Sunday, October 14, 2007

Celebrations in life: Nine Emperor Gods Festival

Image heavy

Went to the Nine Emperor Gods Festival at the Nine Emperor Gods temple in Ampang New Village on Saturday (13 October 2007). It's a Chinese festival celebrating the return of the Nine Emperor spirits from heaven to earth which is held on the ninth day, in the ninth moon in the Chinese lunar calendar (yes, I wiki-ed it). There's an interesting read written by Cheu Hock Thong entitled the Festival of the Nine Emperor Gods in Malaysia: Myth, Ritual and Symbol both in Adobe Acrobat version and HTML version. By the way, Cheu Hock Thong states that Ampang was originally Anbang (pronounced in a way that makes it sound 'dark society or secret society' in Chinese) and later on changed to a differently pronounced Anbang (which refers to 'peaceful society' in Chinese). Note: The Chinese language is a tonal language and thus a word can have different meanings when pronounced in different tones.


A whole lotta smoke


Joss sticks sticking out


Prayers


Stick 'em


Smoke sticks


Walking into the temple


Smokey experience in the temple


A fortune-telling session, if I'm not mistaken, or something like it


Lantern


The blue team having a rest


Spiral joss sticks


Part of prayer offerings?


Big Dragon joss sticks (Right) and a man hanging spiral joss sticks


Big Dragon joss sticks (foreground) and an industrial size furnace (background) to burn prayer papers


Opera performer having a rest reflected in the mirror

2 comments:

black magic woman said...

yes..i like the pictures :)

Marilyn John said...

Thanks, adam k and BlackMagicWoman!