This is directly related to China's classical burial and funeral rites, burial is now the longest duration in human society, the most cumbersome etiquette customs, and the most widely spread, and the most used by the nation of a traditional burial method, can also be said to implement the 5000 years of history in our country.
As early as ancient times, we have been in the tradition of burial, but at that time burial was relatively simple, without rituals and sacrifices. However, in the period of three generations, China's funeral rites have been basically perfected.
It was once recorded in the Book of Rites: Life must die, and death must return to the earth. That is to say, no one can live forever, and after death, people need to return to nature, and people's horcruxes will return to heaven, and their bodies and souls will return to the earth.
In the ancient traditional thinking concept, it is believed that after a person dies, only after he is buried in the ground and out of the body, the soul can return to heaven, and in the process of time passing, our country has also formed a funeral tradition that regards death as life.
For traditional Chinese, death sometimes means a new beginning, after all, we still have a well-established religious doctrine of reincarnation, so there are burial tombs everywhere in ancient China, and this will inevitably give rise to ghost fires.
In ancient China, because people's understanding of natural science was relatively limited, it was impossible to explain ghost fire. But in fact, ghost fire is a scientific phenomenon, and it is phosphorus fire.
The human body is mainly composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, but there are also other elements in the human body, some of which are also one of the main elements that can maintain the normal functioning of the human body, such as iron. The same is true for phosphorus, which contains more calcium phosphate in the bones of the human body.
After death, the body will be buried in the ground, and the body will gradually decay over time, and eventually various chemical reactions will occur, and the phosphorus in the human body will also be converted from a phosphate state to phosphine. Phosphine itself is a gaseous substance, and its ignition point is relatively low, basically only about 40 degrees. If it comes into contact with air at room temperature, it will burn up immediately.
And this burning fire itself is presented in blue, which is the ghost fire we usually know and see. Ghost fires frequently appear in summer, also because the weather in summer is relatively hot and the local temperature is relatively high, so it is easy to ignite the phosphine produced in the process of human decay.
Then there will be a new question, that is, why does the ghost fire move with people? Let's think about it for ourselves, if we encounter these ghost fires in the middle of the night, and they will drift with people, it will make people feel very frightened, but in fact, this is also based on science.
First of all, because photosynthesis is basically stagnant at night, and in the absence of wind, the air is also in a state of stagnation. At this time, the ghost fire itself is very light, and in the process of human movement, it will drive the flow of air, so the ghost fire will naturally flutter with the air flow caused by human movement, and even follow the footsteps of people all the time. When people go, they go, and when people stop, they stop.
And in the 60s of the last century, an important factor in the number of ghost fires in our country was due to the fact that we had just experienced decades of war. In the course of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, many people died on the battlefield, and later there was a famine, which led to the death of a large number of people. Over time, the decomposition of large numbers of corpses naturally leads to the appearance of a large number of ghost fires.
At that time, the burial system was still very popular in the countryside, and if the traditional burial method was used to bury the deceased, it would have to occupy a large amount of land. In addition, according to tradition, burying the dead also requires burying the things they used in their lifetime into the soil, which can easily cause the loss of *** and other civilization relics, and then form a ghost fire.
In addition, in the 60s of the last century, China was in an era of rapid infrastructure upgrading, and during that time, various infrastructure projects were being overhauled across the country, which also led to many ancient tombs, and even modern tombs have been turned out. At some point, there were even bare bones of corpses in the fields. These bones have been evaporated for a long time, and they can also develop ghost fires.
But now, as the burial system has been largely replaced by more advanced cremation, ghost fires have all but disappeared. Now we can only see ghost fires from film and television dramas, or in some remote mountainous areas.
All in all, the reason why ghost fires are rare these days is due to the popularity of cremation, as it makes ghost fires lose the possibility of their appearance. There is not as much phosphorus as there used to be in nature. Although these elements still exist, they can burn in the presence of oxygen due to very low ignition points and rising temperatures, but this is much less likely than before.
In addition, the vast majority of people now do not go to the deep mountains and old forests at night, even if they have to rush at night, the planes connecting all parts of the country, high-speed and even railways are operating normally. And in populated places, ghost fires are only less likely. In fact, to a certain extent, the disappearance of the ghost fire is the inevitable development of the times.