Saturday, August 25, 2007

Old habits die hard 積習難改

After three weeks of heavily raining days I was expecting a short relief of drier and fresher air before the Sun starts burning again.
But as soon as the first clean air was drawn, I started to breathe in the smell of burning paper money.
Gosh! It's the seventh month of the lunar year- the Ghost month. Many people are earnestly providing, by means of burning paper money, ghosts with sufficient cash to spend while they are on vacation in our human world.
I took a short walk around the streets this afternoon; I saw many shopkeepers stacked heaps and heaps of paper money like small hills along plethora of tributes in their shop fronts.
In the rest of this lunar month the smog of burning paper money would inevitably permeate everyday’s air, and release large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
I wonder if the virtual world of the internet would change this, we've seen virtual funeral emerged yet, won't this happen?
Perhaps it's unlikely, because old habits die hard!
經過三週的大雨之後,期待在太陽再度燃燒之前,有短暫的乾爽新鮮空氣可以呼吸.
在吸進第一口新鮮空氣的瞬間,馬上也吸入了燃燒紙錢的味道.
天哪!現在是陰曆七月-鬼月,許多人急切地燒紙錢給來人間度假的鬼花用.
今天下午在附近街上繞了一下,看到許多店家在店門口擺了豐盛的供品,並放置了一堆又一堆像小山丘般的紙錢.
陰曆七月剩下的日子,每天空氣中必定會佈滿燃燒紙錢的煙霧,也會有大量的二氧化碳被釋放到大氣中.
不知道網際網路的虛擬世界能不能改變這個,虛擬喪禮都已經有了,不會嗎?
或許不太可能,因為舊習難改啊!

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