Today is the Hungry Ghost Festival. And as I flipped through my old drafts, I remembered this old news I read in Feb 2012.
Seng Wong Beo Temple in Tanjong Pagar, Singapore
This temple is famous for conducting "ghost marriages". Also known as Du Cheng Huang Gu Miao, meaning "Temple of the City Protector", Seng Wong Beo is a Taoist temple similor to Seng Ong Beow in Penang.
Hundreds of this ritual have so far been conducted at the temple. According to Taoist belief, the rules in Hell permit only the married to eat at the table. Children and the unmarried could only eat under the table. For that reason, the spirit of miscarried fetuses and the unmarried would not be able to receive offerings made on family altars.
Thus some families conduct a ghost marriage to upgrade their status and meal tickets in Hell. However this usually happens when the dead appear to their living relatives, seeking their help to find them a match. Though rituals conducted at ancestral altars, the dead were introduced to each other. The success of the match is determined by the casting of lots and interpretation of dreams.
During the ghost marriages, the altar is decked with paper furniture such as bed, car and other material possessions for the dead. Paper effigies of the bridal couple are positioned in worshipful posture in front of the temple deity before they are torched for the couple.
Source: singapore-traveltips
At that time, I find the tradition fascinating. At least the marriage is respectful. Unlike the case in China where it insinuates a certain demeaning feeling to the corpse bride.
In fact an old news had mentioned a case where a 52-year-old farmer Sung Tiantang had admitted to killing six women in northern Hebei province and selling their bodies to be used as ghost brides, for a total profit of less than 20,000 yuan ($2,600). And that was because there is a lack of females (corpses) due to the one child policy in China. Fresh dead bodies, known as wet goods, also could fetch higher prices than bodies buried in the grave for some time, which is known in the industry as dry goods.
Sigh this is not the Tim Burton's Corpse Bride that we are definitely dreaming about.
A WOMAN in northern China was sold into marriage twice within days - despite dying weeks earlier. The young woman, from Hebei Province, a large region near Beijing, died over the Lunar New Year holiday.
Her family opted to sell her body for a "ghost marriage" - a macabre union designed to prevent deceased bachelors from wandering the afterlife alone. They received 35,000 yuan ($5560), a large sum in China's still-poor rural areas.
But the deal turned sour just days later for the dead woman's new family, when robbers raided the grave and removed the bride's body to marry her off to a dead bachelor in another town for 30,000 yuan, it was claimed.Source:theaustralia.com Reading this news remind me of the temple I once visited in Singapore.
Seng Wong Beo Temple in Tanjong Pagar, Singapore
This temple is famous for conducting "ghost marriages". Also known as Du Cheng Huang Gu Miao, meaning "Temple of the City Protector", Seng Wong Beo is a Taoist temple similor to Seng Ong Beow in Penang.
Hundreds of this ritual have so far been conducted at the temple. According to Taoist belief, the rules in Hell permit only the married to eat at the table. Children and the unmarried could only eat under the table. For that reason, the spirit of miscarried fetuses and the unmarried would not be able to receive offerings made on family altars.
Thus some families conduct a ghost marriage to upgrade their status and meal tickets in Hell. However this usually happens when the dead appear to their living relatives, seeking their help to find them a match. Though rituals conducted at ancestral altars, the dead were introduced to each other. The success of the match is determined by the casting of lots and interpretation of dreams.
During the ghost marriages, the altar is decked with paper furniture such as bed, car and other material possessions for the dead. Paper effigies of the bridal couple are positioned in worshipful posture in front of the temple deity before they are torched for the couple.
Source: singapore-traveltips
At that time, I find the tradition fascinating. At least the marriage is respectful. Unlike the case in China where it insinuates a certain demeaning feeling to the corpse bride.
In fact an old news had mentioned a case where a 52-year-old farmer Sung Tiantang had admitted to killing six women in northern Hebei province and selling their bodies to be used as ghost brides, for a total profit of less than 20,000 yuan ($2,600). And that was because there is a lack of females (corpses) due to the one child policy in China. Fresh dead bodies, known as wet goods, also could fetch higher prices than bodies buried in the grave for some time, which is known in the industry as dry goods.
Sigh this is not the Tim Burton's Corpse Bride that we are definitely dreaming about.
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