The One About Hungry Ghost Festival

(If you're reading this posting hoping to know more useful facts about the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival, please press ALT-F4 right now.)

I like to think of the Hungry Ghost Festival is some sort of an annual vacation for those Hungry Ghosts.

The Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival is celebrated on the seventh month in the Chinese calendar, where all the spirits in the ghostly realm, which have been busy working their arse off to pay for the wrongdoings they did before they passed on, are released into the human realm. Don't you think it's somewhat like a vacation?

Of course, to be able to qualify for this, you would need to:
- lie, steal, cheat and/or kill someone...
- be sentenced to hell for eternal damnation
- be tortured non-stop everyday by the minions in hell for the crime you did (and)
- not being fed any food, and water throughout the process

By "working", I meant them being tortured for their wrongdoings. Think of it this way: If you backstab someone when you're alive, you are most likely going to be literally stab in the back when you're in hell. Brings a whole new meaning to the word 'backstabbing', doesn't it?

Anyway, let's not get side tracked here. Back to the festival...

The reason why those spirits are known as Hungry Ghosts is because there is no time given for break. It's all about being tortured over and over again all day long, all year round, for the crimes you did. So when the gates of hell open during the seventh month of the Chinese calendar, they are starving so much they'll eat any fatty MSG-coated food you offer them. Hence, the term 'Hungry Ghosts'.

Back on the human realm, knowing that those 'Hungry Ghosts' will be walking among us, we offer them those fatty MSG-coated food, hoping that it will give them high cholesterol and they will drop dead in hell and never to return again. Little did we anticipate that the MSG will cause their hair to drop and they will come back the following year with a vengeance. That is why some people are haunted by ghosts which looked like its hair is falling off, or looked like its having a bad hair day. I guess this is also probably why most ghosts you see in the movies are depicted as ghastly figures that wear badly made wigs. My guess is that they probably don't sell well-made wig there.

Many associate the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival to the ever famous Día de los Muertos , but I have to disagree. Día de los Muertos is a day to remember the dead. More like our Chinese "Cheng Beng", where those ghostly friends from the other realm don't come visiting. But during the Hungry Ghost Festival those ghostly figures actually come out. And like it or not, they're everywhere!

How I know? The answer is very simple. As Haley Joel 'Michael-Caine-Robbed-My-Oscar' Osment once said: "I see dead people..." In fact, I think there might be one behind you right now.

- jessism © 01082008 -