To the Chinese, the Hungry Ghost Festival is consider an important annual festival to commemorate the dead/spirits

Why is Hungry Ghost Festival important to the Chinese?

In my earlier article on annual Ching Ming festival, there is the mention about the Chinese viewing the relationship between the living and the dead as a important aspect of their family life. It’s just not only about getting a burial site/grave it is also about maintaining the tomb-site of their family’s ancestors

The Ching Ming festival ensures that the relatives can “take care of their ancestors” by offering hell money/etc.

But what about those dead who have left this physical world without a proper burial or who have no relatives to care for them? The Chinese believe that those dead without relatives/descendants to take care of, will turn into spirits/ghosts who then become bitter and retaliate by creating danger in the living world. These ghosts/spirit who are “hungry” need to be taken care of.

Hence, we have then the Hungry Ghost festival which is held on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month. Why the seventh lunar month is because the Chinese believe that the gates of the underworld are opened during this time to allow these unfortunates to wander in the world of the living. Their anger can be soothed if they are presented with the same offerings that are given to the ancestors and gods and their anger can be further assuaged if they are entertained by several days of opera.

About the Hungry Ghost Festival:-

• The celebrations are normally arranged by the Residents’ Association
• House to house collections are made to subsidize this event
• A theatre is built at one end and altar hugh sticks of incense are constantly burnt at the other end
• Deities are carried in a sedan chairs from local temples and reside in a temporary temple behind the altar.
• In the first two weeks before the festival, families make private offerings to the ghosts in a ceremony known as shiu yi /”burning clothes”
• Those who live close to the sea sail out to pray and scatter rice on the water or launch small paper boats carrying food and paper offerings to appease the ghosts who are had been lost at sea
• On the last evening of this festival which is usually on the fifteenth day of the seventh moon, the paper “ Bank of Hell” notes, paper clothes, furniture, transport and food are “sent”/burnt to the ghosts.
• As the festival draws to its close the hugh paper statue of the deity normally Tai Si Wong is carried from one end of the bonfire to the other to the other so that he can assess the efforts that have been made and then he too is burnt so he can make his report to Heaven.