Chingling are often thought by travelers to bear a strong resemblance to the bells used for music, timekeeping, and religious observances throughout Sinnoh; in reality, they are one and the same. Although Chingling are technically a baby pokemon, they often shy away from battle, preferring to ring for men in peace, and many spend their whole lives without evolving. Although a newborn Chingling's ring is often off-key, these pokemon shape their sound by eating metal over the course of their lives into a steady, mature sound, and death appears to be no impediment to their continued ringing.
There are many even today who consider the custom of using Chingling corpses to make music, instead of burying or cremating them in the manner of most temple pokemon, to be barbaric and sacrilegious. Many outsiders share this sentiment, for it seems that shrines mourns more when a Chingling evolves and floats away to Mount Pyre than when it dies, for they lose both the pokemon and the metal fed to cast the Chingling into a bell.
Yet the reason so few mourn Chingling's deaths is not a matter of financial calculation, but a recognition of the strange nature of death in Chingling; unless the bell is shattered, their spirits remain tied to the world of the living. They are not true ghosts, for their spirit has parted the world, but the bell remains as a focus for mediums to communicate with these pokemon – and those close to them – in the afterlife. Although they may ring for some other official function, those who ring the bells of Sinnoh always keep in mind the departed, Chingling and trainers alike.
