The seventh lunar month is Ghost Month, and the fifteenth day is Zhongyuan, the Ghost Festival. The gates of the underworld are held to open for the whole month and the dead come up, including the hungry ghosts — those who died violently or far from home or without descendants, and who therefore have nobody making offerings to them. The response is public and charitable: food is set out at roadsides and in front of shops for the unfed dead, braziers for burning spirit money appear on pavements, and communities stage getai variety shows or opera on temporary platforms, with the entire front row of seats left conspicuously empty because those are the ghosts'. Behavioural avoidance across the month is widespread and pragmatic in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia: people postpone weddings, house moves, surgery, major purchases and swimming, and property and car sales measurably dip. The festival is simultaneously Taoist Zhongyuan and Buddhist Yulanpen, and no one at street level distinguishes.