The whole seventh lunar month is treated as the time the dead come back, and the fifteenth — the full moon — is the night of the Hungry Ghost Festival itself.

Food is left out, paper money and paper goods are burnt, and front-row seats at street opera are left empty for guests who are not visible. There are practical taboos for the month: no swimming, no weddings, no moving house, no whistling at night. It is one of the largest bodies of live lunar-calendar superstition anywhere.