Scaled back offerings

For the second straight year, my clansman Kongsi was unable to celebrate the annual Chap Goh Meh worship on a normal scale. Again, we were forced to cut back on the offerings due to the sudden increase in Omicron variant cases in Penang. But although the worship was scaled back, we were still able to present a decent enough offering at the altars. I hope our resident deities, especially Tai Tay Eah and Tua Pek Kong, will pardon us for this year's spread. 😀

The Seng Lay is a must on such occasions since the Kongsi does not offer vegetarian food for worship. As explained by a friend of Baba-Nyonya background, the Seng Lay is fundamentally meat offerings from land, water and air; which is why we have pork, duck and chicken. But that is being true to its origin. In order to simplify the worship, the duck and chicken are substituted with chicken and duck eggs. But a generous strip of roast pork is usually retained to complete the picture. I'm told that some people do not consider the duck as fully representing meat from the water and hence, they offer fish or cuttlefish at the altar.

Now that Chap Goh Meh has ended, the next Chinese festival to look forward to will be Cheng Beng at the start of April. Will the Omicron numbers go down sufficiently by then to allow us a return to the cemeteries?