ghost street

I had a quick evening trip into town today, and my journey took me along what is known as Ghost Street, a length of road inside the 2nd ring road lined with Chinese restaurants all adorned with hundreds of red lanterns outside. It's quite a sight at night.

It got me wondering why it's called Ghost Street- and there seem to be a lot of different stories. One is that the street is the site of an old night market, the ghostly lights of which shone from dusk till dawn. Another is due to the Chinese name, Guijie. 'Gui' is the name of a food vessel used in ancient China, but 'gui' can also mean 'ghost' (mini Chinese lesson: words can be pronounced the same but the characters are different and they have different meanings. The word 'ma', for example, has at least four meanings). So there you go. Ghost Street.