Here is what the student said:
Yesterday(Feb 01,2022),in celebrating the year of tiger,grad house staff placed red envelopes for students and residents to take in the common area. However,in the red envelopes are a few 冥币(i.e.hell money/hell banknote/money for the deceased),which are paper money burnt for the dead, usually used during another Chinese festival 清明节(i.e.. Qingming Festival/Tomb-Sweeping Day). Please see the picture attached with this email, it literally prints “HELL BANK NOTE” on it! Giving 冥币(hell money) to a living person is a horrible act because you are conveying to the person that “you are dead to me” or, worse,”l wish you are dead.”
such a “mistake” is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.
Judging by the Grad House website,they have several Asian-looking staff members on the team,and numerous Asian students living in Grad House.It is very clear that not only none of the students/staff from the Asian cultural community was consulted in preparation for this event,but also none of their staff cared enough to look at the things they put in the red envelopes(it literally says HELL BANK NOTE!) Therefore,this is a serious act out of,and which will maintain,cultural imperialism, white supremacy, and oppression forced upon Asian students.
Here is what netizen thinks:
I don’t understand how such ‘mistake’ could be made, even if they don’t know the real Asian currencies, it literally says HELL MONEY NOTE on the top.
Even in China you can’t find hell bills in regular store, it’s usually in stores that sell funeral related items (coffin, candles, etc). I try to convince myself that it’s simply a mistake but I do understand why there are so many people belive this is done on purpose. This tells that they simply don’t care about the asian group because this could be avoided by asking ANY asian or even google it