the festival of the satiated rodents

in singapore we have just come to the end of the seventh lunar month celebrations of the festival of the hungry ghosts - the belief is that for the duration of this month, the gates of hell open and the ghosts of people's ancestors are allowed to roam freely around the world

it is marked by religious festivals to appease the spirits of the dead, who crave wordly pleasures that they once enjoyed in life, so ritualistic food offerings are made either on altars in temples or at temporary makeshift ones which can be seen at the side of roads and pavements all over singapore



people can also be seen burning bundles of paper in braziers - the paper is referred to as 'hell bank notes' or 'hell money' and is burnt in veneration of dead ancestors






















the ghosts need to feast their other senses too, so all over singapore tempoary stages and large tents are erected for traditional and modern entertainments such as colourful chinese operas, pop concerts as well as large feasts

to the eyes of a casual western observer such as myself when i first came to live in singapore, these traditions seem quite bizarre and elicit the same sort of puzzled and fascinated reaction as you see during other local religious festivals such as thaipusan, when indian men carry large metal structures, pierced through their skin in various places on their upper bodies and faces, for long distances to various hindu temples

in a place as clean and ordered as singapore i was surprised to see food being left out unhygenically on pavements and roads sometimes for days on end - a feast, i thought, for local populations of rats and the odd-looking tail-less stray cats you see all over populated areas here

i once asked a taxi driver how disembodied spirits could satisfy themselves on such corporeal offerings - he told me that the spirits consume the spirit of the food - good answer really - so killing two birds with one stone - keeping the souls of your ancestors happy and providing hordes of rodents with good-quality take-out

the whole hell money burning bewildered me at first too - one night i was sat at one of my favourite pavement coffee shop restaurants on east coast road when two kids came out of the karaoke bar next door - a brazier had been placed on the edge of the pavement and they proceeded to throw piles and piles of these thick wads of hell bank notes onto a small fire that had just been lit - within minutes an unfavourable breeze was blowing cinders and bits of burnt paper all over me and other displeased diners as we sat eating our dinners - loud shouts of complaint went up to various servers about food being covered in the fallout from the blaze, until one of the older waitresses, an 'auntie' of advancing years, strode purposefully over to the fire, which was getting larger and fiercer by the minute, causing not only flambed bits of paper to flutter down on plates of food but also covering everyone in acrid smelling smoke - i was under the impression that she was going to scold the two kids severely but what i didn't expect was that she would help them throw even more of the paper onto the fire, which is what she in fact did - i supposed that the reasoning behind her actions was that to stop the kids half-way through this appeasement ritual would be a very inauspicious thing to do, and so she did the next best thing, which was to get it over with as soon as possible to avoid more complaints

'a month of hungry ghosts' , a film detailing the festival celebrations in singapore has recently been released