12 April 2007

Ching Ming, My Family Activities, Part 1

My Family Ching Ming activities involves visiting 3 sites on the Island, to visit the columbarium where my paternal grandma ashes are intern, an Christian cemetery where my maternal grand father, and aunty grave site is located, and a Buddhist temple where my paternal grand parents ancestor tablets are place. My maternal grand mother grave is located in KL as such the responsibility is under my cousin who lives down there.
As the appointed leader and organizer, I am required to purchase all the necessary offering (Taoist believe), vegetarian food stuffs (Buddhist believe), & flowers (Christian believe). The offering were purchase one week in advance and consists of Paper “gold” & “silver” ingots, Paper “Bank notes”, Paper “clothing’s” and Paper “shoe” for my paternal grand parents. The Flowers and Vegetarian food stuffs were purchase from the market on that day itself. We decided to go for the Ching Ming 2 days after the actual day, on a Sat morning as we hope to encounter less traffic.
Departing from our House in Tanjung Bungah at 9am , our first stop is in Ayer Itam, at the Beow Hiang Lim Temple.
Entering from the rear entrance it was a quite day, This temple is well manage, a temporary car park have been set up with attendants to ensure smooth flow of traffic and to avoid jaga kerata harassment. Prayers are organize so you may join in if you want.
Groups Prayers
Monks on their Rounds
After setting up the prayer table, with the vegetarian food stuffs and fruits, and lit the joss stick and prayer candle, I move around to observe what was happening at this temple.
Prayer Table with Food Offerings, Fruits, Steam Cake, Vegetarian Noodles.
View of Penang Hill, Bukit Bendera, or Flag Hill, from the grounds.
Interior Photo of the Old Temple
Exterior View of the Old Temple.
The New Temple
To be continue in Part II

1 comment:

KopiSoh said...

Once again you managed to bring back good memories for me, it's been awhile since we did the Ching Ming thing, my father wanted his ashes scattered in the ocean so we kinda have no place to go and do the pai pai thing. Btw I dun have my own e-mail account so if you have questions pls feel free to use my comment box to ask away, all my kopitiam kaki do that too, doesn't matter that the comments have nuthin to do with my post, okay, please do feel free to do that :o)