Pieces of Southeast Asia

By Arthur Hullett

Personal experiences in Southeast Asia plus Japan and Sri Lanka.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483595542

Book preview

APPROACHES

PREFACE

This is not a guide book. It won’t tell you where to stay, what to eat or how to shop. It is simply a collection of storys covering some of the things I saw or learned about during the 25 years I lived in Southeast Asia. There are a couple of digressions — one to the north (Japan) and one to the west (Sri Lanka) — but otherwise the storys deal with the five original members of ASEAN: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and The Philippines. They were all written during that peripatetic quarter-century at the time they actually happened so, although things might have changed a little in some of these places since then, I hope you will respond to the immediacy of the situation described. I enjoyed the experiences which led to the writing of these storys. I hope you will enjoy reading about them.

A GODDESS COMES DOWN TO EARTH

In modern Singapore, temple mediums are gradually dying out. The phenomenon has not completely disappeared, however, as this experience relates

Drums were beating, gongs clanging, incantations rising and falling. Inside the temple, the smoke from innumerable candles and joss-sticks, burning in the confined space, rose slowly on the heavy air and curled lazily out onto the five-foot-way where we stood waiting expectantly along with hundreds of eager devotees.

It was the evening of the nineteenth day of the second moon, and the Goddess of Mercy was being invited, as part of her birthday celebrations, to descend from the heavens and take possession of the body of the medium who sat waiting in the Dragon Chair before her altar.

The noise from within suddenly reached a deafening crescendo: there were shouts and cries that the Goddess had been reincarnated and we knew that the invocation had been successful. Kuan Yin, also known affectionately among her Singapore followers as Third Aunt, had condescended to be present on this auspicious occasion.

The temple itself, which was on the ground floor of an ordinary shophouse, was much too small to accommodate the crowd of grateful worshipers who had been brought out by the Goddess’s birthday, and temporary canvas shelters had been set up on the roadway outside. Under one of these, trestles formed an enormous table, every part of which was covered with offerings, mostly food, in predominantly red containers or wrappings — gifts from those who had sought the Goddess’s help or counsel during the year.

Under another shelter hung a brilliant array of formal costumes and head-dresses made of paper, representing the generals and other officials who normally attend upon her, and, in acknowledgment of the special protection she offers to seafarers, nearby stood a table containing a number of paper ships. There was also a round, raised platform edged with lotus leaves, and an altar. All that was needed was the presence of the medium, or tang-ki.

Tang-ki is the term most widely used in Singapore to denote a medium. It is a Hokkien (one of the many Chinese dialects) expression and translates roughly as ‘divining youth’. Although technically anyone can become a tang-ki — age or sex have no bearing on the matter, it is the spirit which makes the choice — in practice the majority of them are young men in their teens, especially those whose horoscopes are considered ‘light’ i.e. their eight characters, derived two each from the year, month, day and hour of their birth, are deficient in some of the more stable elements. Such young men are expected to lead blameless but short and unhappy lives, and so, by lending their bodies to the spirits, they can at least be of some service to society during their time on this earth.

While the spirit will never harm its tang-ki deliberately, the very nature of possession is such that it can and does inflict physical rigors on the body, often leading to death at a comparatively early age for those with a less than robust constitution. Many mediums, therefore, resist their calling for as long as possible, fearful of the consequences. There are some horrendous tales of the tribulations endured by those who have refused the spirits, however, and it seems wiser for a tang-ki to accept his fate philosophically.

The tang-ki, naturally, has little say as to when and where possession will take place, but it usually only occurs in a temple, at the request of petitioners who wish to consult the spirit on a variety of matters, or on festival occasions such as this one. No consultations take place during these public events, for the demands would be too great.

The tang-ki must not perform for material gain, either in public or private, and must approach the state of possession pure in mind and body, after fasting and, sometimes, sexual abstinence. All tang-kis need at least two or three helpers, well-versed in the ways of the occult, to assist and protect them while possessed. The chief of these also acts as a scribe and translator, taking down prescriptions and other instructions given by the spirit, and interpreting