Moving the memorial (sinchu) tablets

For more than a year already, the Trustees had been talking about replacing the base table of the memorial tablets cabinet in the inner hall of our Penang Swee Cheok Tong Quah Kongsi (檳城瑞鵲堂柯公司) which had been badly infested by termites.

However, we realised that it wasn't going to be a straight-forward or easy task of just removing the old base table and putting in a new one which, by the way, was custom-made by a local carpenter.

No, we had to consult the Taoist priest for a suitable date to do so. Reason was because of the memorial (sinchu) tablets. It was going to be a delicate affair. The priest would have to conduct prayers first before we can even be allowed to move the tablets. And then there was the painstaking task of removing the tablets one-by-one, identifying them properly and then placing them on the temporary table.

On 28 Nov 2018, we did all that. At ten o'clock in the morning, the Taoist priest arrived and after the preliminary prayers, my treasurer began removing the tablets while my secretary took note of each and every tablet that was moved. Meanwhile, I undertook to photograph all of them.

We are also taking the opportunity to carry out repair work on the Kongsi building and to have the wall behind the memorial tablets cabinet repainted. We hope to finish the bulk of the repair work soon so that we can move the memorial tablets back into the cabinet on the day of the Winter Solstice or Tang Chik, which falls on the 22nd of December.

This exercise also serves as an occasion for us to open a new register for all the memorial tablets. Frankly, if ever there was an old register, we couldn't find it among our records. And without this record, we wouldn't know who these memorial tablets belonged to. For the record, I shall first post here all the pictures of the memorial tablets while I await my secretary to give me his detailed listing.