Chapter 22 Kowloon Tong Triangle Park (2) Yu Lan Festival offerings

The Yu Lan Festival is also known as the Ghost Festival, and its day falls on the fourteenth day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. However, Hong Kong people attached great importance to the Yu Lan Festival after the war. The itinerary burns clothes and puts food away to save the souls of the dead, which lasts almost one month, so the whole July is also called ghost month.The seventh month of the lunar calendar is traditionally considered inappropriate, and weddings and other happy events are not scheduled for this month. In order to maintain their turnover, restaurants will hold some gala dinners, and special banquets with singing and dancing are born from this.Starting from Heng Tau Hom, most of the Yu Lan Festivals were hosted by people from Chaozhou nationality, so the Shengong opera was also dominated by Chaozhou opera.It is said that this is because the Chaozhou community in Heng Tau Hom, in view of the fact that the area was haunted by ghosts after the war, in addition to the constant rumors of headless ghosts haunting the area, some people even dreamed of ghosts claiming meat at midnight. As a result, unjust souls and wild ghosts were flooded, and the custom of burning street clothes was expanded into a large-scale sacrifice, which is both a divine skill and a disciple.The magic performance can entertain the fellow villagers, while the dojo and the altar can save the souls of the dead, and distribute rice grains to help the poor. Many districts have followed suit, so the Yulan Festival has become a special event in the seventh month of the lunar calendar.

However, in the 1980s, Hong Kong's economy was prosperous, and the government's welfare measures could meet the basic necessities of the citizens. It was rare for roads to freeze to death.Coupled with the fact that the new generation of Teochew people have little interest in Teochew Shengong Opera (you don’t even understand Teochew dialect, how can you appreciate Teochew opera), so the Yu Lan Shenghui is not as popular as it was in the 1960s and 1970s.Coupled with the reconstruction of old districts, the disintegration of hipster community organizations, and the lack of interest of the new generation to take over, Yu Lan Shenghui disappeared in many new districts.Later, due to the noise problem, the Shengong Opera was complained. Under many restrictions, the Yu Lan Festival became more and more rare, leaving only a few old districts, such as Kowloon City, Ngau Tau Kok, Ma Tau Wai, etc. to support the situation.

However, the custom of burning street clothes did not disappear with the Yu Lan Festival. On the contrary, due to the lack of venues for collectively burning street clothes, as soon as July entered, the streets and alleys were filled with ashes offerings, which caused environmentalists to condemn This bad habit of destroying trees, polluting the environment, and wasting food calls for the abolition of the custom of burning street clothes, at least to reduce the number of burnt paper and take back the sacrifices for consumption.They may not know that sacrifices to ancestors and gods can be eaten casually, but those who sacrifice to wild ghosts and lonely souls have to go through some procedures before they can be eaten. If they eat them casually, they will cause trouble at any time!

In the past, there were many rules for burning street clothes. The most memorable thing is throwing money, throwing broken money in all directions, and street children happily searched among the ashes. It is a windfall income for street children.Times have changed, and this fine tradition of throwing money no longer exists. Even if there is, it is just a perfunctory throwing of counterfeit money.It is better not to burn street clothes if it is sloppy. If it is sloppy, it will cause evil spirits to pester it, and it will cost more to put down the incident. A family on Cumberland Road, Kowloon Tong, burned street clothes in Triangle Garden, which caused a strange disaster!

Siqi, a young woman with a westernized mind, was urged by her grandmother to buy some gold and silver clothes paper, fruit and meat, etc. on the 13th night of the seventh lunar month, and set fire to street clothes by a lawn in the Triangle Garden. Everything is done by the workers, and she is just watching from the sidelines.At this time, she was more than seven months pregnant, her belly was swollen, and she felt quite inconvenient to move.Since the burning of the street clothes, she has complained a lot, telling the workers to light the candles as soon as possible. The fruits and meat are wrapped in plastic wrap very properly, and the workers are not allowed to insert the incense candles to avoid contamination. Waste, to be environmentally friendly and so on.

The burning of the street clothes was completed in a hurry. The workers cleaned up everything. Siqi picked up an apple, tore off the plastic wrap and ate it. When she got home, she almost ate the apple.For other fruits and meat, Siqi's grandmother took them from the workers and placed them in front of the ancestors' spiritual tablets to worship.Instructing the workers to eat it tomorrow, Siqi didn't care about the intention, thinking that the old man had two uses for one thing, and she didn't tell her about eating apples, thinking it was just a trivial matter. That night, Siqi had a nightmare. In the dream, several men and women in ragged clothes asked her for food, and the one in the lead even scolded Siqi for stealing their food, looking very angry.After Siqi woke up, she was covered in sweat.After that, there were similar dreams every few days, and the man's anger became deeper and deeper, and he kept cursing, saying that Siqi wanted to take revenge on Yunyun by cutting off people's food and clothing.Siqi told her husband about the dream, and the husband said that she was pregnant and under psychological pressure, so she often had nightmares. This explanation seemed reasonable, so Siqi ignored it.

On the evening of July 30, accompanied by workers, Siqi took a walk in the Triangle Park. This was the doctor's order. Pregnant women should do more exercise to help with childbirth.After wandering around for a while, Siqi rested in the gazebo, a burst of tiredness hit her heart, and she fell asleep.In a daze, I saw that ferocious man yelling at her again: You mother-in-law, I am so tired that I have no food or clothing. If I don’t go back, I will eat you for the rest of my life! After scolding, she rushed towards Siqi, who woke up suddenly, her body was shaken, she lost her balance and fell to the ground.This fall caused the fetus to be born prematurely, at exactly eight months old.

During the hospitalization, although Siqi didn't have that nightmare again, every time the nurse brought the baby to breastfeed, the baby didn't know how hungry she was, and sucked on human milk without end.It took the nurse to forcibly hold the child away, so Siqi had to get away.Breastfeeding is a pleasure for a new mother, but Siqi has an inexplicable fear of breastfeeding. After being discharged from the hospital, Siqi shared the room with the child. The child was placed in a baby basket, and he looked very cute when he was asleep. However, when he woke up, he had to feed or cry wildly. Siqi made eye contact with the child, and found that the child's eyes were very fierce, vaguely like the man seen in the previous nightmare.As a result, Siqi actually developed resistance to the child.Seeing that there seemed to be a rift between the wife and the child, the husband thought it was postpartum depression, so he had to take care of it from the sidelines.

One night, Siqi woke up from her sleep and cursed at the child. The strange thing was that the child didn't cry and looked very strange. From her husband's point of view, the two seemed to have some kind of communication.After a long time, Siqi suddenly went berserk and pinched the child's neck.This is terrible, the husband hurriedly pulled Siqi away, and on the other hand called for help.After quarreling for a long time, Siqi calmed down and told her husband what happened: the child was raped by a male ghost. The male ghost came for revenge and punished her for stealing his food and clothing, but the male ghost just cursed her. , but did not say how Siqi robbed him of food and clothing.When she pinched the child just now, it was an illusion that she thought she was fighting desperately with the male ghost.

As a result, Siqi felt that something was unusual, especially when the child was pinched by the neck, he still didn't cry out, and there was even a wicked smile on his little face!The entanglement of ghosts and spirits cannot be deduced with logic and common sense, the only way to be rescued is to ask the ascetics.After asking around, I finally got a Taoist priest of the Qingwei Sect to help. The Taoist leader learned that Siqi had passed out in Triangle Park before giving birth, so he went to Triangle Park to observe for a while.In the evening, the Taoist priest walked around the Triangle Park and stopped in the gazebo for a while, muttering something, as if he was talking to someone.

After the Taoist priest returned to the mansion, he hung two talismans on the child. The child immediately cried and cried, but the Taoist priest ignored him and first told Siqi the reason for the ghost encounter. Rich families in Kowloon Tong seldom burn street clothes. It was hard to see Siqi burning street clothes, but there was only a little bit of it. What’s worse was that the fruit and meat were eaten without incense candles, so that ghosts could not enjoy them. , and Siqi ate apples in front of them again, which made the hungry ghost salivate, but couldn't touch anything. The group of lonely ghosts survived until the end of the ghost month, but still got nothing, and the hungry ghost became even more angry. Finding an opportunity, she entangled Siqi, attached herself to the fetus, and took revenge on Siqi. Siqi didn't expect that eating an apple would lead to a catastrophe, so she asked the Taoist priest how to save it.The Taoist leader said that it is better to break up an enemy than to make a knot, so he asked Siqi to apologize to the hungry ghosts, and held a grand ceremony of burning street clothes in the Triangle Park, so that the ghosts returned home full of rewards. The hungry ghost originally didn't want to leave here, because he was possessed by the fetus and had plenty of food and clothing, so he didn't want to become a wandering soul again, so he had no one to rely on. The Taoist priest promised to open the altar to transmigrate, so that he could enter the reincarnation early, the hungry ghost had no objection, and the incident happened. be fully resolved. However, although Siqi got rid of the entanglement of hungry ghosts, she was afraid of the dark after seeing ghosts, and she dared not live in Kowloon Tong again. The office of a film company, the business of the film company is still able to carve out a bloody way in the downturn of the market, becoming a new force in the film industry.