Tang Chik 2019

One unique aspect of Tang Chik this year is that we found our children back home in Penang for the weekend. My daughter came home yesterday from Kuala Lumpur but had to head back there today. Meanwhile, my son returned from the island as is his usual routine. Thus, for a brief moment, a weekend, a Tang Chik weekend, we found ourselves a whole family unit again. This is what Tang Chik is meant to be: a time for families to group together at the end of the year to reflect on a year for its good or its bad, depending on your point of view.

Tang Chik is, of course, the time of the Winter Solstice, the deepest depths of winter when in the northern hemisphere, the day grows shortest and the night longest. In the olden days in China, farmers would have completed their harvests, downed their tools, completed all their thanksgiving worship of the ancestors and be preparing for a reunion feast with the community. That's the Chinese cultural aspect of Tang Chik. In Penang, the festival has become so commercialised that we now mostly celebrate it for the glutinous rice dumplings.

The butcher expertly carving up the roast pig.

It is perhaps observed more faithfully by the clan houses such as the Swee Cheok Tong (Quah Kongsi): a Thanksgiving worship of the deities and ancestors. And what a year it has been for us! When I arrived at the Kongsi House this morning, the worship session had already begun. The centrepiece of attraction was the roast pig which we had laid in front of the ancestral altar. As this was one of the only two occasions that we offer a whole roast pig before the altars, this just shows how important this Tang Chik festival meant to us.

Greeted my cousin at the Kongsi. She stays in Johor Bahru but it has been her routine that for the past 10 years, she's here to pay respects to the ancestral tablet of her late father. It is always a good occasion to catch up with one another.