In January villagers began preparing for the New Year by making a raft of items such as boats or elephants from paper. Vietnamese believe that burning these paper models in religious rituals will cause them to appear as real gifts for their ancestor’s spirit in the afterlife.
This year each paper small boat has been selling for about VND13,000, a villager, Nguyen Thien Nghinh told a VOV reporter, adding that large paper elephants have been selling for as much as VND250,000 each.
Thanks to the growing demand for votive paper figurines of all types villager’s lives have improved tremendously over the past few years, Nghinh added.
Everyday tens of thousands of products have been delivered to other cities and provinces throughout the region such as Hanoi, Bac Giang, Nam Dinh, Haiphong and Cao Bang.
