Threshold: Opening the Gates
Enter Ghost Month as a threshold rather than a single fixed belief. Across the seventh lunar month, many communities set aside ordinary routines to attend to ancestors, family souls, wandering ghosts, and the obligations that connect living and dead. The image of “opening the gates” guides us into the exhibition, but it should not be taken as a universal description of every community’s practice.
Core Concepts
Threshold, Sacred Time, Cultural Specificity, Lived Religion, Continuing Bonds
This exhibition follows several related but distinct histories: sacred calendrical time, a concise Buddhist scripture, the later Mulian narrative tradition, household care, public performance, material offerings, and regional variation.
As you move through the galleries, notice what changes from one setting to another. The central question is not whether all participants share one belief, but how ritual makes memory, care, uncertainty, and obligation visible.