Ghosts stalk the canyons created by Singapore's modern high-rise offices and apartments. They also wander the remaining byways of the Southeast Asian island city-state's older, "traditional" Chinese areas of narrow streets and turn-of-the-century shophouses. This is especially true during the Month of Hungry Ghosts, the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar (usually August or early September), according to the many Singaporean Chinese (and Chinese elsewhere) who observe traditional religious practice.
During the seventh month, Chinese belief has it, gui (ghosts or ancestral spirits) leave purgatory and roam the earth in search of ritual nourishment. Such wanderers can be dangerous, particularly the spirits of people who have died violent deaths and forgotten ghosts who have been neglected during the year. Hence individuals, families, and--most often--business associations conduct rituals to placate and propitiate the gui, thereby warding off the ghosts' capricious maliciousness and ensuring the luck and prosperity of the propitiators. The ceremonies are always held outside to prevent the ghosts from entering homes and shops and causing disturbances. The fifteenth day of the month is the actual Festival of the Hungry Ghosts; however, ceremonies take place throughout the month. Because the rites take time and Singaporeans are practical people, the ceremonies often are held on the weekend.
Although substantial minorities of the country's 2.5 million people are Malays (approximately 14 percent) and Indians (8 percent), Chinese predominate (76 percent). They came primarily from the Hokkien-, Teo Chew- and Cantonese-speaking regions of south China. Starting in the early nineteenth century when Singapore was a colonial British entrepot and ending about thirty years ago when Singapore gained independence, waves of mainly lower-class migrants brought not only a drive for hard work but also diverse beliefs and customs. Since then, the government has consciously fostered a contemporary "Singaporean" society and identity along with a burgeoning technology-based economy. Nonetheless, older customs not only remain but appear to thrive, propitiations for the Hungry Ghosts being among them.
Ceremonial Appeasement Of The Hungry Ghosts
Ceremonial appeasement can be quite simple. An ancient grandmother, garbed in black sateen pants and a blue high-collared jacket, burns bunches of incense sticks to call the spirits, then a pile of paper "hell notes" (packs of fake money especially made for the purpose) to pay them off. The residue can be seen in the burnt-down stubs of incense tucked, two by two, along the cracks between curbs and sidewalks, and the heaps of paper ash in gutters.
Or a shop may set up an altar on the five-foot-way (the Singaporean term for sidewalk). Take the late Sunday afternoon observance by the family running the hardware shop at the corner of Killiney and Dublin roads. Under the matriarch's watchful eye, her grown sons erect a makeshift altar of "good luck" red plastic garbage pails and a red-painted board. They fill it with offerings: canned mushrooms, packages of cellophane noodles, bottles of cooking oil and ketchup, a red bucket filled with uncooked rice, a tray of fresh fruit, plates of bright pink buns, bunches of scallions and bok choy (Chinese cabbage), a platter of roast chickens, and a pot of steamed rice. Triangular paper flags planted in the offerings indicate the food is for the
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