Ghost festival traditions live on

People who attend the Mid-Summer Ghost Festival at Lujhou (蘆洲) Township's Yonglian Temple in Taipei County will find something different this year. For the first time, the temple is making sacrificial offerings from flour paste in the shape of birds, animals, fruits and tea pots.

The reason for it is very simple, said Yang Lien-fu (楊蓮福), chairman of the temple's management committee.

"There are so many good religious traditions that are on the verge of extinction," he said. "As the second generation of the temple's management, I feel obliged to carry forward old traditions and keep them alive as long as possible."

The temple took over the city's public sacrificial rites for the Mid-Summer Ghost Festival about four years ago. It now has one of the nation's most elaborate Ghost Festival religious ceremonies, after that of Keelung City.

Built in 1873, Yonglian Temple is the center for Buddhist worship in Lujhou. It has gone through various renovations and expansion projects over the years, with the latest renovation work being completed in 1997.

Festival roots

The festival, which makes offerings on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, is a custom dating back thousands of years.

According to Buddhist beliefs, the festival originates from a story about Moginlin, a disciple of the Buddha Sakyamuni. He went to hell to rescue his mother, who was being punished for selfishness and failing to do good deeds when she was alive.

The Buddha told him that if he wished to relieve his mother from her suffering, he should offer five fruits and 100 delicacies to all ghosts on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month.

Taoists, meanwhile, believe that the festival is held to mark the birthday of the Guardian of Hell, who governs all matters in the underworld. He decreed an amnesty so all lost souls in hell could be released to return to the mortal world on the first day of the seventh lunar month. They enjoy incense, candles and food offered to them for one month so that they might be converted to "the Way."

In current practice, the Mid-Summer Ghost Festival begins on the first day of the seventh lunar month and is marked by the opening of the gates of the underworld. All the wandering, hungry and lonely ghosts in hell then return to the world of the living for one month.

On the 14th day, a parade is held and lanterns are released on waterways to light the way for abandoned souls and lead them to dry land.

A ceremonial dance is performed to welcome deity Chung Kwei (鍾馗) to awe the ghosts and keep them in order, so they will not cause any harm. The ghosts are sent back to the underworld on the first day of the eighth lunar month.

Paste offerings

Nowadays, paste sacrificial figures are distributed to festival goers at the end of the day for home decoration. They are not edible -- although about 20 or 30 years ago they were. In earlier times, paste figures were also offered at house-warming parties or weddings.

According to Hung Shih-hsien (洪世賢), vice chairman of the Lujhou-based Love Your Hometown Cultural Association, paste sacrificial figures are believed to have been invented by Chu-ko Liang (諸葛亮) during the Three Kingdoms era. Chu-ko ordered his soldiers to make human figures out of rice dough and offered them to the river god in order to gain safe passage across a river.