Times are tough: The God of Hell and his dominion are going hungry too

KUALA LUMPUR: The bulging red eyes of the one-storey high effigy of the God of Hell glowers over the spread of roast pork, fluffy pink pau and bottles of beer offered by devotees.

The offerings are the same every year as Taoists and Buddhists celebrate the Hungry Ghost Festival. This year, however, the offerings are noticeably less generous.

Across the country, believers are downsizing their Hungry Ghost Festival celebrations in response to the spike in global prices. It is not that they are spending less than before. It is just that they are getting less for the same amount of money spent.

"The change is obvious. We are burning and offering less. Even the number of devotees has gone down," Bangsar Yee Lan Festival Society committee member Chew Wooi Foo said.

The society spent RM70,000 on a three-day celebration recently, the same as last year, but the prices of joss sticks, candles, paper effigies and hell bank notes have gone up.
The volume of offerings, Chew said, had dwindled by as much as a fifth.

"We get less in joss sticks and paper offerings for the same amount of money."

In the past, he said, the offering table, almost double the length of a badminton court, would be weighed down with food.

This year, food only covered three-quarters of the table's surface.

"Prices are going up everywhere. We are feeling the pinch," lamented Chew.

So the spirits of the departed, who are believed to roam freely in the world of the living during the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar, will have to make do with less.

Believers offer food to departed relatives and "orphan" spirits who lack family members to take care of their needs.

They burn paper offerings shaped as gold ingots, servants, houses and other basic necessities in the belief that the dead will bless them if they live well in the underworld.

Businesswoman Lai Yut Goh, a traditionalist, is hoping that her deceased relatives would bless her and turn her fortunes around so that her business would survive despite the weak economy.

"I'm burning more gold ingots and servants for my dead relatives. Maybe they will be happy and bless me."

The Malaysia Worship Item Trade Association said its members, who imported 80 per cent of the offering items from China and Vietnam, were badly hit by rising transport costs.

"When oil prices go up, transport costs and the price of the wax used to make candles also go up," its secretary Lim Thing Ke told the New Straits Times.

He is confident the celebrations would go on despite the increased costs because "you can't stop celebrating just like that".

Sinologist Dr Lai Kuan Fook said this was actually rather symbolic.

"The Chinese are pragmatic people. They want progress, to get better year by year. So, a celebration which gets bigger means you're improving."

*Article was published on 15 August 2008