« Progress For Our Nation | Home | The Right Tutor »
Hungry Ghosts Festival (中元节)
By Peace | August 11, 2010
Dragon in the skyToday is 七月初二， 11 August 2010. The second day of the chinese Hungry Ghosts Festival or 中元节. This morning, the weather was so hot, extremely hot. I went to 888 Plaza to buy some vegetables and food. I saw the Coffee Shop displaying the usual seventh month ‘altar’ beside the coffee shop. Two big red candles were burning, together with incense. I do not like the smell of the incense. Anyway, we still buy food from this mixed vegetable rice stall. After buying, we walked home. On the way, I stood still somewhere beside the altar, a pillar was pasted with pink papers, with words written on it…. the name of the people and some ‘money figures’ shown. I supposed that is what they meant by the 黑金…
The sky now is suddenly grey, and thunder roaring now. Just now around 115pm, Isaac and me witnessed amazing wonders of birds flying in the sky. The wind was so huge (the thunder just roared loudly and fiercefully), and all the trees swayed. I had not seen such a strong winds for so long. I love the cool breeze. The pigeons today were so strange! Today is the special number 11 day. As I walked to 888 Plaza, I saw the modern pigeons home — the Pigeon holes (MRT PILLARS). Today, so many pigeons were standing outside their home! What an unusual scene. Back home, just now, after my lunch, the pigeons flew, ‘parading’ in the sky! This includes the white pigeons! What a spectacular sight. I kept saying ‘wow’ and Isaac also follows me!
Jester on the Dragon
These dragon pictures were taken on the 8th August 2010, the ‘auspicious day’ where the chinese believes about the number 8 to be 发发 (prosperity). I was a Sunday and after going to 11am Mass at St Anthony Church, we went to my mother’s house. Coming home, after eating Burger King, this was what we saw on the open space beside Causeway point or Woodlands MRT station again.
Grass slope of Woodlands MRT Station/Woodlands Bus Interchange
On this grassland, we saw 7 white cranes…
white cranes on the slope
Some of the cranes flew around as I watched them. It was such a beautiful sight to see the crane flying just in front of me.
It is raining heavily now. Talking about the Ghosts Festival, my religion is Roman Catholic and I do not use to believe in Ghosts or rather do not have knowledge about them. But after what I had gone through, it is a truth whether you believe it a not. Ghosts or spirits are present in the air even though you might want to choose to not to believe.
The spirit world is such a scary thing. It is a world of ‘darkness’ and there is no peace. It is so noisy, and the spirits are living in an unhappy world, feeling hunger and pain…. It is said that there are eighteen levels of hell, and it is said that in hell, you paid for whatever sins that you had committed during your lifetime. There is sufferings in hell, no peace.
Everywhere, you can see people burning ‘papers’ and incense to the spirit world. When people died, they burned money and paper house, paper cars etc, hoping that the dead would ‘enjoy themselves’ with these objects and that the dead will bring them good luck…. I would not want to do such a thing…
As we were walking home, I told Clara about the Dragon in the sky. Then she told me that there’s a jester sitting on the dragon! True enough, I could see a little jester…
In show, we always saw in Chinese films that “老天终是爱做弄人“ ， these seems a truth… there is so much mysteries in the world of spirits…
Topics: View All | 1 Comment »
September 8th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
The Title “Hungry Ghost Festival” is inappropriate, this is not respecting our Ancestor. Do you mean that our ancestor is Hungry Ghost.?
We call this as “Zhong Yuan Jia” or some time call as seven months Ghost Festival.
It is inappropriate and disrespect to all Chinese celebrating the Festival.
Master Tan ZhiXia of Taoist mission (Singapore) has openly acknowledged “Hungry ghost” is an inappropriate on the forum on the 1 August 2008.
I hope that everyone can understand the feeling, I think we should promote this month as “Happy Ghost Festival” because everyone celebrating and our ancestor coming back also happy & enjoying in this 7 month celebration.