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 Serendipity struck on Saturday evening when a thirsty stroll to a roadhouse unearthed a flotilla of lorries bedecked in garish shades and outlandish filigrees. We had spotted a similar train careening down the east coast highway in the past week, but it seems the festival of the Nine Emperors was still in full swing.

You could call him a sibling deity. Or a pack of nine gods for the price of one. The result of the union between the Emperor Zhou Yu Dou Fu Yuan Jun (斗父周御國王天尊) and the Goddess of the North Star Dou Mu Yuan Jun (斗母元君), the Nine Emperors or Kow Wong Yeh (九皇爺) as the Cantonese call him/them are said to dwell in the heavens as stars and visit the mortal world from the first to the ninth days of each ninth lunar cycle. We reached the junction of Jalan Tua Kong and Figaro Street just in time to see a mass of white-clothed bodies surging towards a little row of weathered shophouses across the watering hole. The crowd had probably emerged from a small temple at Jalan Ulu Siglap that is one of a dozen or so across the island devoted to the celestial nonet. Watched over by invisible spirits and corporals in uniform, the procession was led by four priests and a veteran flagbearer. Behind them marched three gangs of four men, each bearing ornate palanquins that swung to divine rhythms as they lurched down the road amid an entourage in pale headscarves. Each quartet, purified by a diet of plant matter, rocked and rolled as they ferried the gods from their shrines to the line of trucks in fancy dress.

A dragon swam through the air. Incense and improvisatory reeds possessed the still, stifling night. The sedans continued to swing and swirl with heaving motion, as if their carriers were driven by a will beyond this world. We skirted the last of the assemblies and paid homage to tastier spirits as they boarded their ride and set off to sea. There, on a coastline far removed from Siglap's sandy shores, the nine little lords will bless the ghosts of festive past and bid farewell to a paradise lost and barely loved. But when the bough at last breaks, we shall lie aslumber on cold threads, afraid of nothing but what remains of this day and haunts our minds to fey.

19 October 2010 in Life in Singapore | Permalink









