Hungry ghosts festival

Ever since we've been using this new Android television set, our main preoccupation is watching movies and TV series on Netflix. Presently, nothing is more absorbing than to watch the old BBC television series, Merlin. The series is quite absorbing and it ran over five seasons in Britain from 2008 till 2012. It can be said that my wife and I are eight years too late in watching the series. 

Right now, we have just started watching Season Four. Ever since a young age, I've always been fascinated by the story of King Arthur and his knights of the round table. How many times have I watched that animated Disney show called The Sword In The Stone? How many times have I watched Camelot in the cinemas and listened to the soundtrack of this movie? How many times have I read The Once And Future King by TH White? And how many times have I read Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory? Too many times, indeed. That is why I'm sat in front of the television set every evening to watch an episode from this series.

Today, we were watching the first episode of the fourth season: the episode called The Darkest Hour. The story is about a sorceress tearing open a veil that connected the living world with the dead. When the veil was torn, ghoulish creatures from hell were released to cause deadly havoc in the land of the living. Quite a coincidence, I commented to my wife, that we were watching this episode during the Chinese seventh lunar month, otherwise known as the Hungry Ghosts Festival. The Cailleach in the Merlin story was their medieval equivalent of the Tai Su Yah (大士爷) in Chinese culture. Interesting that some aspects of different cultural beliefs have some similarities.

During the Hungry Ghosts Festival, as we all know, the gates of hell are opened to allow the ghosts to roam among humankind. It is during this lunar month that the Chinese will pray to the unseen inhabitants of this earth. On a certain day during the month, up to each family to decide, the spirits of our ancestors would be invited to the household and offerings would be made to them. My family practice a strictly vegetarian offering of fruits or sweet desserts to my ancestors (my paternal grand-parents, my parents and my aunt); many others would prefer a non-vegetarian offering that included chicken, roast pork and other cooked dishes. 

On the 14th day of the seventh lunar month too, I would make my way down to the Swee Cheok Tong Quah Kongsi in the morning for worship, this being one of the cultural traditions that we have been observing since the early 19th Century when the first clansmen arrived from the Ow-Quah village in Hokkien Province, China. We would be praying to our resident deities and also to the memorial tablets of deceased clansmen.

Normally, it would be a challenge to find a parking space for the car along the road but it was pretty easy this time because there wasn't any makeshift outdoor stage erected along the road to celebrate the occasion. In fact, all over Penang, both on the island and the mainland, there was hardly any outdoor stage seen. No open celebration of the Hungry Ghosts Festival due to the coronavirus pandemic. No massive outdoor stages, no giant paper effigies of the Tai Su Yah, no stage shows, no open-air Chinese dinners and hence, no traffic jam on the roads. Quite a muted affair. Quite sad how the pandemic has put paid to a lot of Chinese festivals this year. Unable to go for Cheng Beng in April this year and now, unable to celebrate the Hungry Ghosts Festival in August/September. 

Of course, the absence of the roadside stages has economic ramifications beyond the Hungry Ghost Festival. The stages provide an avenue of income for the Chinese opera performers and entertainers. Normally, the stages are not removed immediately at the close of the Chinese seventh month. The Mooncake Festival of the Chinese eighth month also provides these performers with an extended opportunity to earn a living, which doesn't look forthcoming this year. It also remains to be seen whether the traditional Nine Emperor Gods processions during the Chinese ninth month can proceed this end of October.