions of Cultural Chinese customs (Ghost Money) regarding the dead differ from your culture's customs? Why do their customs seem so strange to Americans? How has your culture shaped your ideas of the living and the dead?

In a way there are many similarities. When one of our loved ones pass, we are socially obligated to purchase items such as flowers, a coffin, perhaps a funeral ceremony. In my own family when my grandmother, and great aunt passed; we had a large ceremony where we payed for a viewing(included embalming, storing, changing, we saved money on the make-up because I did that), a funeral service (transportation of the body, and floral arrangements, large expensive flower arrangements, a headstone, a plot, etc. The list goes on and does not include the costs to maintain the headstone and other various expenses such as food, and entertainment for the services. My point is, that although we didn't purchase ghost money, we 'burnt' holes in our pockets with the cost of what is a socially necessary step we must take in the even that we lose a loved one. It's strange to Americans because we don't see the cultural similarities in how we spend on our dead loved ones, maybe because we're not physically burning the money we spend to gift our lost loved one. Having close family members pass in a short amount of time has opened my eyes to the cost of death. It has also shown me that most of what we do is actually for ourselves, because they're not items that the deceased can enjoy. I have also come to find that if you don't financially prepare yourself for death that is a burden that befalls your loved ones; if in fact you have any. Many of the ceremonies that we do often only benefit the people that implicate the necessity of them on you. Places, like the church who benefit from donations, the food service industry who will feed the people who attend such events, the funeral service industry who survives on the passing of others, etc. Some may view death as an industry in it of itself; composed of people who are willing to take advantage of the fact that you're at a loss.