If you're curious about the spiritual inclination of young people/the young people we hope to shakubuku, here's a book review by prize winning poet Ng Yi-Sheng, on Dr Fabian Graham's research.
Voices from the Underworld: Chinese Hell deity worship in contemporary Singapore and Malaysia, by Fabian Graham.
Up till now, I've viewed tang kee / Chinese spirit medium worship here as an ancient, endangered tradition. This British anthropologist flips the script, arguing that it's an extremely contemporary movement, vibrant & growing, actually stimulated by SG policies—mass graveyard exhumations for development creates a demand for ritual specialists; digital infrastructure means an explosion of spectacular ceremonies (e.g. slashing of tongues w porcelain shards) prospering on the attention economy of social media. Writing in 2020, he notes an upswing in the percentage of SGans identifying as Taoist—completely the reverse of what others have lamented about Chinese youngsters turning away from "superstition".
What's especially interesting, however, is that he notes that there's been specifically a rise in the reverence of hell deities, more than celestial deities. (Fantastic moment when he describes his befuddlement upon walking into a SG temple & beholding the shrines to the underworld gods: like discovering a sect of Christianity that's utterly orthodox in doctrine, but whose members prefer talking to Satan cos he's more relatable.)
He's especially interested in the worship of Tua Di Ya Pek / 大二爷伯, a manifestation of the Heibai Wuchang / 黑白无常 deities who guide dead souls to hell & enforce punishments. This is an early development, he says: he can only find evidence going back to the 90s of mediums channelling him, & it doesn't look like it comes from China. (He went to the Anxi Chenghuangmiao, which is regarded as the most sacred site, & found their legends & iconography were all different. Penang's a better bet.)
It's also kinda moving reading about his research practice, cos he approaches everything w the same respect & curiosity as I'd try to, even while folks jokingly nickname him "Blue Eyes". He interviews Tua Di Ya Pek via mediums—in Muar, he attends a whole conference of these gods—& marvels when the god genuinely seems to absorb all trace of the offerings of Guinness Stout & Cuban cigars, leaving none of their scent on the mouth of the medium. He documents their syncretism: Malay & Indian devotees in SG industrial estate temples; oil wok rites that include benzoin, limes, vibhuti, ginger, lemon grass, holy basil; shrines to Datuk Gong & Madurai Veeran; Thai influences on Malaysia like luk thep dolls & coffin ceremonies (he undergoes one of these, getting his bad karma erased by being sealed in a casket & crossing the Blood River btw the worlds of the living & dead, & mentions how the practice exploded after Ekachai Uekrongtham's 2018 horror film The Coffin).
Strange banalities: devotees call the act of sticking skewers in your flesh "satay"; a getai singer sings "Happy Birthday to You" Marilyn Monroe style to Tua Di Ya Pek, right after he joined in a techno remix of Gangnam Style. & the sacred: he offers the god a 16-million-year-old ammonite fossil from an English beach, which is gratefully accepted.
& these movements are still evolving. He notes new deities, e.g. the money god Bao Bei Ya in SG, Bone God & Laughing God in Penang (the former was according to legend a Japanese officer killed in the war for his kindness!), & predicts that their cults will grow.
Genuinely inspiring, to think of SG & Malaysia as crucibles for new religious practice, not simply preservation of the old. & also, amazing fodder for fiction!
#yishreads #singaporestudies #taoiststudies #bookstagram
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