China used to be one of the "Mingbi" for offering sacrifices to ghosts and gods, funerals and sweeping graves for the dead. Also known as ghost money. Generally, white paper is cut into the shape of copper coins, and then it will be scattered in the cemetery in the wild or burned to the dead. People generally call this kind of paper loose burning. According to Gao Cheng's "The Origin of Nine Years": "Since the Han Dynasty, people who were buried have lost their money." There are also records about paper money in Historical Records and Biography of Cool Officials: "Someone stole money from Xiaowen Garden." It can be seen that the custom of paper money existed as early as the Han Dynasty. After Wei and Jin Dynasties, when the Southern Dynasties were in Qi Dynasty, people generally used paper to hold money as a sacrifice to the gods. This custom has been inherited to this day.
There are different kinds of "paper money" According to the author's historical records, there are three kinds of * * *. One is the oldest "making money", which uses mallets and iron money molds to make the shape of money on earthenware paper; One is "cutting money", that is, as the saying goes, "buying road money", which is cut into squares with earthenware paper, pasted with gold and silver paper foil, or folded into ingots that look like gold and silver; One is "printing money", which imitates modern paper money and silver dollar and prints "Bank of Tong Ming" and various figures. Just like paper money circulating in the world. The emergence of paper money stems from the ancient belief in the immortality of the soul. They believe that there is a heaven and an underground world, so they must give their dead relatives paper money to use in heaven or underground world.