On Dec 17, 8:01*pm, Bruce in Bangkok
wrote:
On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:44:40 -0800, Gordon wrote:
* Can you explain this "festival" to this unenlightened fool?
*Thanks
*Gordon
http://www.fattygoodlander.com/scary_veggies

The Phuket Vegetarian Festival apparently basically is a mix of the
Chinese Vegetarian Month and the Hindu , mainly Tamil, Thaipusm
Festival as practiced in Singapore and Malaysia.

Let me add a few extra bits:

The nine days of vegetarianism (and other restraints, including as
Bruce noted, from sexual intercourse but also including contact with
menstruating women) is fairly common in Chinese communities in
southeast Asia, in the ninth lunar month of the year (count the New
Moons, starting from the Chinese lunar new year; it's usually in Oct
or Nov of the Gregorian calendar), and known as the Nine Emperors'
Festival. The Nine Emperors are seen in the night sky as the stars of
the handle of the Big Dipper (or at least 7 or them are on a clear
night; the other two seem not to show when I count the stars).

What is unusual about the festival in Phuket is the piercing. It
doesn't happen in the other Chinese communities (eg Malaysia,
Singapore) celebrating the same Vegetarian Festival. It's worth noting
that Phuket has a fair sized minority of Chinese, with Chinese
families dating back a few hundred years. Old Phuket town is largely a
Chinese merchant/trading settlement and Chinese are perhaps as much as
one-third the permanent population of Phuket.

I think Bruce is right about the influence of the Thaipusam festival.
The piercing tradition of Thaipusam has been banned in most (or all?)
of India for decades. But it's still practised in southeast Asia. Note
that the older generation of Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore
generally find the piercing in Thaipusam to be abhorrent, but each
year a few young Chinese join with the Indians to carry a kavadi or at
least a milk pot.

The other influence of the Phuket Vegetarian Festival are a handful of
traditional practices in Chinese Daoism. In southern China (eg Taiwan,
but I've never seen it in northern China), Daoist mystics will on
certain occasions climb a ladder of swords (with the cutting edges
uppermost, but with no damage incurred by the climber) or use a sword
to cut their tongue (and then sometimes write in a supposed trance,
using the blood from their tongue, with the intention of creating a
charm). Those same Daoist practices show up in Phuket at the
Vegetarian Festival. But they're done by a small number of mystics
(who are mostly middle-aged men, compared to the larger number of
younger men who do much of the conspicuous piercing).

Most Chinese communities in southeast Asia have a sprinkling of Daoist
temples. And not a few businesses and home have Daoist shrines. But I
reckon that Daoism has lost ground considerably, in the sense that it
has not been as successful as Buddhism or Christianity in transferring
doctrine to succeeding generations. The lack of doctrine doesn't mean
a lack of practises - we need to distinguish among Daoism as a body of
ideas and Daoism as a set of worship behaviours.

I disagree a bit with Bruce about the bleeding. I stood as part of the
support group for a young man in Singapore, piercing for Thaipusam
back in the 1980s. And when done with calm intent (ie absent shock and
with minimal tissue damage, plus application of ashes), surprisingly
little blood is spilled. But in Phuket I've seen a couple of young men
who had clearly each lost at least 100 ml of blood (with the blood
visible on their chests). A little blood goes a long way, so it's easy
to over-estimate the volume of blood, but I think 100 ml was a good
estimate.

Bil