Jade Emperor birthday celebration

The noisy half of the Chinese New Year celebrations is over. It ended with last night's worship of the Tnee Kong Seh, the Jade Emperor's birthday, by the Hokkien community in Malaysia, with the largest scale in Penang.

The moment the clock struck 11 o'clock at night, I could hear fireworks booming all around me and firecrackers erupting throughout the neighbourhood. Then they eased off, but did not stop, after about half an hour, only to go off again with greater intensity at midnight. It was only closer to two o'clock that the noise stopped completely around my house. Yup, this happens every year during Chinese New Year.

Two of my neighbours set up their traditional makeshift altars at the front of their houses and loaded them with all sorts of offerings. By comparison, mine was very modest, making use of only the available space to the small Jade Emperor's permanent altar that's fixed to the wall. There is a long story behind why my family celebrates on such a small scale. As I've written about it before, I won't elaborate again.

But lately, I've noticed that I have tried to pile more things onto the altar. Previously it was only a bunch of pisang raja. Last night the offerings were oranges, a dragon fruit and a pineapple, plus the traditional huat kueh and ang koo kueh. It made for a very congested altar. 

The huat kueh, or prosperity cake, is easily recognised by its cracked top, usually split into two or three lobes. That crack is not a flaw. It is the whole point of the huat kueh. The cracks symbolise smiling or blooming, a sign of expanding fortune. When buying huat kueh, I would always search for one that has bloomed nicely with clear cracks on the surface. Last Chinese New Year eve, I actually rejected the huat kueh from one of the market stalls. Theirs hadn’t risen at all. In fact, they were sunken, with pockmarks on the surface instead of proper cracks. My grandmother would have said they must have violated some pantang rule, which was why their huat kueh sank instead of rose. How could the vendor put those out for sale, knowing nobody would touch them?

Anyway, the word huat itself is the Hokkien word for prosper, as in the familiar phrase “huat ah”. The cakes are usually pink, since that is the colour of happiness.

The ang koo kueh, literally red tortoise cake, is a small sticky rice cake filled with sweet mung bean or peanut paste and pressed into a mould with a tortoise shell pattern. The red colour represents prosperity and happiness. The tortoise symbolises longevity, strength and endurance. By offering this to the Jade Emperor, devotees pray for long life for their family and blessings for the year ahead. 

We have also resorted to burning more paper offerings. I spent the last two days folding kim chuah into small paper gold ingots. I had also bought some ready-folded ones from vendors in the market. Once the worship was completed, these paper ingots were taken outside the house to be burnt. But not before my son and I let off two strings of firecrackers of our own to add to the community's noise level. All in good fun, once a year. And with good neighbourliness in mind, not wanting to contribute to ash pollution, I make sure that the burnt paper is swept away or washed off afterwards.

My final comment on the Tnee Kong Seh is this: the actual date for the Jade Emperor's birthday is the ninth day of Chinese New Year. From the way people worship, with all the fireworks and firecrackers, some think mistakenly that it falls on the eighth day, to be celebrated just before midnight. It does not. The worship starts from 11pm on the eighth day because according to the Chinese calendar, the ninth day begins at that hour.