Tang Chik festival 2018

We celebrated Tang Chik (Dongzhi, 冬節), or the Winter Solstice festival, today and it has been absolutely uplifting. My five hours at the Swee Cheok Tong Quah Kongsi (檳城瑞鵲堂柯公司) today were the longest that I had ever spent there on a community function and I felt that my fellow Quah Kongsi brethen and I had achieved quite a lot. Really accomplished a whole lot.

We ordered two roast pigs for the occasion and they came by motorcycles!

This Tang Chik would be the day that we were going to move the ancestors' memorial tablets back into the cabinet. For the past month, the tablets had been placed at a temporary location while we had the back wall repainted and the termite-infested cabinet base table replaced. Arriving at nine o'clock in the morning, I found that the Taoist priest (the sai soon nah) was already around to advise us on the worship.

The ceremony started at about 9.40am with the priest conducting the initial rituals before our resident deities, Tai Tay Eah (大帝爷) being the main deity, Lo Chia Kong (哪吒) and Tua Pek Kong (大伯公).

We then moved to the inner hall and proceeded to move the memorial tablets back into the cabinet under the priest's watchful eyes, and myself making sure that the tablets were being put back in the correct order.  That done, the priest began the elaborate prayers before the tablets. Eventually, we finished at about 11.15am.

At about 11.30am, I threw the chiao pai blocks to ask the ancestors whether we could conclude the worship and proceed with the burning of the joss papers. It however took me three attempts in a good 20-minute period before I received the go-ahead signal from the ancestors.

Making preparations to start off the ceremony

The Taoist priest and his assistants

The worship in the inner hall prior to the memorial tablets being moved back into the cabinet

Slowly does it.; easy does it. We started with the central tablet which represented the founder patriarch of the Swee Cheok Tong in the Hokkien province of China 

And this is where it sits: right in the centre of the top row, the most prominent position in the cabinet

The inner hall of the Swee Cheok Tong Quah Kongsi, with every tablet moved back to occupy its original position in the cabinet.

A view of our main hall with our resident deities housed in their respective cabinets

Now starts the process of praying to the memorial tablets after they had been moved back

The Taoist priest's trade tools which included this chanting book

We stood behind the priest and his assistants as they did all the chanting and banging of the cymbals and drums

Doing his chantings and invoking the ancestors' spirits to bless the Kongsi and the members. 

Making preparations to burn the joss papers

Concluding the day's work with a bonfire of joss papers