Hungry Ghost Festival
After Chinese New Year, the annual Hungry Ghost Festival (Zhong Yuan) is perhaps the next most popular celebration among the Chinese. Celebrated for thirty days beginning on the first day of the seventh moon of the Chinese lunar calendar (usually around August), the festival has roots in Chinese forms of social life, Taoist folk religion, and Buddhism. It is believed that during this period the gates of hell (purgatory or the underworld) are thrown wide open, and ghosts—euphemistically called "good brothers"—are free to roam the realm of the living once again.
The Feast of the Wandering Souls, more commonly known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, is an inauspicious time. Hungry ghosts may prey on the living out of anger and resentment. Weddings are not held in this month, and ghost stories of mishaps and ill fortune circulate to keep the living alert. Children are particularly vulnerable, and parents take care to prevent them from swimming in the open sea or camping in forests, for example.
To appease this legion of anonymous ghosts, offerings are made outside of Chinese homes at nearby road junctions, country lanes, and open spaces, but care is also taken not to invite them into the homes. Neighborhood groups and clan and trade associations have more elaborate celebrations lasting for a few days. Temporary sheds are built in open spaces to house anumber of deities. These deities are made of papiermache and are burnt at the end of the festival. The chief of these deities—called Phor Tor Kong in Hokkien—is the keeper of purgatory, who keeps a watchful eye over the wandering ghosts. Sumptuous feasts are provided to fete both deities and ghosts. An assortment of meat dishes, rice, noodles, sweet cakes, fruits, wine, and other drinks, as well as joss sticks, paper money, and paper clothes, are laid out. Additionally, entertainment is provided in the form of traditional Chinese opera, live singing bands, and open-air film showings. Besides fulfilling ritual obligations, the Hungry Ghost Festival is occasionally used to raise funds and awareness to address concerns pertaining to the well-being of diaspora Chinese communities, particularly in areas like Chinese education, ethnicity, and culture.
A ritual specialist jumps over a fire at the Hungry Ghost Festival held by the Chinese community in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in August 1999. (AFP/CORBIS)Further Reading
Debernadi, Jean. (1984) "The Hungry Ghost Festival: A Convergence of Religion and Politics in the Chinese Community of Penang, Malaysia." Southeast Asia Journal of Social Science 12, 1: 25–34.
Jordan, David K. (1972) Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors: The Folk Religion of a Taiwanese Village. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Tan, Sooi-Beng. (1988) The Phor Tor Festival in Penang: Deities, Ghosts, and Chinese Ethnicity. Clayton, Australia: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University.
Teiser, Stephen. (1996) The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wong, C. S. (1967) A Cycle of Chinese Festivals. Singapore: Malaysia Publishing House.
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