I wish I knew more about Chinese folk practices and religion. Recently, I ran some searches online and found that most of the sources of information are written in Chinese. There are very few good ones in English. Even then, there weren’t many sources that addressed Singapore/Malaysian Chinese practices, either. What ever I learnt was passed down orally to me by my parents, and over the generations the information is diluted. I know some ideas behind certain rituals, but I never understood the full story.

The practices of Taoism and Buddhism overlap sometimes, and the lines between religion and folk rituals are blurred, too. Taoism as we colloquially understand it to be is different from Taoism as described in the books written in English for a Western audience. As ethnic Chinese in S.E. Asia, our culture has assimilated certain aspects that have altered it from the Chinese culture of mainland China, too.

In my previous job, the premises’ terrace overlooked a carpark just behind the building. Every year, a tent with an altar set up for the 7th lunar month would be erected there, complete with a hired puppet troupe. And amidst all that going on, I could hear the strains of evening prayer projected through the speakers of the nearby mosque. The area was never glitzy or quiet, it sometimes bordered on sleazy — but it was never boring. From where the office was, we could sometimes see fights break out on the coffee-shop corner, strange kooks, drama, even outrageous accidents.

Today is the first day of the Seventh Month festival, which is also known as the ghost festival. The seventh month of the lunar calendar is a period during which the Chinese believe that the gates of the underworld will open, allowing the ghosts and spirits of the deceased to visit the human realm. I’ve never given it much thought, but I’ve come to appreciate the presence of getai, the night auctions, the hustle-bustle. When I was younger, we lived in an old housing estate, and I used to hear the auctions going on in Hokkien at night. It was always a source of amusement to hear the prices go up and up and the people’s cheers following the raising of bids.

We don’t see the puppet shows and wayang so much nowadays — put up for deities’ celebrations — but I’ve always liked watching them when I was a child. I would ask many many questions and I found the costumes and painted faces really cool, I wanted to imitate them. As we moved away from the older estate, my contact with these street performances lessened, too. It’s easy to forget about them. I’d only had a re-kindling of interest when a Taoist temple in my neighbourhood held a street parade to mark their opening — we all leaned out of the windows of our flat to get a better view.

The Chinese folk rituals and religion seems to be practiced here mainly by the blue-collar and older segment of the population, the people who speak primarily Mandarin or Chinese dialects, or what is often called “the heartlanders” (I dislike that word very much). It’s sometimes scoffed at for being superstition or something unfashionably out-dated; it’s been parodied, joked, derided for being heathen… It’s been exoticised by people who see only the surface of it, the lure of something “oriental” and pagan. Even up till recently, I never liked it that much myself. I thought it unpleasant, inconvenient, something that I just had to go through as my parents wished it. I’ve had arguments with my parents about it. But now, I look beyond the haze of the incense smoke, and I see something so rich and fascinating, I wish it will continue to be practiced for a long, long time to come. It’s not about my personal religious beliefs, but an aspect of our identity and culture.