On 2nd March 2013, there was a Chingay Parade taking place in Johor Bahru. Through one of my photography groups JBOG, one of my good friends, Michael, the creator for the JBOG group, organized an outing for this event on Clubsnap: http://www.clubsnap.com/forums/gatherings-outings/1222915-%5Bjbog-mar2013%5D-jb-chingay.html
The JB Chingay Parade has been held for more than 100 years, and this year was in its 149th year and running. It is celebrated on the 21st day in the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar and the event attracts thousands of people annually. A brief history for the creation of this event as explained by Michael is as follows:
“149 years ago, there was a paranormal haunting at the cemetery along Jalan Ulu Air Molek. In order to get rid of the evil spirits, the townspeople decided to exorcise the evil spirits by inviting the deities from the Johor Ancient Chinese Temple (柔佛古庙). After the ceremony is done, there is a parade back to original temple. Thereafter, every year they will repeat this ceremony to represent luck and prosperity among all who attended.”
The more official history is as follows: “The Johor Ancient Chinese Temple houses 5 deities, “Zhao Da Yuan Shuai” (Hainanese), “Hua Guang Da Di” (Cantonese), “Gan Tian Da Di” (Hakka), “Hong Xian Da Di” (Hokkien) and “Yuan Tian Shang Di” (Teochew). Each of the deity was brought to Johor by the ancestors of the clan members in the 19th century. The kangcus (river heads) prayed to the deities for a safe journey to Malaysia. As gratitude, all the kangcus celebrated Chingay. The procession is a religious celebration led by the Johor Baru Tionghua Association where the temple deities are taken on an annual “tour” to bless the city with peace, prosperity and harmony. Carried by devotees from the 5 Chinese clans, the deities take to the streets accompanied by traditional lion dancers, dragon dancers, stilt-walkers, puppeteers, pugilistic troops, cultural dancers, colourful floats and brass bands that will take more than 7 hours to complete. The annual celebration begins with a Lighting-up ceremony at Xing Gong, a temporary shrine at Jalan Ulu Ayer Molek for the temple deities.”
This year, I hooked up with Elmo, who drove a group of 5 up to JB to meet up with Michael. The meeting place and time was at City Square, 5pm, but it was raining very heavily then. According to Elmo, there will be rain every year for this event, but it will stop just before the parade starts at 7pm. Elmo claims that the rain is to wash the roads so that the deities will have a clean road. At around 6pm, Michael got the entire group to walk over to the starting point, which is the Xing Gong. We walked in the rain and reached around 630pm. By then, the rain really did stop as per Elmo!
Over at Xing Gong, there were plenty of people waiting for the parade to start. Whilst waiting, the event organizers were working the crowd by having them shout “Huat ah!” and “Heng ah”, both auspicious words in Chinese.
Halfway while waiting, a few of the dragon dance troupe tried to enter to pay their respects, but as there were many people within the temple grounds, the organizers tried to stop them. However, they still forced their way in, which was a comical sight, but all was good and controlled.
Then the time comes for the deities to go on parade. The statues of the five deities are then carried by devotees from the five Chinese associations and they take to the streets accompanied by traditional lion dancers, dragon dancers, stilt-walkers, puppeteers, pugilistic troops, cultural dancers and brass bands. It will take more than seven hours to complete the city circuit.
At this point, I got separated from Elmo and the rest of the group. I was kind of bumped when I got separated, but there was only one way out and that was to go along with the parade, which I did. Along the way, the parade got more and more interesting. There were plenty of lion and dragon dances, acrobatic performances and other interesting stuff.
There were also Hello Kitty mascot and Taiwan’s Third Prince (台湾三太子).
One of the performances that I especially liked is the giant flags. The flags are most probably about 5~6m tall and the performers have to hoist the flags around on their stomachs, elbows and heads. Simply amazing.
Up at this point, i managed to meet up with Elmo and the rest of the group at a designated meeting place set between us, which proved to be lucky for me. Elmo then suggested to cut straight over to City Square so that we can have a feel of the parade in full swing as the main stage is over there. Once over at City Square, the atmosphere was amazing! The crowd was in its full glory and there were like thousands of people there, all trying to get a glimpse of the parade.
Another interesting thing was that if you are a shop owner along the streets where the parade is taking place, you can actually set up an altar to pray to the deities passing by and the lion and dragon dance troupe will bless your shop. I managed to catch this blessing in action once along the parade.
Carrying on, we could see God of Fortune handing out ang pows containing sweets. People was rushing to get these goodies for good luck! The rest of the parade is more or less the same from this point onwards. One interesting dragon dance was that it was a snake that was spewing out smoke!
Finally after walking non-stop for close to 4 hours, it was time to call it a day and we went to have supper at a nearby roti prata stall. What a day it has been! It was definitely an eye-opener for me and I hope to make it again for next year!
PS. Some of the info on the Chingay parade is taken from here: http://ppunlimited.blogspot.sg/
RVF Photography 