Over in the blink of an eye

And just like that, Chinese New Year is over. All 15 days of it, gone in the twinkling of an eye.

Strange, considering the run-up lasted almost two months for me. The on-and-off spring cleaning, waking early to buy fruits for deity and ancestral worship, stocking up on fresh food for the long stretch of cooking ahead. And of course, preparing for the reunion dinner.

It’s not as though we don’t sit down regularly with my son and daughter. We do. But the Chinese New Year reunion dinner carries a different significance. A whole day is spent in preparation -- washing, chopping, simmering, tasting -- until evening comes and we finally sit down together to enjoy what we’ve made with our own hands. Usually roast chicken, garlic prawns, jiu hoo char, too tor soup. Sometimes a steamboat dinner, but not this year. The food tastes better for the effort.

Once that dinner is over, my annual pre-CNY duties begin. I gum strips of red paper carefully around each fruit, one by one, before arranging them neatly on plates for offering. Then come the gold-stamped worship papers, folded into paper ingots and lotus flowers. These will be burnt after the worship to Soo Kong, our house deity, and the Tnee Kong to welcome in the New Year. By the time everything is done, prayers said, incense offered, and suddenly it is usually close to 2am before we turn in.

The first day of Chinese New Year is vegetarian for us, from breakfast through to dinner. A tradition that has stayed, even as other habits have loosened over the years. We make our way to Bandar Tasek Mutiara to visit my mother-in-law, now the most senior member of the family since my parents and my aunt are no longer with us. Time does its quiet accounting. Generations shift almost without announcement.

Apart from that, we keep things simple. On the sixth day, when we are out visiting the Kuan Imm Teng and the Triple Wisdom Temple on the island, we drop by a long-time family friend’s home more out of habit than obligation. Otherwise, we stay home and wait for visitors, mostly relatives, the house filling and emptying in waves.

And then, before we quite realise it, Chap Goh Meh is upon us. On this day, I make my way to the Swee Cheok Tong, where my Kongsi makes its annual worship to the deities. Our principal deity is Tai Tay Yah, though Tua Pek Kong and Lo Chiah Kong are also prominent in the front hall. In the inner chamber are the Chow Moo Kong and Tay Choo Kong, along with the ancestral tablets. Once the noon worship is completed and the members have dispersed, I make my quiet way to Poh Hock Seah in Armenian Street to pay my respects to the resident Tua Pek Kong there. This is something I’ve done each year since my retirement.

So now, with the 15 days over, the mandarin oranges finished and the unused angpow packets put away, all that remain are the various unfinished Chinese New Year cookies. The red banner above the main doorway comes down, and the house returns to its ordinary rhythm. Two months of preparation. Fifteen days of observance. And it all passes as it always does.

Mooncake festival

Today is the 15th day of the Chinese eighth lunar month, the Mid-Autumn Festival or Mooncake Festival is in full swing with worship sessions by the clanhouses this morning all over George Town. As usual, I had to make my way to the Swee Cheok Tong for our own worship of the Kongsi's deities and ancestral memorial tablets.

The Mooncake Festival is one of the most important occasions for Malaysia’s Chinese community. Falling on the full moon of the eighth lunar month, usually in September or early October like today, it marks a time of reunion and thanksgiving. The roundness of the moon and of the mooncake both symbolise harmony and completeness, reminders of family togetherness that have endured through generations.

The mooncake itself remains the heart of the celebration. The traditional baked kind, with its thin golden crust and lotus seed or red bean filling, sometimes hiding a salted duck egg yolk like a small sun inside, still carries a quiet dignity. But Malaysia being what it is, we’ve never been content to stop there. Over time, the flavours have multiplied: pandan, green tea, coffee, even the durian snow skin mooncake with its soft, chewy skin and aroma. No matter the variety, mooncakes are meant to be cut and shared, ideally with a pot of Chinese tea to temper their sweetness. A ritual of togetherness as much as of taste.

When I was small and still staying in the Seang Tek Road house, my grandparents observed the festival with their own quiet devotion. Around 8.30 at night, the excitement would mount. Once the moon had risen bright and round, we would go upstairs to the back terrace on the first floor. There, they would lay out a simple altar comprising a joss-stick urn, a pair of candle holders, a few mooncakes and fruits, and always the ang kong piah, those animal-shaped pastries that fascinated children far more than the mooncakes ever did.

Unlike the proper mooncakes, the ang kong piah had no filling at all but just a solid lump of baked dough that stuck to the teeth when eaten, but that was part of their charm. Most were shaped like piglets, though occasionally there'd be a fish or some other animal shape among them. What truly delighted me was the packaging. A little dough piglet snug inside a tiny plastic cage, bright and colourful, like a toy pen you could carry around afterwards.

If the weather was fine, the full moon would shine above us, bathing the terrace in its soft glow. My grandmother would murmur their prayers to the Moon Goddess, Chang’e, while we stared up at the sky, wondering if we might actually see her, until Apollo 11 changed everything. Nevertheless, those were simple nights, unhurried and filled with quiet wonder. These were  the kind of moments that remain forever. Even now, whenever I catch sight of the full moon at Mid-Autumn, I can still picture that terrace at Seang Tek Road, the smell of incense curling in the air, and the small cages on the table bathed in the moonlight, all reminders of a gentler time and of family.

179th anniversary

We had a dinner last weekend to celebrate the 179th anniversary of the Swee Cheok Tong Quah Kongsi in Penang. Apart from our own Kongsi families, we were happy to welcome guests from the Malacca Swee Cheok Tong Quah Kongsi (马六甲瑞鹊堂柯氏公会) and the Persatuan Chiyang Selangor & WP (雪隆济阳辛柯蔡宗亲会). A few clansmen also came all the way from the Ow-Quah village in Haicang District, Xiamen City, Fujian Province, China. The evening brought together representatives from several Penang-based associations too, including the Chay Yeong Tong Sin Quah Chuah Chong Soo (槟城济阳堂辛柯蔡宗祠), Tong Aun Kim Har Association (槟榔同安金厦公会), Sam Toh Bean Lok Keok (槟榔屿三都联络局), and Cheang Chew Association (槟榔屿漳州会馆). Altogether, about 100 people turned up, and it made for a warm and meaningful evening. We were especially pleased to have State Assemblyman Teh Lai Hin as our guest of honour.

Presenting Teh Lai Hin with a fruit souvenir box

The main table, before the arrival of the State Assemblyman

Kongsi worship

A splendid gathering today for members of Swee Cheok Tong in conjunction with the annual birthday worship of our resident deity, Tai Tay Eah (Poh Seng Tai Tay), held on the 15th day of the third lunar month in the Chinese calendar. This is one of five key occasions that form the core of the Kongsi’s activities for members. We hope to see even more members join us for future celebrations—it’s always meaningful to come together in worship and fellowship.

The main altar comprising the Tai Tay Eah, Lochia Kong and Tua Pek Kong deities

The memorial tablets in the inner hall of the Kongsi

2024 Chap Goh Meh activities

Today's the 15th day of Chinese New Year. Chap Goh Meh to the Hokkien community in Penang. As usual, I spent my time at the Swee Cheok Tong for the annual worship of the deities, principal among them being Tai Tay Eah. This year, I had to provide additional support to the Trustee that had always been responsible for our worship sessions. He had just had three stents put into him in the first week of Chinese New Year! Anyway, there I was at the Kongsi to oversee the burning of the gold jossip papers for the deities and silver joss papers for the ancestors. And then there was the packing up of the worship food items to ensure that those who turned up for the worship could collect their share. I shall be very glad when my Trustee returns to full strength in time for the third lunar month worship of Tai Tay Eah's birthday.

My Chap Goh Meh is also normally spent with a visit to the Poh Hock Seah (寶福社) temple in Armenian Street after clearing the foodstuff at the Kongsi. I've been doing this annually for quite some time now. The stroll from Carnarvon Lane to Armenian Street is a short one but lately, the heat has been very unrelenting. Despite sheltering from the midday sun by walking in the shade, being out in this weather makes me very tired indeed, My routine is to burn a bunch of joss sticks at the Poh Hock Seah, calling on Tua Pek Kong to bestow good fortune on me and my family. The previous night, the deity had been taken on a procession to the Hai Choo Soo (Tanjong Tokong Tua Pek Kong) (海珠嶼大伯公廟) temple for the annual flame watching ceremony. The return journey was made on Chap Goh Meh morning itself, and I had missed it by about an hour because I was still at the Kongsi. Come to think of it, I have only managed to meet the returning Tua Pek Kong once in the last 20 years or so. 

But actually, this year's Chap Goh Meh proved to be a little different from past years. Some of my former colleagues from the old Ban Hin Lee Bank days decided to have a small get-together at the Gudang Cafe in Armenian Street Ghaut. That was where I proceeded after my visit to the Poh Hock Seah: to join up with Daphne Saw, Wong Yuen Chee and H'ng Boon Hock, the latter two turning up with their wives. We spent some two hours regaling ourselves with old stories and gossips about our banking days, and good food too. Yes, the company was good. 

Tai Tay Eah temple

This is the 聖菓院 temple in Kuala Kurau. Not exactly in Kuala Kurau town itself, but on the southern banks of the river. Although the building is rather recent, maybe rebuilt on the same spot, the temple dated back to 1882 when the forefathers of the present townsfolk emigrated from Hock Kien in China. They brought with them the worship of the deity, Poh Seng Tai Tay (保生大帝) or Tai Tay Eah. It is either the original ashes in the joss stick urn or the deity's image itself that was brought over. If you ask the caretaker, he'd probably claim it was the image but it is very hard to say whether he knows for a certainty or he is simply repeating a story handed down through the generations. 

This is the same Tai Tay Eah that is worshipped at the Cheng Leong Keong (清龙宫) (established in 1895) temple in Jelutong on Penang island. Both temples celebrate the deity's birthday on the 15th day of the third Chinese lunar month. I got the dates of their establishment from AngKongKeng.com and if they are correct, then the Kuala Kurau temple is the older by several years! The Swee Cheok Tong (Seh Quah Kongsi) also celebrates the birthday of Tai Tay Eah, our chief resident deity, on the same day too. In fact, the original name of our clans house, prior to it being known as Swee Cheok Tong, was Tai Tay Eah Society when it was established by our forefathers in 1846.

Xiamen visitors

I get very upset when I am informed of an event that requires my presence and yet, there is very little detail of what's happening. Last Friday or so, I received a cryptic message saying some important visitors from Xiamen in China were on a whirlwind tour of Penang and elsewhere. 

They wanted to come by our Swee Cheok Tong as part of their tour but the only information we had was that it would be on the 16th of the month. No time given. 

Mad, lah. Siow, lah! You expect our Kongsi to be open the whole day for them? You expect my committee members to hang around the Kongsi the whole day long without doing anything but wait for their arrival? 

Then on Saturday, I received an excited call from our clansman in Xiamen asking us to assist by ensuring we meet the Xiamen officials.

Slowly, more information trickle d it and it was confirmed on Monday midday that these people from the Xiamen Haicang Overseas Chinese Sandu Association would visit at 10am. Altogether with their local representatives there would be 18 of them.

Well, at least there was something concrete for us to work on, although it was still practically at the last minute. We had to arrange for a pewter plate for the exchange of souvenirs or else, pai say, loss of face for the Kongsi that we had nothing to give our guests in return. We also had to arrange some last-minute gifts for the whole group. And refreshments too.

For us from the Swee Cheok Tong, I also had my Vice-President Chin Sun, Treasurer Chin Chuan and Committee Members Chin Choon and Soo Liang on standby. We expected the visitors to be late and we were surprised that they actually arrived soon after 10 o'clock.

It was a whirlwind sort of visit, all right. My vice-President spoke to briefly explain to them why our signboards said Swee Cheok Tong outside and Hai In Tong inside. After a quick exchange of gifts, we had our group pictures taken and that was that! All over inside 20 minutes and for that, we had to make so much quick preparations in double quick time.

In a way I was glad for this chance to meet these Chinese officials. After all, Xiamen was one of the sources of us Hokkien clans in Penang. A very long time ago, our forefathers had departed there for the Nanyang to seek a better future. So there will always be ties with Xiamen but today, it's left to us to pull one another closer.

Worship resumes

It's been two years. After two long years of what seemed like eternity, we were able to re-open our Kongsi House for worship again today. Today's session coincided with the celebration of the birthday of our resident deity, Tai Tay Eah (大帝爷) on the 15th day of the third lunar month. The only restrictions we continued to impose were the wearing of face masks and the scanning of the MySejahtera QR code.

Tai Tay Eah has been our resident deity for a very long time; not only at our Kongsi in Penang but also in our ancestral village in Hokkien Province of China. 

When our forefathers arrived in 1805, they had brought with them some ashes from the original worship urn at the Hai Inn Tong temple there. 

That's why the main hall of our Kongsi here is also named Hai Inn Tong, in honour of the original Hai Inn Tong temple in Ow Quah Sia. Tai Tay Eah, the healing deity, takes pride of place on the main altar. The deity has temples all over Penang but the main one, the Cheng Leong Keong (清龍宮), is located in Jelutong. Click here to read what I wrote about Tai Tay Eah some eight years ago.  

Some of the trustees and committee members turned up and we were quite happy and relieved to see one another. None the worse after emerging from the lockdowns of the past two years! 

My added bonus today was to see one of my old aunts - my father's cousin - whom I had invited to share in the worship at the Kongsi when I learnt that she had just moved up from Kuala Lumpur. 

I wanted to ask her about her grandfather, who was also my great-grandfather, but her memory wasn't already up to scratch. But she did reveal to me that in the old days, one of his lines of business was stevedoring and he had two shophouses somewhere along Beach Street to hold the goods in transit. Unfortunately, there is no way to identify their locations today.

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?

Cowherd and the weaving lady

Although this is the seventh Chinese lunar month when the Hungry Ghosts Festival goes into full swing for 29 or 30 days annually, the seventh day of the seventh lunar month holds a completely different significance altogether. It is on this day that the folklore of the Cowherd and the Weaving Lady takes hold. This is an old Chinese love story and is fascinating because of its astrological origins.

Early sky-watchers in China had discovered that the circumpolar stars revolving round the Pole Star would return to the same place in the sky every 27.33 days, which formed a sidereal month. In relation to this discovery, the Chinese devised the 28 Mansions lunar system as early as the middle of the Shang period (商朝) (circa 14th Century BC). These 28 Mansions are equatorial divisions, or segments of the celestial sphere. A name was given for each of these 28 segments: the ninth mansion, with its star that westerners call Vega, was called Ch'ien Niu (牵牛) or Cowherd and the 10th, symbolised by the star Altair, was named Chih Nu (织女) or Weaving Lady.

As Vega and Altair are close to each other in the sky, it was easy to imagine myth-makers, such were the ancient Chinese, creating the boy-meets-girl romance of Heaven. 

Vega (the Weaving Lady) is the brightest star of the summer triangle.
Then there is Altair (the Cowherd) which is the second brightest,
separated by the Milky Way (the Celestial River) with the fainter 
Deneb (the bridge of magpies) in its midst 

One of the early stories goes back to the state of Ch'u (楚) (BC 740-330) telling of the Cowherd marrying the Weaving Lady who was the youngest of seven grand-daughters of T'ien Ti (天帝) or Lord of Heaven. To pay the dowry, the Cowherd secured a loan of 20,000 strings from T'ien Ti. For a long time, however, the Cowherd was unable to repay the loan. As a punishment, they were transformed into stars. The Cowherd was banished to the west of the Celestial River or Milky Way while the Weaving Lady stayed in the east. However, they were permitted to meet once a year on the seventh night of the seventh moon.

On that night, provided the skies were clear, magpies (鵲) would form a bridge over the Celestial River with their bodies and wings so that the lovers could meet. But if there be rain, the Celestial River became so wide that the bridge could not be formed. So the husband and wife could not always meet by reason of bad weather, sometimes for three or four years at a stretch. But because their love remains immortally young and eternally patient, they remain optimistically happy hoping to meet on the next year's seventh night of the seventh month.

In Malaysia, Chinese households used to pay homage to this pair of celestial lovers during the Seven Fairies Festival (七仙女節 ). As times have changed, this practice is no longer popular among the larger community. In my family, however, we still continue with the tradition on the night of the sixth lunar day, usually around 11.30pm as a new day is deemed to have begun at 11pm. Our worship to the seven fairy sisters would include offering a glass bowl of water. In the past, some in the Chinese community would bottle up the water on the next day as it was deemed to have curative powers. In Penang, and I dare say elsewhere too, the Baba Nyonya community would use the water to make bedak sejok. These are not done nowadays. At best, the women in the household would now share out the water to wash their faces in the hope of radiating a beautiful countenance almost as ravishing as the fairies.

In Chinese culture, the magpie is a very popular bird. As a symbol of good luck and good fortune, the bird is a common subject in Chinese paintings as well as traditional Chinese poetry and couplets. The Quah clansmen in the Ow Quah village, Hokkien province, had named their clan house as Swee Cheok Tong (瑞鵲堂). The closest I can get to translating this name is Auspicious Magpie Society.

The story goes that a long time ago in China, there was a senior member of the Quah clansmen who was a righteous government official. When he finally retired to his village, a flock of magpies had flown to accompany him on his long journey home. Thus, he was inspired enough to name the clan house that he founded as the Swee Cheok Tong. When my forebears migrated south to the nanyang in the mid-19th Century, the clan house that they established in Penang was subsequently named the Penang Swee Cheok Tong Seh Quah Kongsi (檳城瑞鵲堂柯公司). Click here to learn more about the Kongsi's origin.

Connecting the dots: Jiang Ziya

This story was originally scheduled to appear on this blog on 20 June 2017 but somehow, I decided to save it for a later day. As things went, I totally forgot about it until today when I went through all my drafts that did not see the light of day. Well, this one will see the light of day: today, (four years later 😉)! So read on....

----start----

20 June 2017

It was actually quite accidental that I came across the film, Xuan Zang (大唐玄奘), which I wrote about a few days ago. It was days after I had returned from Sitiawan in Perak that I had wanted to know more about the Tua Pek Kong temple there. Remember too that I had written very briefly about the statue of Jiang Ziya (姜子牙) in the pond behind the temple building.

I had long been intrigued by Jiang Ziya and seeing that statue at the temple simply increased my curiosity about one of ancient China's military strategists. Jiang Ziya was also known by several other names: Jiang Shang (姜尚), Lü Shang (呂尚) and Jiang Taigong (姜太公), among others more. He was a Chinese noble who was hired by King Wen (周文王) and later helped his son, King Wu (周武王), of the Zhou Dynasty (周朝) overthrow the Shang Dynasty (商朝) in the 11th Century BC. 

In popular culture, Jiang Ziya is portrayed as an old man sitting by a riverside and patiently fishing with a baitless or hookless fishing rod. His contention was that when the fish was ready, it would swim to meet him. One day, King Wen saw him fishing thus and began engaging him in conversation. King Wen was convinced that he was a military strategist and made him his Prime Minister. Jiang's treatise on military strategy, Six Secret Teachings (太公六韜), is considered one of the Seven Military Classics of Ancient China.

I did a search on for the Internet for Jiang Ziya and among many things, learnt that in 2016, someone had made a film where Jiang Ziya was one of the main characters. The blockbuster show was called League of Gods (封神榜) and starring heavyweight actors like Jet Li. A name among the other cast members stood out: that of Huang Xiaoming.

Huang Xiaoming. At first, the name had sounded vaguely familiar to me. Then I remembered that he had starred opposite Donnie Yen in Ip Man 2. So naturally, I did a search on his name as well and Huang Xiaoming's name appeared as the main actor in the film, Xuan Zang (大唐玄奘). Now, I did know that Hsuan Tsang (玄奘) was the real-life pilgrim monk who went to India in search of Buddhist scriptures. He underwent lots of personal perils but none of which were even distantly close to those depicted in the various fantasy film versions of Journey to the West.

In those fantasy film versions, Hsuan Tsang would be protected by the divine powers of Sun Wukong (孫悟空), Zhu Bajie (豬八戒) and Sha Wujing (沙悟淨), which brings me full circle back to the Tua Pek Kong temple in Sitiawan where these four stone statues were located. Fascinating connections, aren't they?

----end----

As an afterword, I must add that there are currently some flicks about Jiang Ziya in the past few years. Other than League of Gods in 2016, there are now New Seal God Jiang Ziya in 2019 while the fully animated Jiang Ziya: Legend of Deitification came out in 2020. As I've yet to watch them, I can't comment anything on these three films. But for sure, they'll be on my list to watch. [UPDATE (22 May 2021): I laboured to watch New Seal God Jiang Ziya and can summarise my review in six words: "Don't waste your time on it."] [UPDATE (4 June 2021): For a Jet Li film, the action scenes in League of Gods lacked excitement, perhaps too much CGI, that couldn't make me grip my seat. Nevertheless, a film that can be enjoyed once and never again.] 

I must also mention something else. In 2013, I wrote in this blog that according to a newspaper story in The Straits Times of Singapore in the 1990s, some of Jiang Ziya's descendants had adopted Ke (柯) as their surname. It's difficult to prove or disprove this sort of claim.

Mooncake festival

Yesterday was the 15th day of the Chinese lunar month. Traditionally on this day, we would celebrate the Mid-Autumn Mooncake Festival. There are legends surrounding this festival, mostly centering on the fairy in the moon but for too many years already, the Chinese people are now more realistic. There is no life on the moon, let alone fairies. Yet we still celebrate this festival today but it is more of a cultural tradition than anything else. So there I was again at the Swee Cheok Tong (Seh Quah Kongsi) to worship at the altars of our resident deities and also the ancestral tablets. As per our practice, each of us - the trustees and committee members that attended - were given a box of mooncakes. This year, I requested the Treasurer to include a Ngor Jeen or assorted nuts mooncake in my box. This mooncake flavour has become out of favour in the past years as more imaginative and innovative fillings take over. These newer fillings are not to my liking though, as they do not taste any better than the traditional ones, Yet if the mooncake festival needs to survive, there must certainly be revamps to the mooncakes themselves.

The Quah Kongsi in 1949

It is a pity that my Penang Swee Cheok Tong Seh Quah Kongsi had lost most of our pre-war records, that is, prior to the bleak period of the Japanese Occupation from December 1941 till September 1945, but recently I found the earliest surviving official list of elected Trustees and Committee Members that dated back to 1949. The most prominent name among the office bearers was Quah Beng Kee, the man that introduced the first private ferry service that plied between the island and the mainland. Beng Kee cast a long shadow over the Quah Kongsi. It is of interest to note that as long ago as 1928, he was already the President and it was a post that he held until his death in 1952. 

Also of interest are the displays of the two flags. The one on the left - with the deep blue sky and a white sun - was the flag of the Koumintang party. Meanwhile, the other was the flag of the Republic of China, now Taiwan. The flag is no longer used in mainland China. Since the Kongsi's origins were in the Hokkien province of China, the two flags were dropped from all subsequent documents soon after the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949.

Eventful July (Part one)

I'm very glad that July is over. I've had enough excitement in a month - too many things that happened to me and my household - and I hope it doesn't spill over into August. It started on 07 July, the 35th anniversary of our wedding. There were the usual congratulatory messages that came in through facebook and then in the evening, someone delivered three tubs of ice cream to the house, courtesy of See Ming. First got to know her in 2001, from my JobStreet days and we have kept in touch ever since.

That was a big and very pleasant surprise, the ice cream, that is, from a friend in Kuala Lumpur. But just a few hours earlier there was a big shock. Lightning. And Thunder. An overhead lightning strike at an electrical pole directly outside my neighbour's house. Immediately, BOOM and the electrical supply to my house, and several other houses to my left and right, shut down.

The neighbour to my right had her ceiling fans damaged. The neighbour to my left suffered damage to several of his electrical items. As for me, my Internet connection went down. My mobiles and laptop could still connect to the router by WiFi but there was no connection to the outside. My desktop, linked to the router by cable, was unaffected although I also could not link to the outside world. Luckily for the laptop and mobiles, my neighbour was kind enough to share her WiFi password with us. So my wife could at least continue working on her laptop. As for my desktop, I couldn't run a cable to her house and thus, I was totally cut off. Not that it affected me a hundred percent. At least, it gave me time to do my writings with little distraction from the Internet world.

Nevertheless, I had to report the problem to Maxis, my home broadband service provider, to get it resolved. Report was made on the seventh evening but through a miscommunication, basically on my part, their technician could come only on the 10th, a Friday. He did some checks and said the problem was with the modem which belonged to TMNet's unifi service. So he had to inform TMNet too for their technician to come to my house too. That would to be the following week, unfortunately. Come the 14th, another Maxis technician turned up to relook at my problem. He quickly determined that it was the Maxis router that had conked out and not the TMNet modem. So after a quick replacement of a new router, poof! My Internet came back alive.

On the 24th morning, I went to the Kampong Baru market like I usually do every few days to buy our provisions. As I was walking around, I felt a sudden pain on my right thigh. Searing pain. I quickly rubbed the outside of my shorts trying to relieve myself of the itch. I knew it was an insect bite and the insect must have somehow flew up the end of my shorts. But the sensation was like nothing I had felt before. A longer sustained pain and itch. As I didn't see any insect parts fall off, I couldn't ascertain what type of insect it was. The pain lasted almost forever. I kept rubbing the itch. When I got home, I was horrified to see the damage on my thigh. A stretch of eight insect bite marks. All red rashes, the biggest about the size of the newer 20 cents coin. Quickly applied some ointment on them. I thought the rashes would subside by the next day but no, they did not.

Curious about the bites, I tried to find out more about the unknown insect. I've heard about the Charlie or rove insect that would leave quite a considerable damage on their victims but the rash on my thigh did not look anything like a rove insect bite. In that sense, I heaved a sigh of relief. I was lucky in an unlucky way, or unlucky in a lucky way. It took eight days for the rashes to almost subside. Today, the rashes have turned into a very light brown colour.

Last January, two or three days before Chinese New Year, the live-in caretaker of our Quah Kongsi collapsed and fell unconscious at our Kongsi premises. He was discovered by our vice-president and quickly, an ambulance brought the caretaker to the General Hospital's emergency ward. But somehow, this caretaker who I will call Ah Beng, mysteriously disappeared from the hospital. We couldn't locate him anywhere. We feared for his safety. I asked some friends what could be the likely reason. In the worst case scenario, could our caretaker have ended up in the mortuary? Not a pleasant thought but it was one of the possibilities. But nope, we made a few discreet telephone calls to check out the mortuary. No such name there. So we knew he was still alive. But where could he be?

We held an emergency meeting. One of our trustees said a police report must be made to safeguard ourselves. So I had to go make a missing person report at the Patani Road police station on the island. A police sergeant even came to the Kongsi to nose around. Looked through the caretaker's barebone of a bedroom upstairs. Found nothing out of the ordinary. It was a mystery to him and to us.

Several weeks later, the Secretary told me that he saw a message of appeal on social media asking for any information about the relatives of one person. That person was, of course, our old caretaker Ah Beng. Somehow the day after his admission to (or escape from) the hospital's emergency ward, a good Samaritan had brought him over to an Old Folks Home. There, he had been well looked after, cleaned up properly, given proper daily square meals and most importantly, a decent place to stay. Not to say that the Kongsi wasn't decent enough, it is, except that it is very quiet alone in an old house. We didn't want to disturb him since he looked so contented in his new environment. We would decide on the next course of action at a committee meeting.

So at the next meeting on the 19th of last month, as I was bringing everyone up-to-date with the developments of our wayward former caretaker, the Secretary, who was checking the Old Folks' Home's facebook page, suddenly surprised all of us to say that hey, Ah Beng passed away six days earlier and his funeral had already been held. He had been cremated and his ashes strewn into the sea. What a big shock to all of us. There we were, in the midst of deciding what to do with his belongings at the Kongsi when fate took a hand to decide for us. But in the end, everyone felt a big relief. Ah Beng had quite a miserable life. He was alone in this world, no-one to call as his relatives. It was only in the last few years of his life that he found shelter at the Kongsi. We installed him as the live-in caretaker so that there would be someone in the premises should a Kongsi member want to come in to worship at the ancestral tablets. Of course, there is nobody to do this duty now and I greatly doubt we will be able to find another person to replace him. Oh well....

Then the car broke down.

(To be continued....)

Going going gone

This wasn't the famed Christie's auction rooms in London or New York. It was just a small private auction of art work at a a large private dinner function organised by Charis Hospice in Penang. At stake were several pieces of artwork by various amateur local painters and a cross-stitch enthusiast. I went to the dinner by invitation of Dr Oo Loo Chan, the founder and a director of the Hospice.

My wife and I arrived early. My wife went into the banquet hall at the Spice Convention Centre to check on the evening's programme and left me to wander around. Feeling a bit bored, I went to look at the paintings in the centre of the lobby. And suddenly, I froze in front of one of them. Mmm, I thought to myself, the subject in the painting looked familiar. I stared at it again. After a few minutes, it struck me. I couldn't believe my eyes. Out of all the random and anonymous buildings in George Town, the artist had chosen the facade of a property that belonged to the Swee Cheok Tong Quah Kongsi. The society that I belong to.

This was one of the paintings that was put up for auction. The organisers called it a silent auction because the bids would be done by writing down the bid amounts on a piece of paper. At the end of the dinner, the bids would close and the last-made bid would be declared winner.


Now, should I bid for this painting? My wife said that I should. After all, it was a painting of one of our properties. The Kongsi should have it. And have it hung proudly in the Kongsi House. If the property can catch the eyes of a painter and he could paint a scene so vibrant and alive, it must mean that there is aesthetic value in this property of ours.

The reserve bid was set at RM2,300 and almost immediately, one person had raised the bid to RM3,500. This actually caused me a dilemma since this was unexpected. I began testing the water with a tentative RM3,550 bid. I walked back to my table at the other end of the banquet hall. When I returned to the painting later, that same person had written RM3,600 on the paper. I raised the bid to RM3,650 and walked away. When I returned to the painting again, the price had gone up to RM4,000.

Whoever it was, he was determined to get his hands on the painting and he wanted to scare me off. For whatever reason, I did not know.  Obviously, he no longer wanted to play along with me. On my part, I was beginning to have my doubts about continuing further but my wife said I should stand firm. It was something for the Kongsi and about the Kongsi. If I were to allow this picture of the Kongsi's property to fall into someone else's hands - someone detached and without any ties to the property - I would very much regret it, she said. On reflection, that was true. It must be more than a mere coincidence that I should attend a dinner function and see such a painting being put to auction.

So I raised the bid to RM4,050 and I stood back. Soon enough, I noticed a young man saunter up to the painting and write RM4,200 as his bid, again trying to discourage me. But I knew that it was almost time for the auction to end. I stood nearby and as the master of ceremony was announcing the closure of the bids, I wrote RM4,250 on the paper and handed it to the person in charge from Charis Hospice.

And that's how I ended up - or rather, how the Quah Kongsi ended up - with the painting of the Kongsi's property at the junction of Malay Street and Beach Street.

That's the artist, Khoo Cheang Jin, with us. He was mighty thrilled that his watercolour painting had fetched this good price at the auction. And actually, his was the only painting that saw some tussle among bidders.

Mid-autumn mooncake / lantern festival

According to the Chinese lunisolar calendar, today is the 15th day of the eight lunar month, meaning that today we are celebrating the Mid-autumn Festival with mooncakes. Traditionally, mooncakes were either sweet with fillings of lotus paste or red bean paste with an enclosed salted duck egg yolk, or savoury with nutty fillings mixed with pieces of Chinese ham. But for quite a long time already, we've seen mooncakes with every inconceivable flavours as fillings. I quite welcomed them then but now, I don't quite like them.

Culturally, we Chinese have been praying to the Moon Goddess during this Mid-autumn Festival since time immemorial. When I was small and still living in Seang Tek Road, this was an occasion to look forward to every year. Come about nine o'clock at night, we would await my grand-aunt and her family. They would drive down from Ayer Itam to visit their elder sister - my grandmother - and we would then all troop upstairs to the open-air balcony at the back of the house.

I would follow them upstairs with my dragon paper lantern. My lantern was usually the grandest among my neighbours. I can say this about my parents. They always gave me the best lanterns every year and it was invariably designed as a dragon. Possibly it was the same paper lantern, kept and stored away till the following year, but I was too young to notice the difference or to care. If it was not displaying the lantern upstairs on the balcony, it would be out on the streets at night during the festival evening when the other kids in the neighbourhood would come out with their lanterns too. But as I mentioned, mine was always the dragon, and always the biggest and the grandest.

My grandmother would have already laid out a table there and placed the joss stick urn and candle holders on it. At 10 o'clock or so, she would lay out the mooncakes and mooncake biscuits and we would then spend the next hour or so worshipping the Moon Goddess. It being the night of the 15th day of the lunar month, the moon would be a round, bright disc in the dark sky. But occasionally, there would be thick cloud cover too and the moon couldn't be seen during that hour of worship.

But these prayers, if I remember correctly, tapered off soon after 1969. Maybe not immediately but it took a few more years before we stopped completely. By then, I had moved temporarily to Kuala Lumpur for my studies and lost touch with this moon worship. When I came back to Penang about four years later, my family were on the verge of moving to Ayer Itam because the Seang Tek Road house was about to be taken back by new landlords. Yes, we were being evicted on their pretext of redevelopment of the land on which their four houses, including our rented home, were standing. We moved to Ayer Itam and never prayed to the Moon Goddess during the Mid-autumn Festival ever again. (Note: The properties were never redeveloped. Until today, the four houses are still standing in Seang Tek Road.)

Even though as a family, we do not observe the worship anymore, this is a culture that is still widely popular among the Chinese community, particularly by the Chinese guilds. Only this morning, I was at the Swee Cheok Tong, the Quah Kongsi, to pay my respects to our resident deities and the ancestral tablets on the occasion of the Mid-autumn Festival. Apart from the usual array of fruits, roast meat and roast chicken, we offered boxes of mooncakes at the various altars. Unfortunately, missing this year were the mooncake biscuits; missing not by design but simply because the Treasurer forgot all about them! 😛

Anyway, tonight is the Mid-autumn Festival night. Would we be able to see the full moon tonight? I would say not likely. It will be more than clouds that will cover the sky. It will be the dreaded haze that had enveloped much of the country for at least a week now. No thanks to the irresponsible people of Indonesia who had been doing open burning on their plantations, the country is now more or less totally shrouded with a thick haze around the clock. Even rain cannot eliminate the haze. Only a change in wind direction can do it and none is expected till one or two weeks from now.

As long as the haze persists, there is little chance of seeing the moon tonight. And this is a great pity because tonight, at 8.21pm, the International Space Station is scheduled to streak right across the face of the moon. It will be very fleeting: the transit across the moon's face is expected to last a mere 1.26 seconds. Over in the blink of an eye. And will be missed by most Malaysians because of the inconsiderate Indonesians. Ah, well....

Furniture scam

"Next time, bring along a thumb drive," a bored-looking policewoman said to me when I went to the Police Station to make a report a few days ago and handed her a computer-printed paper. Wow, do they expect complainants to submit their reports via thumb drives nowadays? That's a new development. Good to know. But the problem is, you know, how often does a person make a police report in his lifetime?

For me, that was just the second time I was making a police report in five days. All for the same matter. The second report was a follow-up to the first one. And what was the matter in the first instance? Well, it concerns a scam. An antique furniture scam.

Last Friday week, I was called down to the Kongsi by an alarmed secretary who said there were several people who were trying to take any the furniture in the premises, claiming that they had paid a middleman a substantial amount of money for it. My treasurer and secretary who were the first to be alerted, rushed to the premises and ordered them to cease their trespass and leave immediately.

You see, we never approved anyone to sell our Kongsi furniture. None of our committee members did. None of out trustees did. Some unscrupulous scammer must have made an unauthorised entry into our premises some weeks ago and had taken some pictures of our furniture. Then tried to hoodwink some unsuspecting buyers to part with their money on the promise of delivering the items to them.

The scam worked too well because the victim flew into town to meet the scammer who subsequently disappeared. I hear the Police are now looking for him and his wife.

So when I arrived at the Kongsi, but not before I had consulted a lawyer on this matter, my fellow trustees decided to lodge a first police report, if not for anything else, to safeguard ourselves in case the victim were to come back with local thugs or possessors or what. The second police report was just to reinforce our view that we shall hold the victim, the scammer and whoever was associated with them responsible if any untoward incident should happen to our premises.

We want to make it very clear that this matter has nothing to do with us except for the fact that the digital image of the furniture may now be finding its way through the Internet. We cannot prevent that. Of course, we are beefing up the security at the Kongsi in the meantime.

Discovering a new nephew

Being trustees of the Swee Cheok Tong Quah Kongsi (檳城瑞鵲堂柯公司) mean that it is also our job to keep a watchful eye on the people that come to pray during the Chinese festivals. At yesterday's Tang Chik (Dongzhi, 冬節), or the Winter Solstice festival, I had noticed this young man praying at the altars.

He was new; I had never seen or met him before. Therefore after he had finished making his rounds of the altars inside the Kongsi, I pulled him aside to introduce myself. (Or was it to turn interrogator?)

Turned out that he is now a newly discovered relative of mine. Name of Ethan Quah. Grandson of Quah Kong Chai, one of our former trustees, now deceased. And Kong Chai was my uncle too, my father's cousin. Which makes Ethan my nephew. How cool. I welcome any nephew or niece with the same surname as I.

Ethan's a Singaporean. Newly completed his two-year National Service and now waiting to enter University. I was told by his aunt that he intended to take up law studies.

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