China grandma spends hell money without complaints from vendors due to kind personality

South China Morning Post · Feb 20, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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A video clip of a woman in her 70s using ritual hell money or toy cards to “buy” snacks at a food street in eastern China without any trouble has touched mainland Chinese internet users.The story unfolded on a food street in Zaozhuang, Shandong province where a poorly dressed grandma often uses her special currency to buy roasted chicken drumsticks, cakes and steamed stuffed buns, the local media outlet Qilu Evening News reported.The elderly woman hands her “hell money” through the window of the food stall. Photo: DouyinOn February 9, a barbecue booth owner released a video showing the grandma giving him a hell money note and him accepting the “worthless” paper before handing her roasted chicken skewers.The clip received 600,000 likes on one social media platform alone.Hell money is a form of joss paper designed to look like real bank notes. It is ceremonially burned in Chinese tradition to provide for the financial needs of ancestors in the afterlife.“The grandma has come to my stall every day for the past seven years. Sometimes, she uses children’s toy cards or plastic cards, sometimes she uses joss paper,” the stall owner, Liu Ruize, said in the video.