The Vegetarian Festival, Phuket Island’s most important festival, takes place during the first nine days of the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar – usually late September or October.
Basically, the festival celebrates the beginning of the month of ‘Taoist Lent’, when devout Chinese abstain from eating all meat and meat products. In Phuket Island, the festival activities are centerd around five Chinese temples, with the Jui Tui temple on Th Ranong the most important, followed by Bang Niaw and Sui Boon Tong temples. Events are also celebrated at temples in the nearby towns of Kathu (where the festival originated) and Ban Tha Reua.
The TAT office in Phuket Island prints a helpful schedule of events for the Vegetarian Festival each year. The festival also takes place in Trang, Krabi and other Southern Thai towns.
Besides abstention from meat, the Vegetarian Festival involves various processions, temple offerings and cultural performances, and culminates with incredible acts of self-mortification – walking on hot coals, climbing knife-blade ladders, piercing the skin with sharp objects and so on. Shop owners along Phuket Island’s central streets set up altars in front of their shop-fronts offering nine tiny cups of tea, incense, fruit, candles and flowers to the nine emperor gods invoked by the festival. Those participating as mediums bring the nine deities to earth for the festival by entering into a trance state and piercing their cheeks with all manner of objects – sharpened tree branches (with leaves still attached), spears, slide trombones, daggers; some even hack their tongues continuously with saw or axe blades. During the street processions these mediums stop at the shop-front altars, where they pick up the offered fruit and either added it to the objects piercing their cheeks or pass it on to bystanders as a blessing. They also drink one of the nine cups of tea and grab some flowers to stick in their waistbands. The shop owners and their families stand by with their hands together in a wai gesture, out of respect for the mediums and the deities by whom they are temporarily possed.
The entire atmosphere is one of religious frenzy, with deafening firecrackers, ritual dancing, and bloody shirt fronts. Oddly enough, there is no record of this kind of activity associated with Taoist Lent in China. Some historians assume that the Chinese here were somehow influenced by the Hindu festival of Thaipusam in nearby Malaysia, which features similar acts of self-mortification. The local Chinese claim, however, that the festival was started by a theatre troupe from China that stopped off in nearby Kathu around 150 years ago. The story goes that the trope was struck seriously ill because the members had failed to propitiate the nine emperor gods of Taoism. The nine day penance they performed included self-piercing, meditation and a strict vegetarian diet.
Basically, the festival celebrates the beginning of the month of ‘Taoist Lent’, when devout Chinese abstain from eating all meat and meat products. In Phuket Island, the festival activities are centerd around five Chinese temples, with the Jui Tui temple on Th Ranong the most important, followed by Bang Niaw and Sui Boon Tong temples. Events are also celebrated at temples in the nearby towns of Kathu (where the festival originated) and Ban Tha Reua.
The TAT office in Phuket Island prints a helpful schedule of events for the Vegetarian Festival each year. The festival also takes place in Trang, Krabi and other Southern Thai towns.
Besides abstention from meat, the Vegetarian Festival involves various processions, temple offerings and cultural performances, and culminates with incredible acts of self-mortification – walking on hot coals, climbing knife-blade ladders, piercing the skin with sharp objects and so on. Shop owners along Phuket Island’s central streets set up altars in front of their shop-fronts offering nine tiny cups of tea, incense, fruit, candles and flowers to the nine emperor gods invoked by the festival. Those participating as mediums bring the nine deities to earth for the festival by entering into a trance state and piercing their cheeks with all manner of objects – sharpened tree branches (with leaves still attached), spears, slide trombones, daggers; some even hack their tongues continuously with saw or axe blades. During the street processions these mediums stop at the shop-front altars, where they pick up the offered fruit and either added it to the objects piercing their cheeks or pass it on to bystanders as a blessing. They also drink one of the nine cups of tea and grab some flowers to stick in their waistbands. The shop owners and their families stand by with their hands together in a wai gesture, out of respect for the mediums and the deities by whom they are temporarily possed.
The entire atmosphere is one of religious frenzy, with deafening firecrackers, ritual dancing, and bloody shirt fronts. Oddly enough, there is no record of this kind of activity associated with Taoist Lent in China. Some historians assume that the Chinese here were somehow influenced by the Hindu festival of Thaipusam in nearby Malaysia, which features similar acts of self-mortification. The local Chinese claim, however, that the festival was started by a theatre troupe from China that stopped off in nearby Kathu around 150 years ago. The story goes that the trope was struck seriously ill because the members had failed to propitiate the nine emperor gods of Taoism. The nine day penance they performed included self-piercing, meditation and a strict vegetarian diet.
